My garden is keeping me sane. I’ve been out there for several hours a day since the middle of March, grubbing in the dirt and blowing my nose on the inside of my t-shirt. Maybe that doesn’t sound quite sane but without the garden I feel certain I would have gained 100 pounds and would have no trouble sheltering in place because I wouldn’t be able to get out the door. As it is, I’m eating Nutella with my fingers straight out of the jar.

“We’re living like animals,” I told my neighbor Gwen who knows something about just about everything, which makes it sound like Gwen has inside knowledge about living like an animal, which is not my point. Gwen and I have watched a movie together every week for 15 years. Usually we are cozily ensconced on the sofa in her tiny “plaid room” but since the room itself is barely over six square feet, social distancing has nixed this tradition. Now Gwen and I watch movies via Zoom. The movie is on the full screen and there’s Gwen in a little box up in the corner. If she talks I can mute her. (n.b. to Gwen: I haven’t yet.)

The consensus among women these days seems to be that we are never strapping on a bra ever again. That goes double for heels. Heck, work from home, you don’t even have to get dressed. On one late afternoon Zoom piano lesson I saw pajamas and slippers walking away from the ipad .

“Is your dad still in his pajamas?”

“No, those are his ‘house pants.’ ”

That’s what we’re calling them these days.

Laundry is a cinch because I wear the same clothes all week. And showers? In what decade did we get the idea –from Madison Ave- that we had to shower every day? I scrub my knees and ankles when I come in from the garden and call it good.

Just before the OK Chorale’s weekly Zoom, one of the sopranos (OK, Nina rhymes with Dinah) told me she wouldn’t be joining us because she didn’t want to comb her hair. This was hilarious because we all looked like a collection of stray cats except for Don (bass) who had cut his own hair and he looked like Mia Farrow.

I texted my beloved hairdresser (Ross): “As soon as you can work again, put me down in your first slot. Then just tell me when it is, I’ll be there.”

As it is I’ve cut the sides of my hair twice. I’ve been pin-curling my bangs. I go out in the garden with a scarf over the pin curls and feel like my mother going to the grocery store in the 1950s.

I miss the small routines of connection. I miss my painting friends, Susan and Madelaine, with an ache. We have painted together every Tuesday morning since 2007. Susan isn’t allowed out of her building. Madelaine came over last week to pet the cat. We sat 6 feet apart in the sun room and had coffee while Artemis lolled all over her. It was a pleasure for all three of us.

I miss my neighbor Bill coming over almost every day to chat and bring me another section of the New York Times. He does come over and we do chat but at 6 feet apart. Not the same.

I miss Kay. Oh god, I miss Kay. She’s my token non-wired friend. In some ways, she’s non-wired. Her partner says the two of us together are dangerous. We have drinks and gossip once a month at her house. She provides the scotch for me and the vodka for her, Hershey bars and potato chips. I bring the Muenster cheese. It’s a ritual. Who knows how it evolved to Hershey bars and Muenster, but it did and I love it. Kay is not on the computer and secretly (or not so secretly) resents everyone who is.

In some cases, the connections have been reconfigured: Andrea and I have found a way to have our monthly happy hour on Zoom. Nancy and I still walk around Green Lake every Friday afternoon, sucking our masks into our faces.

The aforementioned Nina and I have been doing weekly laps in the cemetery behind my house on Saturday, also sucking our masks. This in lieu of monthly dinners at Saffron using the monthly coupons from ValuePack. We review the “six things” Nina does every day: take a shower, put on clean clothes, spend (at least) ten minutes tidying up, get some exercise and two others I can’t remember.

“Who says we should do these things?”

“I read it in an article somewhere.”

The shower and clean clothes seem a bit excessive unless we are talking about more filth than one can acquire lying on the couch watching Netflix.

cartoon by Hilaire Squelette aka Madelaine Ramey