As I often theme my writing with the concept of “just do it now” I am traditionally reflecting back on the year just lived. Some days our get up and go is pro forma. Our time to make the donuts occurs in a knee jerk fashion. Some days our knee jerks. My Bubby Chicken, for those in the know- phrased the difficult times with a “just look away mamala.” Oh Bubby I believe now more then ever that your schmaltze and sugar laden food added wisdom to your 95 years. You didn’t exercise, but you never sat down. You worked the majority of your life and when you stopped formally working you worked at whatever you did. As you gathered your loved ones around the table, your emotional nutrition sustained us and your cooking created memories that still linger. We talk about your baking as treasures. We reminisce about your traditions and the intensity is still palpable. How lucky my sisters and cousins were to have Our Bubby Chicken. So at this time when uncertainty and fear is being served up in prodigious proportions, we turn our daily prayers to a time where panic, disorientation and the certainty of loosing lives is not sitting first row first seat. Why not exhume your Grandma, Grammy or Bubby memories. Hanging with her babies and watching them grow into themselves was her Pilates, her group therapy and our legacy. So Bub, here’s to our days gone by. We carry you in our hearts and tapping into your Sechel gives us reasons to believe especially when we loose our way. When we played musical chairs and the music stopped, you pulled over one extra chair so we all stayed in the game. And by the way I spend more time “looking the other way,” as my knee jerks.

People complaining on social media about things being canceled due to corona. ….. I wish you could see what we see on a daily basis. #countyourblessings#endrant
My precious 28 year old niece is a trauma unit nurse at Westchester Medical Center. She excels at what she does and was assigned to help run the corona unit when this pandemic exploded. This was her post (see above) today at lunchtime on social media when she took a break from adjusting the percentage of air flow into her patients lungs who breathe because of a machine. Without explanation further- we all know the limitations and change of life lifestyle we have succumbed to because of this virus. So stop complaining when the brand of hand wipes you ordered was substituted with another one or your canasta game was kicked off line because of high volume. Oh -and while we are all taking precautions in whatever way we find comforting or respectful so as to not spread the virus, let’s understand that we are all gropping in the dark trying to do the best we can to work toward the same goal. Safe and sound in whatever way we can. All for one and one for all. Forgive everyone everything- especially now. The disease is killing us as a nation, lend a hand whenever you can.

And then just like this we are home, confined to our thoughts and how they leap from page to page. Exhuming memories of a time other than this situates-us in a better position than staying stuck in this place. Who matters and who doesn’t? Are there expiration dates on relationships when put to the stay at home test. There are people who fill a seat at the table of games only because you need an extra player. There are friends and family members you would mourn if you never met up with again. Bottom line time to clean the collections of people in your world. History accounts for so much, but it doesn’t mean you need to start another chapter if your story has ended

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Housekeeper, housekeeper when were you here, it’s only a month but feels like a year. With honor and glory I hand you respect- there are so many things I’d didn’t expect. With dust balls and clutter and schmutz on the floor I’m cutting through grease spots and so very much more. My hands are so brittle in spite of the gloves, my elbows left scratchy cause I’m scrubbing with love.

Through quarantined isolation I am down on my knees, when I get up it’s you I will please. The future’s a bit clearer, so now we can see, I’m heading back down to beg on my knees. Tomorrow we’ll change our once a week sheets, I can’t wait to hear you are just down the street. Lysol, and hand wipes and swifters galore. From now going forward it’s you I adore.

Humpty Trumpty sat on a wall – 

Humpty Trumpty had a windfall

 Alexander Hamilton was constitutionally correct

A thud like Donald he’d never expect 

Through tweeting and twitching he drove his point across

The United States of America, well yeah, we want a divorce

From this wild man of loose tongue

We will run and we’ll hide

Putting aside every ounce of our pride

We scream can this be happening at noon Jan.20

This is alarmingly serious in the absence of funny.

We confess we accept, this fate to be had -Our four years ahead portend to be bad- We’ll listen very closely and circumspect when need be. By the dawns early light, O say can you see!

And then one day I just stayed in bed, under the covers, eating mozzarella cheese. A mental health day? Perhaps. A day of feeling sorry for our mess of a country moment, indeed. With so many things on my “to do”list the pathetic state of affairs has immobilized me. I got tagged and today I’m It. Devastatingly in a crowd of millions. We are barely living through the Kavanaugh Countdown. With no obvious panacea, but time, I long to watch reruns of Dobie Gillis, I Married Joan and Topper. I derive comfort in exhuming memories of eating a can of Buitoni ravioli after school before I left to go to my algebra tutor. Gornisht Heflin, I barely passed the class anyway. Did anyway need to know what a parallelogram or a quadrilateral was ever?
Ah, simple joy of listening to AM radio on the drive over. The days when one of our greatest pleasures was hearing the Temptations, as we were “not to proud to beg” while we waited to be built up by buttercups, knowing at this point it was the “worst that could happen.” Run on counters I know. I’d drive under the tressel , make my way through third ward park and look to see if my latest boyfriends car was parked there. How easily serotonin and endorphin rushes happened in the long ago and far away days, we so long for now. If only we were living the days when busy signals offered the worst of frustrations. When setting our hair with pink plastic rollers and enduring the fumes of Aqua Net hairspray was one of our toughest endurances. Only if, our not so guilty pleasures were peanut cheddar crackers, Ring Dings or Funny Bones and a can of Tab, the acronym for the first (Totally Artificial Beverage). With lots of quarters, nickels and dimes I’d stop to get my algebra snack at the candy store next to Jan, Jill and Jon on Main Avenue. Shout out to Rhoda and Seymour Zucker ( antique aficionados) for 50 years . What a run. Side bar, your Honor. Those were the times before rats were tested for lethal saccharine levels. Loved the rush from Tab.
So we wait under the covers with bated breath as we watch as our future decisions will be weighed in by one more unstable narcissist who has perfected the art of lying through his teeth. We pray for the times we imagined that when Cosmo Topper, married Joan the only thing that was artificial was the beverage he toasted with. Hashtag Sad.

