A Quarantine Monday

Today, quarantine is that little piece of nail that chips off on the ring finger of your left hand and you know that you should stop, file it down or get a clipper and round it off, even though you keep your nails short so they don’t gather dirt or tap on the keyboard.  But you don’t stop, and before you know it, the chip is bigger and catching on the yarn you’re knitting with or the t-shirt and stretchy pants you pull on so your neighbors, who you don’t think pay a bit of attention to you -  but you never know -  won’t think you’re a weirdo for spray painting two old rocking chairs in your nightgown.  But you don’t stop to clip or file, and when you pull on gloves to weed the mint patch of those SOB stinging nettles that you should have weeded a week ago, you catch that now-torn fingernail on the inside of the glove, but you don’t stop to clip or file because it looks like rain and those SOB stinging nettles aren’t going to weed themselves.  And then halfway through the mint patch you pull some SOB stinging nettles and discover the entrance to a huge tunnel, probably dug by that cute chubby groundhog who sometimes hangs out in the back yard and you scream a tiny scream because although he looks adorable through the kitchen window, you don’t know what groundhogs are like close up, even though you’ve seen the Puxsutawney spectacle a hundred times and don’t think they are mean or would launch themselves out of that tunnel and toward your carotid artery.  So you back up slowly toward the garage and get out the power washer and blast the moss off of the plant ferris wheel your dad welded together for your grandma 50 years ago and which you inherited after she sold her farm and which you clean up and re-paint every few years.   And when you go to dig your hammer out of your tool box to repair one of the little baskets on the ferris wheel, you catch that nail again and realize that it’s torn farther into the flesh of your finger, and although it’s going to hurt, you’re going to have to rip it off.  But not now – now you’re in the cathartic throes of power washing, and you scavenge your gardens and garage for more things to power wash!  More things to power wash!  You power wash the corona from the grocery store shelves.  You power wash the guns away from those terrorist/protestors in Michigan and Kentucky.  You power wash the smug right off the face of the president.  You power wash the picnic table where you and Anthony Fauci will celebrate the end of the quarantine with expensive wine and delicious cheese and crisp fig crackers and lovely little pastries you learned to make while quarantine-watching The Great British Baking Show then you and Dr. Fauci will make sweet sweet love right there on the picnic table on your back porch and your dear husband won’t even care because it’s Dr. Fauci for pete’s sake and anyway, he’s too busy watching for the groundhog to emerge from the cavern under your porch to notice the bacchanalia and then the power washer stops because you have drug it out too far from the plug.

And your finger hurts.  And you rip off the remnants of your nail. 

And you put on a band-aid and promise yourself never to let a broken fingernail go too far ever again. 

Peace.