Hello friends!
Ugh. Right? I don’t know about you, but TBH, the last few weeks have been rough.
I’m headed home to see my parents for Thanksgiving so I’ve been quarantining for the past two weeks. Honestly, that’s really not all that different than the past several months, but it just happens to fall when the time has changed and the weather has gotten colder.
So while the last several months have been stuck at home with the ability to go on walks, eat outside and have generally pleasant weather, the last two weeks have just been dark and cold and sad.
And I’m just feeling it. And it’s the beginning of the desolate winter that and I (and I’m sure all of us) have predicted. So, ugh.
How did we get here?
I really started to feel it last weekend. I had this overwhelming feeling to do something, anything that wasn’t watching tv but I’m out of solo projects to do around the house. So all I could come up with was decorating for the holidays.
I am usually an avid-post Thanksgiving decorator, but this year I strayed. It’s not even so much that I needed the holiday spirit (though I support you 110% if that’s how you’re feeling). I honestly just needed something to do because I’ve been feeling so stir crazy.
But I own like 7 holiday decorations, so it didn’t take that much time.
Then I decided I would make a hot chocolate bar. Which is cute and very delicious. But also something that I did and then was done doing.
PSA About Holiday Cheer
Also, PSA for all you other post-Thanksgiving decorators out there: I know that you’re probably cringing at the early decorations and wanting Thanksgiving to have it’s gourd filled spotlight, but 2020 is weird so just let everyone have this. They (we) need this. We need the holiday spirit. We need our lights and our Christmas music and our cocoa. Please, just hold in your grumbles, calm your eye rolls (maybe just go with minor eye pivots) and LET THEM HAVE THIS WIN. It’s the only one we got.
So, I was out of productive things to do and last weekend Ben had a bunch of homework to do. So I just kind of watched tv and pretended it was fun. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t that fun.
Luckily, Ben had some free time this weekend so we were able to hang out some, because after seven months, I’ve finally run out of ways to entertain myself. Especially since, like I said, I finished all my solo, budget-friendly projects so now for fun, I look at lamps I can’t afford and finished basements that I envy. Anyway...
We Decided To Try Fondue Night
Thankfully, Ben agreed to have a fondue night at home. He even agreed to dressing up. Usually I’m about not dressing up at home, but between my extremely limited showers and all my clothes being too big, I’ve been feeling like a blob of a human and I needed to look cute.
So after getting dressed up, picking some classy music, and lighting a candle we broke out our fondue pot and smashed a TON of cheese and wine. Srsly, my stomach is still in post-cheese recovery.
Then after a cheese and wine induced nap, we made some chocolate fondue and ate literally all of it even though we were stuffed. Because how can you not? And what do you have to lose?
And it was delicious and awesome, but it wasn’t like going out and eating fondue. I feel like for the most part I have been okay with the at-home alternatives to a lot of activities and events. But this week I’m going stir crazy and I’m having a bit of a “pre-covid” pity party. So here we go.
Here are the things I miss the most:
1. Drinking in public.
Y’all, this may make me sound like I have a problem, but there’s just nothing like drinking in public!! Going to a brewery and sitting on the patio and trying a variety of beers is objectively better than sitting inside and drinking at home. Or sitting on the patio at your house and drinking. Breweries are just better. They’re more fun. They’re more adventurous. They’re more glamorous and I miss them.
But more than drinking at breweries or restaurants or wineries, I miss bars. I really really do. Some people are not bar people, so they won’t understand this, but I’m a bar person. I’m not an every weekend bar person, but I’m an occasional, get dressed up, take some shots, dance on a surface that is not the floor, bar person. And there is literally nothing that can replace a bar.
I’ve tried drinking at home. And playing music at home and dancing at home. But the magic of the bar is that you’re not in control of all those things.
When you’re at the bar, one of your friends buys you a shot and you just drink it. It’s a lemon drop. You don’t like lemon drops but you’re at the bar!
You SCREAM when Yeah! by Usher comes on. Not because you never hear it, not because it’s the greatest musical styling of all time. But because you’ve been waiting all night to hear your song and you’re at the bar surrounded by a bunch of strangers who are also your friends and you want to dance to Yeah! by Usher.
At the bar, you go to the bathroom and make a new friend. You add each other on snapchat, because it’s the bar!!
After the bar, you get to eat some late night eats that are almost exclusively reserved for post-bar. It’s not good, you’ll probs wish you didn’t eat it in the morning, but tonight, you’re bar you and bar you wants McDonalds.
