exercise

Coronatine, Day Sixty-seven (Social Distancing Applied to Poverty)

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So we don’t have a beach in Colorado, not a real one anyway. We do have immigrants from a hundred countries and out-of-state transplants from all fifty states who have come to live here for one main reason: to be outside.

It’s true. Colorado has one of the highest rates in the country for outdoor recreation, and in general, physical activity.

So, after more than two months of being trapped indoors, of ski areas being shut down too soon, of gyms being closed, of mandates that tell us we shouldn’t drive more than ten miles to enjoy the outdoors, this happened: a crowd of just-out-of-school teenagers, more than two hundred of them, ignored all social distancing mandates and managed to get all of the state’s beaches closed indefinitely.

Now, I am a high school teacher, AND I have four teenagers in my house. Are they crazy? Yes. Are they self-absorbed? Yes. Are they reckless? Absolutely.

But must we all, all of us outdoor fanatics, suffer a summer without our “beach” because of a crowd of adolescents?

Because let me tell you who is affected by this new mandate. All the poor people everywhere who crowd into Cherry Creek State Park, conveniently located in the center of the city, on any given weekend because you can fill a car full of people to enjoy the water and sun for a measly $11. You can pack a picnic or a barbecue, relax under a cottonwood, dip your toes in the water, and pretend that the world outside of this sanctuary doesn’t exist. For a few hours, a day, you can have a sense of peace.

I have lived within fifteen minutes of this park for most of my life. On summer weekend days, you have to stake out a spot by 10am if you want the perfect combination of shade and sun. And you will see people from all walks of life enjoying its proximity to the city. Every language you can think of, every tone of skin, every belief system, all enjoying the splashes and sun.

And now we’re in a pandemic. And now we’re supposed to stay home. And now we’re social distancing.

Most of us are.

But guess who still gets to enjoy the water at the fourteen parks with closed swim beaches?

People with boats.

Guess who gets to enjoy the lakes and campgrounds owned by counties in northern Colorado? Lakes like Horsetooth Reservoir with its crystalline turquoise water, surrounded by mountains?

People with hard-sided campers that contain their own private bathrooms.

And guess who those people are?

People with money.

So, in the midst of a pandemic, when the privileged are allowed to storm the streets brandishing military-grade weapons because they want everything open, those same things ARE open. To them.

And to those who can just gather up the $11 entrance fee? They can social distance from home. They don’t need to play golf or take out their speedboat or enjoy a luxurious camper that costs more than they’ll ever make in a year. They can go back to their cramped apartments with no yard space while the rich can back their boats into their third garage and pay their gardeners to perfectly maintain the 10,000-square-foot lot that they COULD be enjoying instead.

And no matter what, don’t you ever forget it, this is the Land of the Free.

Free for everyone with a million bucks, and ever-so-costly for those who can just afford $11.

(I will miss those cottonwoods).

 

Coronatine, Day Sixty-four

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the sun keeps rising

and he bought a screen for pics

of all our travels

it can’t be the same

but the sun will rise again

and we’ll try again

Coronatine, Day Sixty-two

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we’ve risen at dawn

for two months of lonely walks

but look at our view

Coronatine, Day Fifty-two

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these daily bridge walks

no matter how trapped we feel

will never get old

Coronatine, Day Forty-nine

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until they close this

we might be here every day

(Colorado beach)

humans love water

in all its fake and true forms

(dams, no dams, fresh, salt)

our Friday night lights

makes this feel like our old life

as fresh as sunshine

Coronatine, Day Forty-four

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bike rides and cuddles

(made it through another day)

pets will save us all

Coronatine, Day Thirty-seven

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i’m back to haikus

(they suit the whole me better)

they’re written on bikes

the Denver sunshine

wins this quarantined Sunday

for those who listen

it seems so simple

to follow the rules. stay home.

be careful outside.

and at home? snuggle.

love the soft spaces of life.

soft spaces of love.

Coronatine, Day Thirty-six (10×10)

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I’ve made it to the final day of gratitude! The ten last bits of gratitude for the Coronatine.