I am officially the corona moan-a!
Getting ready for a “go to humor” virtual committee meeting sometime I think today or tomorrow or in the next 100 years that we are in quarantini. I like my apartment but every freakin corner is now too clean. Not only do I need a manicure, like desperate in nature, I think I need a pinky transplant. I hear beeps- yeah like beeps and I don’t know where they are coming from- did you ever? I am rounding out the bottom of the hand lotions and I am hunting for those airplane give aways with the mini bottles. Just for today to maintain that one increment of Sanity (capital S like in wishful thinking), I vow not to touch any baggies, tin foil, saran wrap, dishwasher powder or a sponge. I am so over sponges- I can’t. I kiss the mezzuha’s, rub the Buddha Bellies, and say Shemas at the major shrine a.k.a. the refrigerator every single day and Gornisht Helfn. Ok, so the lights are on, the dishwasher unloaded, dinner is defrosting on the hermetically clean counter- (no cross contamination here)- and now that we are tapped out on Netflix-I’m searching on prime and hulu for what we can binge for the next 8 hrs. Signing off from the go to humor committee member. Flip it and have a good day!

Before 6:00- I am up- WTF- sleep deprivation, no fresh air. The President says you could wear a scarf, like a mask. So am I pulling out of my closet- the gucci scarf I bought at The Sawgrass Mall this winter, (pre Corona )or an old Echo scarf I probably have since the 80’s that I bought at Aldo’s on 86th street when they only sold Keds sneakers? I don’t know about you but I got a whole new set of worries. Will I run out of alcohol wipes, let alone Alcohol? Should I order another half and half, those expiration dates could take you into the next century. Never understood those far off dates. People, what’s in my half and half or better yet cottage cheese Fricken formaldehyde? Could someone tell Bed, Bath and Beyond that I have enough 2 in a pack pillows and in fact the stores are closed. Another expiration date I don’t need to worry about- save those e-mail coupons. Btw your return policy used to be better take it to your virtual board- ( bored) meeting. And this Zoom- now I got major Zoom FOMO. One more thing to add to my list for when I can go to my shrink- shout out to Dr. Spitz. My old issues, nothing, you hear me I got over them all while in isolation. Wait till he hears my new set of complaints- G-d willing we make it out alive. Another expiration date to worry about on old med bottles- cipro, valtrex, donnatol, valium. All kidding aside, my hands now need scar cream, my hair forget, like Bubby Chicken for those in the know, my nails chipped? under the radar statement. My routines are as varied and exciting as open lights, shut the lights, empty and load the dishwasher, haven’t used a sponge this much since the 60’s. Finally is anyone else putting deodorant on these days? I don’t know about you but it’s not like I’m sprinting from the living room to the kitchen. And this is not an April Fools joke. Baruch Hashem- thank G-d for Dr. Fauci.

מי יחיה ומי ימות

We can’t help but wonder is this how the world ends? In the book of job G-d is said to “direct his lightening to the ends of the earth.” It’s a poetic way of saying G-d is in charge everywhere. With a prodigious proportion of people falling deathly ill right in our backyard, the better safe than sorry adage was slipped, like a memo, under our front door. The two things you never want to hear from a doctor is” I have never heard of this before- and there is nothing we can do about it.” At the helm of our fate is a demonic behemoth holding the reigns to our destiny with no instinct on how to safely steer us to shore. With a pesty, independent, out of control trajectory we find ourselves dodging the fallout from this venomous alien. In a tag you’re it fashion, we can’t run, we can’t hide-fast enough. From moment to moment we are trying to navigate our not “new normal.”In the Book of Exodus, Moses leads the Hebrews out of Egypt to escape from the tyrannical pharaoh and find the Promised land. They follow him at first but it soon becomes clear that the journey will be far from straightforward. I pray there is a limit to our days of isolation. We will welcome the simple acts of an embrace hello, a click of a glass cheering to health first, or a stroll in the park less than 6 ft. apart. Mouth watering events we will never take for granted. James Lipton of the actors studio passed away several weeks ago. So James, now that you are behind the pearly gates can you get the one word G-d would hear us say when we get there to him beforehand. “SAFE”.

The sounds of Little girls and medium sized boys- bella and “frankie the jacket” my cherries on top! Park East Chicken cooking in my oven. My own bed with hints of the knowing smell of years of yesterday’s. I will double down. That’s all she needed to fine tune the picture.