Quarantine: August 2020

Our home is spacious and well-stocked with essentials, but all the creature comforts of modern life don’t entirely alleviate cabin fever that builds up month after month. You do reach a point where you are desperate to see something besides your own backyard. You start to identify with the tigers at the zoo who spend entire days pacing back and forth across their paddocks, longing to just be anywhere else but here even though they’re surrounded by lovely climbing rocks, shade trees, refreshing swimming pools, and meal delivery three times a day.

Just when you think you’ve hit a wall, your husband’s best friend offers his boat to you for the day. Thank you, Ed.

Mike and I spent a wonderful day at sea, boating across Buzzard’s Bay, past Wood’s Hole, and exploring around Naushon Island.

Mike has been coming out here most of his life, being a highly-skilled boat person and sailor. He knows these waters so well and has many wild tales of adventure on the seas around Massachusetts. I think most of the boats I grew up around were of the row boat variety you paddled across a country pond with your dad to find good fishing spots. Nevertheless, I think I managed to make a seaworthy passenger on our day out. Including the times I had to pee over the side of a boat with rough waves knocking us about, which is a whole new level of spousal bonding I wasn’t prepared for.

In the afternoon, we dropped anchor in a picturesque spot and had sandwiches while we imagined what the crazy rich people were up to in their crazy rich houses on Naushon Island. I imagine it’s like Knives Out or Ready or Not up there, probably. Then we had a long swim in the ocean and forgot about the pandemic for a good long hour.

We came back from our boat adventure with mild sunburns, tangled hair, and lifted spirits. And then we hunkered back down in our house and tried to desperately hold on to the last few weeks of summer while they were here. If this pandemic continues along it’s current trajectory, we are in for a very long, dark winter…

I’m also happy to report that renovations on the home office are now complete! Here’s what it looked like February 22, before the pandemic began. Mike and I removed the carpet that day and I painted the walls white. Then we had beautiful hardwood floors put in on March 1st.

Right after the floors were in, we were in lockdown. So the office remained an empty room full of echos for a good long while. In April I finally broke down from working at the dining table and bought a proper desk. I moved into the office and the room became purposeful for the first time.

Then we hung the television up on the wall, which necessitated getting a bean bag chair to sit on so I could watch costume period dramas while Mike watched sports. And again, we were good like that for a few months. Then West Elm had a big furniture sale and I totally caved. Here’s the office now, properly set up with real furniture, rugs, and art. Still looking for a coffee table.

That door leads to an 80’s bathroom that will eventually be remodeled when we have saved up enough.

And then on the other side of the office, there’s this thing…

This was a cool but cheapo TV console that we bought off Wayfair because it fit the retro vibe of our office. I love it but I also hate it because it’s a constant reminder that it took us a whole MONTH to assemble. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever put together and I’ve assembled literally hundreds of pieces of crap furniture.

There were a million parts, an instructional manual that was clear as mud, and just way too many steps. We managed to fuck up the assembly THREE times and had to disassemble parts of it to then reassemble it correctly. Mike and I actually walked away from this for a week out of sheer frustration.

Then we discovered we were missing one part (which they shipped out to us). Then one of the drawers had broken component (that they had to replaced). Then we still could not get the far left drawer pull to work correctly and rather than email them a third time, we just shoved the drawer in there all broken and crooked and we just don’t use that one drawer now. 1/10 stars, would not recommend. Left one star because it does still look pretty cool.