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Hello Jake from State Farm. What are you wearing?
You only pay for what you need.
Safe drivers save 40 percent.
I have been home alone locked in with four TV sets and Facebook way too long.
I’m addicted to twice-a-day local and national news, even though both are liberally laced with depressing statistics about COVID-19. I’ve also watched too many marches (peaceful and otherwise), heard of too many tragic gun deaths and watched too many stressed-out people throw tantrums because they’ve been asked to wear a mask.
I’m blurry-eyed from repetitive commercials. The most annoying ones are repeated over and over and over, one after another. It’s no longer ad nauseum, it’s ad annoyseum. Sometimes the exact same Liberty Liberty Liberty, the exact same You’re in Good Hands is aired twice within a few minutes. The same commercial, word for word!
I’m tired of Facebook, too. And emails. People keep posting things I’ve already seen several times.
I need to get out more.
My mood lightens considerably when, for instance, I have to get a haircut or pick up a prescription. Or even (and I swore I’d never do this again) go grocery shopping. I loved having food delivered during March and April, but it’s expensive and I sometimes ended up with the wrong items. THREE half gallons of Cherry Garcia, for example. (Which didn’t turn out to be a problem at all.)
Nine quarantine-related television/Facebook annoyances:
1. The phrase “We’re all in this together.” Of course we are. Don’t remind me.
2. Fuzzy faces. When will clean-cut, shaved faces on adult men return?
3. Sam Bernstein commercials. Mike Morris commercials. Jeffrey Feiger commercials.
4. Zooming. I want to get together with a group of real live people again. In person. People who breathe in and out audibly and cough and sneeze and sweat. Up close. I want to observe who is tapping fingers, who is bouncing a leg up and down, who is scratching, who is not wearing pants. I want to smell aftershave and hair gel and fabric softener. I want to high-five somebody. I want to converse LIVE.
5. My bathrobe. It’s getting extremely ratty. Frayed sleeves. Stains. Uneven hemline. Torn pocket. (Note to self: Order new one from Amazon.)
6. Non-mail. The thwack of delivered mail on the floor of my front hall used to be one of the day’s bright spots. But nobody sends anything interesting via the USPS anymore. Some days my faithful mail carrier drops just one mass-produced junk advertisement and a few odd catalogs from places I don’t patronize.
7. Forgetting what day it is. This happened to me when I first retired, when every day seemed to be Saturday. I got used to it and was eventually able to keep track by what was on my weekly schedule: trash pick-up, exercise classes, piano lesson, mah jongg game, meetings of groups I belong to. Each activity had its allotted day. Now I have to look at my weekly pill container to see what day it is. (Note to self: It’s the day after the empty compartment.)
8. Binge watching. I find a program I like, watch all 12 episodes in three days, then it’s gone. Grace and Frankie? Done. The Crown? Saw it all. Private Lives of Royalty? Finished weeks ago; Council of Dads? Done. This is Us? Been there, saw that; Dead to Me? Afterlife? The Kaminsky Method? Loved them all, but finished all the final episodes months ago. I remember looking forward to Monday nights at 9 p.m., when I Love Lucy was on. It was on once. If you missed it, tough luck. Or Saturday night's Show of Shows with Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca? Or Sunday night’s Ed Sullivan Show? Bad news if you missed these. They vanished into thin air and you never got a re-run plus you had to wait a whole week for the next episode.
9. Procrastinating. If I don’t do something I should – like, say, pay bills or do laundry or pull weeds, or vacuum, or, uh, take a shower, I think, “I have all day tomorrow to do it. And all day the next day. And all week the next week.” This coronavirus quarantine is paradise for procrastinators.
OK. I got that all off my chest. Back to Candy Crush. I’m facing level 1179.