I have no idea what I want to write about tonight, so I’ll just go on for a bit about this lovely coronavirus pandemic quarantine we’re having. It feels kind of strange, actually, not to write about it every day because it’s everywhere all the time. I have my half-dozen coronavirus websites that I check regularly throughout the day; it’s all that’s in the news; and truly, we can’t get away from it. The kids have been out of school since March 12, and our lives are now taking place in some surreal otherworld that seems both totally foreign and very familiar at the same time. Our house is the same, our food is the same, our cars are the same, our friends and family are the same, and our days are even largely the same (at least for my husband and I, since we’ve worked at home for years), but the world doesn’t feel the same at all.

When we lived in Romania for fourteen months, I used to think about how much later, after we were back home and life was more normal, I would look back on our time there and it would seem surreal, like a dream. That’s the way I feel about this pandemic. Someday I’ll think about what a strange, hard time this was, but right now it’s just life. We’re all hanging on questions, mostly the same ones, no matter who we are–that feels both comforting and frightening. I generally try to remember to take life one day at a time and not get too ahead of myself, and, well, this pandemic has made that a lot easier. But I can’t help looking forward to the day when it’s difficult again.