Day 1 of “working from home” due to COVID-19.

I have a dentist appointment at 9:30 AM, wake up around 7:30, answer emails until 7:33, and do the Sunday NYT crossword until 9:10. In between, I hear from my art director that she can’t get onto Slack. I throw on clothes (Shit, was the computer camera ON??) — no shower — and go.

Home about 10:30. Time to check in with the team and see what’s happening. Get the art director back onto Slack. Make myself breakfast. 11:30: start editing a couple of stories and send them along for page layout. Work until about 1:30. Go upstairs to make coffee. Hallie’s awake (did I mention she’s home from college because it was shut down due to COVID-19?) I ask her if she’s upset that the Delaware Blue Hens’ basketball season ended the way it did, and was quickly reminded that she has no interest in that. It did, though, lead into a half-hour of listening to college fight songs. (My alma mater, the University of Maryland, has TWO! Technically, one’s a fight song, presumably played DURING games, and the other is a ‘Victory’ song, presumably to be played AFTER victories, yet the band plays ‘Maryland Victory’ WAY more times during the game than the fight song despite rarely winning. Makes no sense. But in this coronavirus world, little makes sense.)

Back to work for another hour. Lunchtime. Go upstairs to have a sandwich, Hallie talks Carrie and I into watching an episode of “Schitt’s Creek” — a VERY  funny show. One episode turns into five, throughout which I keep exclaiming, “I can’t … I’m WORKING!”

After lunch, back at it, transcribing recorded interviews into text. Play. Pause. “What did he say?” Rewind. Play, Pause. In two hours, I’ve transcribed 11 minutes of recording. I’d rather be back at the dentist than having to do this task. Six minutes to go until the end of the recording, I drop everything to start writing this.

Five o’clock. End of Day 1.

They’d better find a cure, and fast! The other options are me gaining what my daughter Lindsey called “the COVID 15,” which is like the “Freshman 15” of weight gain, but worse, because it’s associated with coronavirus. At least we don’t have peanut butter-stuffed pretzel nuggets… YET! And, of course, the final option … me being the victim of a bludgeoning death for having committed the crime of … always being home!