To quote a tweet I found on the lovely N.R. Walker’s twitter feed the other day: today is Blursday the foryteenth of Maprilay, and OMG it sure feels like it. What day is it even today? What year?

I’m stuck at home—because where else would I be?—and to avoid dying from boredom, I’ve finally started project learn how to cook Thai and other Asian food since I don’t have Asian food readily available on every street corner anymore, since moving back to Sweden from Malaysia. Not that I would have been able to go eat at any of the places now anyway, but anyhooo… The project is going great; I’m finally starting to understand the Asian flavors, and the other day I made a Pad Krapow Gai that was pretty close to perfect. Next on my project plan: Japanese ramen! My favorite food in the whole wide world.

One project that isn’t going as great is getting my parents to quit going to the grocery store themselves and instead accept the help that my brother and his partner have offered them to shop for them.
“We need to get out of the house,” they say with their voices full of stubbornness so typical of people born in the forties (and early fifties).
“Then go for a walk. Somewhere you won’t meet other people,” I say. “You’re in your seventies, you have to be careful.”
“I’m only sixty-nine,” Mom says, making me roll my eyes so hard I fear they’ll pop right out of their sockets, making me wonder if she’s 69 or 14, forcing me to remind her that not only is she almost seventy, but she also has asthma, and the conversation goes downhill from there.

Another project that isn’t going great is Camp NaNoWriMo. I signed up for it weeks ago, eager to be in a cabin with my fellow JMS Books authors who also signed up for the event. I always enjoy writing with them, working towards a shared goal. I have a story, a title, a semblance of an outline (which is very unusual for me), and I know what’s going to happen next. But the words won’t come. Instead, I stare at the blank page with my shoulders up around my ears, stiff, tense muscles, and with my face set in a constant frown, wondering if I’m still a writer if I don’t have words.

Instead, I think about how quickly life as we know it can change. Instead, I think about how I resent not having any kind of control over the situation, that I can’t do anything to make it better. I think about how much I miss my positivity. Usually, I’m a very positive person, quick to see a silver lining, but who can be positive in times like these?

But I try. I try so hard to unfrown my face and to lower my shoulders, while I consider picking up yoga again to get rid of the stiffness in my muscles. I think of yet another way to try to convince my parents to accept my brother’s offer of help or at least try grocery shopping online. I re-read favorite feel-good books (like Cultivating Love by Addison Albright) and try to find new (to me) sweet feel-good books in the hopes that they’ll manage to put a smile on my face (like Finders Keepers by N.R. Walker).

And I curl up close to my husband’s big, warm body at night, falling asleep with his palm on my back, his arm like a conduit for love flowing from his heart, through his arm and palm, and into my worried chest. And I think I’m so grateful that I have you, if I must be locked inside with anyone, I’m glad it’s you.

I look at the tender, light green buds on the trees and bushes outside my house and rejoice in spring, in a new start. I try to remember that after all the long months of darkness that is winter here up north, light always returns in the end.

Because if I can’t remember that, I’m afraid I’ll hide under the covers with my hands over my ears, quoting Thom Yorke and Radiohead, I’m not here, this isn’t happening.