After being steam rolled by my homework, I hunkered down, reviewed old powerpoints, watched language tutorials on YouTube, looked over my flashcards, reviewed my Italian verbs, and rewrote my notes, only for all of my classes to get cancelled due to the Coronavirus. Living 4 miles from New Rochelle, ground zero for the US cases of COVID-19, I wasn’t eager to hang around Bronxville any longer. Instead of running off like a thief in the night, I booked an $87 flight home for the next day, in an attempt to put some distance between me and the Coronavirus.
Ignoring my generalized anxiety about flying, I was sardined in cabin two of a miniscule airplane, side eyeing the woman next to me every time the elderly gentleman behind us hacked up a lung. I thought that 2020 was going to be my year but then my mother, who met me at the airport, attacked me with lysol and then shoved me in the trunk of her car to change clothes. I was driven home by my mother, brother, and my brother’s girlfriend, who then, along with my father, became my quarantine buddies for the subsequent weeks.
I would just like to add that I have noticed no discernable difference between my regular anti-social, daily routine and my social-distancing, quarantine routine. I wake up whenever I want, don’t change out of my pajamas, turn on random TV shows and movies that I probably won’t finish watching, and just overall sit around waiting to heat up my next meal. My sleep schedule is unnecessarily off-balance and my diet has also been unnecessarily off-balance. I have eaten cake, crepes, brownies, and ice cream as legitimate meals.
I have been home for the past two weeks. Here’s what I’ve been up to:
(See if you can spot the difference)
Week one:
- Making chocolate crepes for the group because morale is high.
- Writing handwritten letters to my aunt and feeling like a character in a Jane Austen novel.
- Being literary in a hammock in a romper in my backyard, trying to maintain my school work. The book that I am reading is a nice companion whilst in quarantine because it is a collection of stories about people in DC getting lost in their own worlds; the perfect combination of communal responsibility and going through individual struggles and I am suddenly struck by the similarities in circumstance.
- Making Chrissy Teigen pasta because it is the only recipe that I can make with any certainty.
- Watching a series of Hitchcock films like intellectual film snobs.
Week two:
- Listening to the Cranberries and doing an impossible, Christmas puzzle that has been laying on various surfaces throughout the house for weeks.
- I have made Chrissy Teigen’s pasta three times, because it is still the only recipe I can make with any certainty.
- Disney plus has kept me occupied and by now I have watched “The Jungle Book,” “Inside Out,” “Coco,” “Zootopia,” and “Big Hero Six,”on repeat and cried throughout.
- I had many expectations for college but doing yoga with my psychology class via zoom was not one of them. Listening to my teacher’s dog howl in unison with us as we do elongated breathing has been a nice change from attending regular class on campus.
- I have watched several vine compilations, including “people vs slides,” but am dismayed by the fact that my favorite vines are no longer on the internet.
- After much deliberation, I have decided that the Derry Girls character that I identify with the most is Orla. She doesn’t talk very much, always gets food on her face, and is kind of just there.
- I have contemplated faking technological difficulties at least once in class (if any of my teachers see this then your class is not the one I’m talking about)
- My mother has commandeered her bathrobe again so I am wearing my stained, two-sizes too big sweatshirt from summer camp when I was 12 as a substitute.
- I go for a walk with my mother and father in our neighborhood. We hear a low growling sound and my mother and I take off running, thinking that it’s a dog growling. My mother nearly dislocated my thumb because that’s what she decided to grab me by. As it turns out, it was just someone closing a metal door, not a dog growling, because we’re that out of touch with nature.
In conclusion, if you read in the paper that I have turned towards a life of crime and/or alcoholism, then mind ya business. Overall, that is the riveting tale of how my quaranting has been going. We’ve all played Clue but I have yet to win. Yet despite all of this, I don’t actually mind being in quarantine, deep down in my heart of hearts. If there ever was a time to have a quarantine, this would be it. The technology that we have allows us to still attend school and work, all the while we sit at home reading books and binge-watching television; the things we like to do anyway.
The Tragic Queen,
Raquel
The Tragic Queen 