The title is a lie. Calendar words are so 2019. No one knows what a “week” is any more.
But here’s what I’ve been up to kind of recently.
I ordered haircutting scissors from Amazon. They should be here Thursday. So should the ear piercing kit I ordered. My 11-year-old shaved her eyebrow a couple of nights ago, so if things go south, I can always say, “Yeah, but at least I still have two eyebrows.”
I don’t have curtains, though. I mean I do, but they’re in my kitchen floor now. They went from the wall to the floor when I somehow sat on them during a school board meeting I was Zooming into. I mean, they didn’t fall straight to the floor. My head slowed their speed considerably.
I still go into work four days a week, and I work from home on Fridays. Unless I have a fever, and then I work from home on those days, too. We have a drive-thru temperature check station set up at work, and we’re required to get an “all good” from the nurse manning the station each morning before we’re allowed into our offices. The line was a few cars long one day last week, and I got bored. I pulled out my phone, watched a bit of TikTok because I’m cool and not at all old, and ate some ice. You want to know what happens when you eat half a cup of ice before getting your temperature checked? The nurse has you put the thermometer under your armpit like a toddler because your mouth is too cold to register a temperature. But my deodorant smells like vanilla fields, so that was probably a nice surprise for the nurse.
I’ve resigned myself to making my own entertainment lately. It’s not husband-endorsed entertainment, but whatever. One of my favorite people suggested we buy megaphones and go yell at some people we know. “It’ll be fun,” she said. “They’ll enjoy it,” she said. “Grab a wig and your crown,” she said. Okay, well she didn’t say the crown part, but how often do you get to wear a crown in your 40s? So I borrowed a purple wig from my daughter, a bullhorn from my mother, and shined up my crown. It’s vintage, I think. Circa 1994. My friend created a route that hit a lot of houses, and I just followed her in my van because I LITERALLY don’t know my left from my right.
When we got to the first house, a very chill teacher we love came outside when we sounded the sirens on our megaphones. It was a pleasant visit. Same with the second, third, fourth, and fifth houses. Somewhere around home six, maybe, we pulled up in front of house, turned on our sirens, and no response. So we did it again. Nothing. Third time for the sirens, and a curtain moved. And then a man opened the door. Either our teacher friend was hit hard by isolation, or this wasn’t her. The man yelled, “I don’t know you!” and started walking toward us. In quick form, we realized it was her husband, explained ourselves, and my blood pressure when back to normal. Crisis averted. And by crisis, I mean prison. A few more houses, and we called it a day. Except we didn’t because there was a wreck that caused an hour-long delay on the way home, so we drove through McDonald’s. And someone may have peed in someone else’s driveway, but on the plus side someone avoided a gas station pandemic potty. And that was just day one.
We begin the next day with a travesty. My friend had locked both her megaphone and car keys in the car, but, because we were so successful the first day, we found a way to press on. I made up my mind to go to her husband’s place of employment to get the spare keys. I took all the precautions. I put on my gloves. I covered my face with a mask. I would’ve added a cap, but I have an abnormally large head. I had Germ-X in the car cup holder, and I took a wipe out of the container so that I could clean the keys immediately. I got a call following the retrieval wherein my friend said, “Hey. Don’t worry about picking up the keys. We remembered my husband could unlock the car from his phone.”
In hindsight, this is probably where we should’ve decided day two was a bust, had a good laugh, and taken our ridiculous wigs home. But what’s the fun in that?
Houses were hit or miss at first. You’d be surprised at how many people aren’t home during times of self isolation. And then we went to a house that was the wrong house, and that’s always fun when you announce your arrival with sirens. After we hit some homes in town, we branched out a bit. We took some dirt roads. We went over the mountain. We visited some private properties. I began to notice one commonality as our destinations became more and more remote: people who have no neighbors save for livestock are a bit leery when you show up on their properties driving large cars with tinted windows, blaring sirens, and dressed in costume. I have no idea why. Each time we chanced adding one more house to our impromptu parade, people took a bit longer to answer the door. And then I remembered that people who owned land and cows also owned guns. It’s an inherent truth. I got scared. I started to picture people loading their guns and my impending demise. This was not how I imagined myself dying — dressed in a wig and crown because I needed to entertain myself during a pandemic.
And then my friend’s kid had to pee, so we skipped the last house, retired our sirens, and returned to our respective homes.
Later that night I hinted on Facebook that I was scared someone was planning on shooting us. Turns out the long lag time between sirens and door openings was attributed to looking for undergarments, not bullets. Yep, my friends wanted to make sure that everything where was where it belonged when they thought they were being kidnapped. That’s just respectful.
Realizing our adventure had drawn to a close, and seeking out a new plan with less socialization and fear of jail time, I suggested to my friend we surprise our community with postcards of us dressed a la Glamour Shots this week. But, for whatever reason, she said, “That’s a hard no.”
PHOMSITHI'S PLAYGROUND 