  1. Always love a bike ride. We wore the new masks my friend made, even though I’ll admit they weren’t wholly necessary because I planned a route that did not involve crowds (I have avoided the Cherry Creek path like the plague, pun intended).
  2. We stopped at a local cafe. Of course, it wasn’t the same. We couldn’t sit down, we couldn’t have a nice brunch, but we could still get some lattes and support a local business and tip the server with a 50% tip.
  3. While we were riding, we saw the Thunderbirds fly right over us on 12th Avenue!
  4. I spent a lot of time this morning reviewing our budget. I rarely do, and in fact don’t really deal with our money because Bruce is a money master. But I think it might be possible, if we are very careful, to live on my salary (which they’re already threatening might be frozen soon) and our savings for a year, so hopefully, that will give the economy enough time to recover and Bruce to be able to find work.
  5. Speaking of that salary, I am SO GRATEFUL that I just got a raise on March 1 because of my National Board Certification. What a difference that will make!
  6. I reorganized the garage, the hall closet, and the basement storage room to make more space for stocking up on supplies while we still have two paychecks. It really is nice to have time to do this without the craziness of working so many hours, especially since Bruce was going to be laid off anyway before the quarantine was put in place.
  7. I really do work at an amazing place with extremely dedicated teachers and students. Our school’s weekly news show has continued during this crazy time, and this week included an in-depth interview with an NFL player who graduated from South in 2004. He couldn’t stop talking about how influential his teachers were and how his experiences traveling to New York on a student trip and participating in the musical made high school so special. It’s so nice to hear that and to know how important schools are in the lives of students.
  8. My counselor colleague helped me (through a Facebook post) avoid paying the AP exam fees for the four AP exams for Izzy and Mythili! I really hope that this virus will help everyone realize what a scam standardized tests are. I’m so over the College Board and AP. It’s a bait and switch, most colleges won’t give you credit, and most students can’t get the score they need anyway. So I’m hopeful that all of these tests will become less important in the future.
  9. In cleaning out the garage, I found the tent stakes I’ve been meaning to put in the tent bag, and since a neighbor girl needed to earn a Girl Scout badge by setting up a tent and didn’t have her own, the tent was already out! I have been trying to get those stakes into that stake bag for three years, and it took coronavirus to make it happen!
  10. Let’s hope we can camp this summer, or at least go on hikes. Let’s just keep hoping that something is gonna give, soon. Testing, isolation, whatever it takes. Because we gotta make this work for our world. We just gotta.

Coronatine, Day Thirty (10×4)

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Well, we’ve officially made it through what feels like the longest month of our lives. I’m trying really hard here to keep up the positivity!

Ten things I love about you, Coronatine:

  1. This begonia. Pets are nice, but plants are constant. I have for years made brownies for my colleagues. After years of this, not knowing much else about me, one of my former colleagues gave me a tiny cutoff from her great aunt’s fifty-year-old elephant-ear begonia. I put it in a pot and it grew into this magnificent masterpiece. It sometimes produces flowers in the spring, but it doesn’t even need to because its red-green leaves are so perfect as they are. It adds constant comfort to any window, and bends toward the light as if reaching for God. If ever there were a perfect plant, this begonia is it.
  2. Speaking of brownies and all things baked… It may be superficial of me, but this KitchenAid stand-up mixer is pure heaven. I don’t know how anyone could live without one. I did for a year and it about broke me. This is more than a mixer: it’s one of the final gifts from my late mother-in-law. It’s a maker of birthday brownies. Of meringues by my youngest. For years, Bruce made bread every week and pizza twice a month. It’ll beat up eight eggs, a pound of chocolate, and two sticks of butter for the best ganache you ever tasted, all without you having to do work to froth those eggs till they’re shiny. It mixes up ingredients and produces love.
  3. We may not be able to travel this year, but we still have our memories. I used to collect postcards when I was younger, but after I married Bruce, he suggested we start collecting magnets from all the places we visited. We’re just getting started, twenty-two years later. 🙂
  4. My patio/outdoor space. While it’s snowing today, I’m just so grateful to have such a perfect patio that is in the shade of giant trees for the majority of the day. And we added a new string of lights this year to make the perfect ambience for those warm summer nights.
  5. What else fits on this patio? A fire pit. Maybe we won’t be able to go camping this summer, but we can still roast marshmallows.
  6. And behind that firepit? Siblings. Quarantine is kind of a lonely hell. And they may not always get along, but for at least part of every day, they do. Look how cute they are, sitting together on the swing like three little girls, not three young women.
  7. Cats. They’re not as good as dogs, but they’re pretty and quirky and have already mostly destroyed this catnip my friend brought! And they tend to be better at “posing” for pictures, much more than the dog!
  8. Speaking of cats, we’re getting another cat. No, my life is NOT crazy enough with four kids, two cats and a dog, thank you very much. And right now, pets need to be adopted, and Riona doesn’t have her own cat, so… In twelve days, we’re adopting this sweet little thing.
  9. My morning walk. Every day at dawn or just after, just me and the pup and this park and its endlessly changing bridge views. A moment to listen to an audiobook, to begin my collection of steps for the day, a way to get going. And oh, his face. Today the view has spring snow.
  10. Riona will still smile for pics and made all of our Easter findings into deviled eggs. Nothing really beats deviled eggs, even if we can’t have the traditional Easter meal with Grandma and Grandpa.