Have I considered getting McDons after an at-home drinking session (with someone else driving, of course). Yes, but that is just a waste of money, which is something you never consider when you’re leaving the bar.
That bar feeling is one you just can’t replicate at home and (judge me if you want) I miss it. In honor of the bar, here is the only photo I took at my last pre-covid bar activity. Wow, what a time. RIP.
2. Friendsgiving.
I miss it y’all! I’m sure you also miss your friendsgivings, but I feel like I miss mine more. I have been doing friendsgiving with my high school friends for a decade. 2020 was legit going to be our 10th annual friendsgiving. Our 16 year old selves actually cooked a turkey and the whole shebang. I honestly think we did Friendsgivings before Friendsgiving was a thing. This was the OG friendsgiving. We made friendsgiving a thing.
We’re still going to have an outdoor, distanced gathering. But it’s not friendsgiving. It’s just an “around Thanksgiving” friends hangout.
And there’s the friendsgiving I usually host in Des Moines. This started with my college roommates in 2014 & 2015. Then in 2016, Ben and I started hosting them. This would have been our 5th friendsgiving. And it’s not happening. Womp womp. I’ll miss the food. I’ll miss the friends. I’ll miss the drinking games (see below). Hopefully next year will be bigger and better.
3. Drinking games.
Here I am again, missing drinking activities. Friends! I don’t drink that often. Which is why I love bars and drinking games. They’re special occasions! And much like my opinion on bars and breweries, drinking a beer at your own pace with no pressure is just not as fun as the kind of panicked and messy drinking that happens during drinking games.
Aside from the fact that I’m not seeing many people right now, drinking games (at least my favorite ones) are just not sanitary. I hope drinking games make a come back, but I feel like it may not be until 2023. And in 2023 will I be too old for drinking games? Damn, I hope not.
4. Spontaneous hang outs.
Throughout quarantine, I have participated in many carefully planned hang outs or gatherings. But spontaneous hang outs have just been completely off the table. First of all, how can you spontaneously go to an after-work happy hour if work is in your house and your coworkers are your dogs? Secondly, even if a spontaneous hang out did manage to happen, I would absolutely be too anxious to agree to do it.
And while hanging out planned is still great and I love it, spontaneous hang outs are just more fun and more satisfying and I miss them.
5. Alone time.
This one is confusing because I mostly miss people. But I also miss being alone. Ben is here all the time. That’s a lot of time. I’ve said it before, I don’t need to rehash it. Love him, but also love when he leaves so I can love him more when he comes home. I also love when I leave and go do stuff and come home and get to tell him about it. None of those things happen and I miss it. It’s kind of like how when we moved in together, I missed living not with him. Because it was more exciting to only see each other twice a week.
Except now, instead of wanting 5 days of the week to myself, I just want like 3 hours of awake alone time. And not the kind where Ben is upstairs doing homework and I’m downstairs watching tv.
The kind where he is not here and I can dance around in my underwear without anyone having to witness it and eat whipped cream out of the bottle. And it’s not because I’m self conscious of dancing around in my underwear while other people see it. Because I’m not. I do that shit with the windows open. It’s because sometimes you just want to do that kind of stuff alone.
6. Shopping.
I don’t even like shopping, which is how you know I am desperate to be outside my home and have alone time. I think shopping is unpleasant, especially if with company. Like just let me look at this pillow for 19 minutes and breeze past the shoe department I DON’T CARE that you want shoes.
But now, I crave shopping. I have been (non-grocery) shopping very few times since March because it’s just a risk I’m not willing to take. I don’t really need anything I can’t buy on Amazon and I have no interest in touching things other people touched and pushing past people in crowded aisles. And I don’t have the luxury of shopping at 10am on a week day unless I use PTO. So I guess I’m now the type of person who likes shopping and misses it. At least until everything is back to normal and I remember how it’s terrible.
Yes, I realize how whiny I sound.
So anyway, that’s my little pity party about stuff I miss. I realize how privileged I am to miss bars and shopping. I realize how privileged I am to be stuck at home but still have an income. I am thankful for all of those things, and I do not overlook how lucky I am.
But as we all know, I am trying to document my quarantine experience, and I miss bars and being alone and also being with people. There is no bright side today. Sometimes you just gotta rant about all the things you miss and how you wish it was light past 4:30 pm and how you wish your dogs would never bark again because you need some peace and quiet.
So that’s where I’m out. Where are you at? What do you miss? What do you feel silly for complaining about? It’s okay. I get it. You can tell me.
Cheers,
Lisa
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