Week 9

Just wrapping up week 9 of staying at home.

Mike’s starting to get really tired of quarantine. We’re trying to decide if we’re going to take our Route 66 road trip this summer in the Airstream. Strangely, though, he’s a no and I’m a yes. My thinking is, we’ll be staying in our Airstream and it’s a lot of roadside attractions, not crowded places like amusement parks or airports, and since the route takes us exclusively through red states, things will be open. I think we’ve decided to push the decision off for a few more week.

That being said, I am definitely ready for a change of pace. This week was crazy stressful (again) and I found myself working 12 and 13 hours days, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. So on Thursday when I looked at my calendar and say I didn’t have meetings from 3 p.m. on, I texted my boss that I was going to take a break, and step away from email. I sat on the couch and read a magazine for an hour and then looked at my phone, saw I missed a call from a reporter on deadline, and ended up having to get up, put on nice clothes and makeup, do a TV interview, and then do a bit more work. So my afternoon “vacation” ended up being a dud.

Michaela accompanied Mike on his shoot in San Bernardino on Friday. He goes up each Friday morning to shoot a COVID-related press conference they hold. This week, he also shot some videos on reopening and needed a cute brown girl to demonstrate eating at a restaurant in the new normal, and going to a retail candy store. So off they went. (I asked them, “what was it like to sit down in a restaurant?!?” It’s a thing I miss about the whole situation, although not as much as I would have expected, to be honest).

When they got home, Michaela was wiped out. It’s hard to be polite and “on” for such a long time. And when your role in the videos is to sit across from one of the county supervisors and make polite small talk over sit-down Mexican food… Well, it would tire me out, too! The fact that their second shoot was at a candy store where the little old lady proprietor plied Michaela with tons of candy probably didn’t help, either. Sugar crash!

After Michaela was asleep, when Mike and I were chatting about the day, he told me she told him, “After two months of not being around a lot of people, I’m kind of peopled out!” And I can’t help but wonder if that will be all of us eventually.