Quarantine: June 2020

Summer is here, at long last and we are free of the snow. The backyard is starting to really come alive and everything is in bloom. We have fuschia pink roses, purple bee balm, and peach salvia light up the gardens around our yard.

The hummingbirds are ever present now, at the feeder every hour between sunrise and dusk.

People always ask us, right after congratulating us on our new house, “Do you get in the pool much?” As if we would spend twenty years of our lives saving up every penny to buy a house with a swimming pool only to just look at it. What the fuck, people? We are in the pool EVERY SINGLE MINUTE of every single day that it is not raining. And sometimes I get in when it’s raining anyways, because IT’S A SWIMMING POOL and WE LOVE SWIMMING. People are stupid.

The pool is life. Life is pool. Unicorn floats and unicorn drink floaties rule.

But we are also new pool owners, so maybe we are just obsessed right now. Speaking of being new to pools, apparently all the local wildlife will invite themselves over for a swim in your pool. I did not know this. I also did not know that I would find dead chipmunks, mice, voles, and frogs in the skimmer basket every morning and have to dispose of bodies as part of my morning routine.

I have, on a few occasions, arrived early enough to save the lives of a few chipmunks before they drowned, with a skillful net and rescue mission. You’re welcome, nature. But eventually I reached my limit with animal fatalities and invested in a Frog Log. It’s a little floating ramp that sits on the edge of your pool so in the event of an animal falling in, they can safely swim to the floating platform and climb back out. We have not experienced a single incident since installing our Frog Log, so five stars for this life-saving device. No more skimmer baskets of death.

Every little critter deserves to live a full life. Even these frogs who sing the songs of horny frog lust every night when the sun sets and it sounds like an alien invasion outside.

Other excellent investments during this month have included the Yogibo bean bag. Bean bag technology has come a long way since I was a kid. I grabbed one of these because the only place to sit in our new house right now is the living room. It’s the only room with furniture. We have an office/tv room (empty) and a sun room (empty) and a spare room (also empty). There’s no way to sit in or use any of these rooms.

Thus, the bean bag. The Yogibo is light enough that we can carry it and move around to other parts of the house and make those rooms functional. I can work on it in the office. I can watch a movie or read in it in the spare room, away from Mike if he’s watching sports or loud movies. And it’s the perfect video game chair. Eventually we will have proper furniture in every room, but that takes time, money, and being able to visit a furniture shop in person to sit on and test out furniture. For now, we love the Yogibo.

How about a COVID hair update? This is the longest my hair has been in maybe ten years. It is also 100% back to its natural color for the first time in…I don’t even know. And that’s how it’s going to stay. I’m all natural from this point forward. While I miss having jet black hair, I don’t miss the maintenance of it and my hair feels healthier in this state. So yeah, all natural. Including the grays! I think they’re rather pretty, like tinsel on christmas trees. And I hope one day I will look like my granny who never once dyed her locks and had the most stunning mane of silver hair that nearly reached her waist. Absolute senior hair goals right there.

This month’s boredom led me to working on coordinating eyeshadow looks for each of my face masks. Here’s a pink and orange look I did for my Loch Ness Monster & Unicorn mask. Who says you stop wearing makeup in quarantine?