Coronatine, Day Twenty-nine (10×3)

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Here we go. It’s a Saturday, so it’s automatically easier for me to write this because my husband is at home. All you all out there who get tired of your spouse’s company, I’m sorry. I never get tired of mine.

Ten things for today that I am grateful for during the quarantine.

  1. Setting up the sprinklers. In our first house, we had a sprinkler system, and it was nothing but a nightmare. It was old, needed thousands of dollars of work on a regular basis, once burst in November and flooded our basement… I could go on. We change up our yard constantly, and not having a sprinkler system gives us the flexibility to do so. In Denver, with its endless sun, sprinklers are necessary to have greenery, and it’s a sign of spring.
  2. I have a second job. It’s mostly a curse, but I start a new class tomorrow, and I am grateful for that. I’m grateful that I’ve been doing online teaching for eleven years, and I have a pretty good idea of how it works, now that I’ve been thrust into it full time. The University of Phoenix doesn’t pay much, but in the year leading up to and the year in Spain, I had back-to-back courses, and it was literally the deciding factor in us being able to live there or not when I made virtually NO money with what the Spanish government offered. So… I keep on keeping on with this job. Sometimes it’s just a vacation fund, but right now it’s going to save our asses, again, with paying actual bills.
  3. Speaking of online learning… Screencastify is pretty much an awesome Chrome extension that I’d never heard of and now love. I have tried Flipgrid as well, but it sucks in comparison. I love being able to record videos on Screencastify that show both my face and the screen so that students know just where to click. Google has it figured out.
  4. Riona decided to get creative with the pancakes this morning, and Mythili joined in. I have a couple of little artists in these two.
  5. Egg coloring. We are not a religious family, so Easter is really just a celebration of spring. This is an extremely rare activity that ALL children agreed to do together, so as the parent of four teenagers, I call this a parenting win! And it is so nice out today that we were able to do it outside! Fabian, of course, had no idea what I was talking about, and he was mildly intrigued by this strange celebration.
  6. Riona wanted to mail art supplies to one friend and deliver some to another, so we fit in a bike ride. Everything is always better with a bike ride.
  7. The peas are coming up! I was a bit wary, but I’m happy to see them fighting the good fight.
  8. Riona finally started doing her piano lesson through FaceTime, and it has instantly motivated her to practice more! We’re trying to enjoy these last couple of months of piano lessons, because it’s something that will be unattainable soon…
  9. Speaking of artists, it’s so heartwarming to see all the artists coming together online to sing Hamilton songs or Carole King songs or have online choirs, dance routines, museum exhibits, etc…. We can’t officially call them essential workers, but art literally makes life worth living. And what do we all turn to when we are trapped at home? TV shows, movies, music, books, visual arts.
  10. Light. Pure sunlight. This is why I live in Denver and nowhere else. But in my bedroom, I’ve suffered for 4.5 years with very little light because we stupidly bought this massive king-sized bed before moving into the house. We’d been together for eighteen years and had never had a king-sized bed, so we were so excited to get it delivered the day we moved in that we didn’t take time to measure. And it has covered half of this south-facing window for the entire occupation of the Dream House. Bruce suggested cutting it down and placing the slate tiles onto the other part, admitting he didn’t have the tools to do so… But today, as we were folding laundry, he pointed out that we could just remove it. And, voila, boy-who-lives-with-us-and-can-carry-it-out-with-him, that headboard is gone! And there is SO MUCH LIGHT. My “home office” is brighter, my room is brighter, and goddamn it if my life isn’t lighter!

This is why I really don’t mind having my husband at home. He makes my quarantine so much more tolerable.