In the absence of a commute and a building to swipe into and a desk to sit at that isn't in my living room, "taking a vacation day" doesn't feel quite the same. Particularly when, other than not logging into Teams or checking work email, everything else about the day is the same as the hundred days that came before it and the same as what the days in the foreseeable future will likely be. Joe still requires attention and cannot reach any of the places where the good snacks are kept (although, as I learned by terrifying accident very recently, what she can reach is into the silverware drawer for a butterknife that she proudly handed to me oh my god my heart it still hasn't started up again.) All of the housework still needs to be done, and then done, and then done again. Plus also, as anyone working from home with children and no childcare knows, "the workday" and "the workweek" have ceased to have any real meaning. You do what you can when you can do it, and if that means using nap time seven days a week to answer emails and run reports and generally just try to keep it all together then that is what you do. 

But, though however in any case. I have taken a few days "off" since March (saying "since March" instead of "since everything got weird" feels a little bit like elderly ladies whispering "cancer" but I still keep phrasing it that way where are my pearls) and yesterday was one of them. We left very early to go to the pharmacy, and then on the way to the park I braved a Dunkin Donuts for the first time... since March. Ordering was a little bit of an ordeal, given the masks and the plastic partition separating the employees from the customers, and the coffee I walked out with was a very distant cousin of the coffee that I ordered. So that was a little sad because I didn't like it at all (who orders "winter spice" anything in June? I ask you) BUT HOWEVER they stuffed half a paper bag full of chocolate donut holes for Joe and so, you know, all in all not a wasted stop. 

After the park we came home and read some books and Mommy used some face scrub and put on a mask and applied some self tanner (too timidly as it turns out, my shins are still blinding passersby) and then we took a nap. Daddy happened to come home early yesterday too, which was nice because we got to play with him for about an hour before bed. It was also nice because after our nap I was a little bit... not sad, but just... mmh, you know? (I don't know if you know. It's just that hours and hours of one-on-one time with a small child one hundred plus days in a row with absolutely no other adults around and not one single place to go to to break up any of that time for either you or the small child can tend to wear on one, at times. I occasionally get a little stare-into-spacey so it was an enormous relief to have another human being around for Joe to interact with. Anyway.) Then I attended virtual happy hour and then Diego and I ate vegetarian chicken nuggets and then we went to bed.

Today is Saturday and my instinct is to do some of the work that's sitting five feet away from me. Most of my job consists of reconciling and organizing and keeping track, and someday it might be fun to dig into the psychological reasons behind why I find those things so soothing but today is not that day. Today I'll just acknowledge that it's hard for me to let things pile up (unless I'm the one that made the piles; that's fine, it's different when they're my piles because I know what they are and what's in them DON'T TOUCH MY THINGS) and that most of the time - at least these days - the list of tasks that plagues me so is nowhere near as long as I convince myself it is when I haven't "worked" in a while. I also feel obligated to keep doing the best work I can for the people who are paying me, you know? "Why should my work suffer?" I ask myself. "There's no excuse!" Except there's a twenty-month-old excuse currently eating green apples and brie and croissant off of my plate in between watching a movie and rearranging her toys throughout the apartment. Also, you know, the general State of Things.

Anyway, today I'm not doing work and tomorrow I'm not doing any either. I am writing this instead, and when nap time rolls around a few minutes from now I'm going to throw a third layer of paint onto the accent walls in the kitchen that I decided were a good idea many weeks ago. Then from now on, since I at least know for sure that I'm home for the next two months minimum, I'm going to block out parts of the day to get work done. Whatever doesn't get done during that time will just have to wait until the next block of time. DOESN'T THAT SOUND LIKE SUCH A GOOD PLAN.

Namaste peace be with you.