I haven’t worn a bra in two months.

On my daily walks, I wear a mask.   But nobody else wears a mask. I have a pleasant (6 foot apart) chat with a young woman who is not wearing a mask, at the end of which she says she is a nurse anesthetist at the local hospital. I rush home to wash my mask.

I have always felt naked without lipstick. With a mask over my mouth every time I go out, I don’t need to put on lipstick.

My mask leaves me breathless whenever I walk up hill, and gets all fogged up when I breathe excitedly while birdwatching.

My engagement book reads like Wylie Coyote – Zoom! Zoom! Zoom!

Zoom is intrusive: it lets a whole committee into my home office and then, when they all disagree with me, there is no place to hide.

I discover that I can mute them: all of them!

A dear old friend tells me that, deprived of her volunteer comings and goings, she went “all OCD” and cleaned her garage “right down to the gnat’s eyebrow.”

(I feel no such compulsion)

I am not changed in any way by social isolation. I am not changed in any way by social isolation. But I can no longer get into the bathtub without my rubber ducky.

 You know those bras I haven’t worn?  I cut one up to make two masks, but it sure feels weird to stick my nose where my nipple used to be!

As I wait on the sidewalk for my friend to come out for a (socially distanced) chat, I realize that in my tweed cap, black jacket, mask, and umbrella I look like a robber intent on coshing her. So I devise an outfit consisting of a pink windbreaker, pretty cotton mask, and baseball cap to look less threatening. 

I appear so utterly anonymous that I post it as a joke on Facebook.  In the park a dear friend comes running up to me. “How did you know it was me,” I ask.  “Oh, I recognized you from your Facebook picture!”