Lockdown progress report for Sunday, May 17, 2020
Total words: 0 (again, will start when I finish this post)
Manuscript total: 69,411
I’m in an odder-than-usual lull in my life right now. After twelve months of really busting my tail with graduate school and student teaching, I’m suddenly student-teaching-free and grad-school-free AND there’s still a pandemic going on outside that’s keeping me home most days of the week.
I’ve found that I’m having a hard time remembering what day it is. The planner I fill in every day with gratitude, the day’s top five priorities, and other things that “It will be nice to get these things done if I can” certainly helps me remember, but even seeing the weekday at the top of the page each morning, I sometimes forget throughout the day what day it is.
I thought you might have this problem sometimes, too. So I put together this brief guide for you. Hope it helps.
How to know it’s Monday
If you work from home and you know you haven’t had any Zoom meetings in at least two or three days, then suddenly you remember that today you have an 8am staff meeting, the chances are it’s probably Monday.
Also, if you’re in the habit of checking snail mail and you didn’t get any mail delivered yesterday but you did today, again, it’s probably Monday.
How to know it’s Tuesday
I can’t speak for where you live, but even in the midst of the pandemic, Tuesdays in San Diego are still Taco Tuesdays, when the local Mexican restaurants tend to discount their tacos. I really appreciate this, because it means that Tuesdays, which are normally such an un-noteworthy day, are made special and important, like a middle child who doesn’t normally get much recognition finally getting the props they deserve.
How to know it’s Wednesday
When your momentum starts to wane after you’ve promised yourself that this would be the week when you finally got to all those pandemic projects you told yourself you were going to do, like scrubbing the stove and cleaning out the garage, and instead you find yourself loafing about for long periods of time in the mid- to late-afternoon with no particular direction or purpose for your life, and you’re genuinely struggling to remember what day of the week it is, then the chances are, it’s Wednesday. Speaking of middle children.
How to know it’s Thursday
Thursday is actually an easy one, but unfortunately, it’s not easy until approximately 8 o’clock at night, because that’s when the reminder on your phone will go off to tell you that you have to take the garbage to the curb. When it’s not your turn to take the garbage to the curb but you know your roommate will almost certainly forget to do it and you spend most of the evening struggling to decide if you should (A) remind him again, (B) not remind him, because he’s an adult and you shouldn’t nag him like you’re his mother, or (C) just do it your own damn self, then again, it’s probably Thursday.
(And by the way, if you awake in a panic thinking you forgot to take the garbage to the curb the night before, and at 6 in the morning hurriedly wheel the bins to the street only to look up and down the street and see that either everyone else also forgot it’s garbage day or else it’s not yet Friday morning, then it’s also probably Thursday.)
How to know it’s Friday
Following up from how to know it’s Thursday, you can know it’s Friday when the garbage truck, then the recycling truck, then the yard waste truck go up and down the street, causing such a racket that you put in earbuds and listen to music while you write.
Also: By Friday, you should be running low on clean clothes and starting to contemplate doing laundry at some point in the near future (but not today).
How to know it’s Saturday
If your one roommate appears to have no online classes and spends the entire day playing Call of Duty on his computer, and your other roommate disappears early in the day to see his family and doesn’t return until well after lunch, then it’s probably Saturday.
And last, how to know it’s Sunday
If your one roommate appears to have no online classes but spends the entire day grumpily doing his homework, and your other roommate disappears early in the day to see his family and doesn’t return until well after lunch, then it’s probably Sunday.
And that, my friends, is how to know what day of the week it is when you’re under stay-at-home orders. I hope you have found this useful. Feel free to include your own tips in the comments section below.
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