SORRY I’VE BEEN MIA!

Yep! I got the dreaded Covid. For two years, I worried about the day it would hit me. What would happen? Would I be okay? I listened to so many stories of all the other people who got it, and I even lived through Skylar getting it before Twelfth Night and Alex getting it before Alexandra’s graduation.

And then it was my turn. It appeared as such a faint line I had to put my glasses on even to read it. And I had almost zero symptoms. It’s a sick joke to quarantine when feeling almost okay and maybe just a little weird. Perhaps this one doesn’t even count?

With so few symptoms to notice, I had to dig a little deeper. I stumbled across something that no one talks about. Everyone worries about losing their sense of taste and smell, but let me be the first to tell you the truth of the matter with Covid–there’s a real possibility you’ll lose your sense of humor.

Trust me, it’s a sick joke, but it happened to me. I got Covid, and yep, all the laughter stopped.

That’s what a month of not writing my blog but obsessing that my daughter’s going to college and dorm shopping will do for a mama–give her Covid and strip her of comedy. So there!

The only place I attempt to be funny anymore is on the college message boards when I ask a million stupid questions, and then I have to poke fun at myself for hijacking this whole college thing. Do you mean Team Skylar’s not going to college?

Screw dorm room shopping. I want my baby back! Somehow I’ve lost her in this pile of power strips, xl twin sheets, mattress topper debates, and the Woozoo fan. Oh, I might have talked about that a month ago?

But it can’t hurt to talk about it again. Yes, my daughter has an air-conditioned dorm. I have already called the housing department to check.

But even with AC, she might get hot, and when she calls home to say she can’t take the heat anymore, I’ll remind her she has a Woozoo fan for that very purpose. And then I’ll hang up and go on being the hot mess of a mom that I am without a Woozoo fan of her own.

So I did what every quarantine-induced Mama who’s lost touch with reality would do: I listened to “Tao Te Ching” by Lao Tzu and binge-watched the only two seasons of “Get Organized with The Home Edit” I could find. Mastery of self and other people’s environments. Like pushing that Staples button, “That was easy.” And I didn’t have to lift a finger.

And then, I couldn’t take being quarantined anymore, so I went outside and took a socially distanced walk with my youngest. She finished another edit of her book on her quarantine. Did I mention she has Covid, too?

So she asked, I think it was to make conversation, not to put me to shame, “What happened to your blog?”

“I haven’t written it in a month,” I said (with great humility, thanks to the Tao).

“What about your other writing project?” She asked.

“Yea, I haven’t written that either. I’ve been kind of busy watching these organizing shows.”

“Maybe you could use this time to write your blog and your writing project rather than learning how to organize. I’m just saying, but if you don’t want to do your writing project anymore, there’s a couple funny lines that you wrote that I’d like to use for my book.”

And just like that, I lost my interest in organizing and had renewed interest in writing again. No, my daughter’s not going to use my funny lines. If I was funny once, I can be funny again. Covid can’t take away my sense of humor forever. It will come back, and when it does, watch out!

Good thing I read the Tao. It didn’t teach me how to get my sense of humor back, but it did remind me that all of this is fleeting, It’s nothing I can hold onto.

Covid will pass, my daughter will do just fine at school, and I will do just fine without her. Eventually, if I start writing again, I’ll get my sense of humor back. (I’ve heard the same thing happens with those who lose their sense of taste and smell). And until then, I have a newfound appreciation of watching other people with much bigger hot messes than my own declutter, containerize and live happily ever after.