An earthquake? First of all, how cliche’d. Let me guess, Lenny Bruce is not afraid #eyeroll. But also, large earthquakes are kind of a California thing. I don’t mean to brag, but we really only have one natural disaster and we’ve kind of perfected it. Other states have their tornadoes and hurricanes but everyone knows California has large earthquakes. It’s kind of our secret weapon for population control. Non-Californians say “I could never live in California, I’m afraid of earthquakes” and we say “Oh yes, they’re very, very scary. Very scary indeed.” and everyone’s happy staying where they are.

Earthquakes in California are very, very scary. Don’t move here.

So look, this is for Utah, the New Madrid fault, and all of you living on faults you don’t even know about–leave the earthquakes to us, okay?

But back to the End of the World. First off, I don’t care how you feel about Trump, but calling COVID-19 the “Chinese virus” is offensive and racist as fuck so don’t do it. Don’t be that asshole. Thanks.

But more personally, we had an exhausting night last night. Our normal bedtime is 8:00 (read: 9:00) but we’ve had all kinds of crazy hours the last few days and I’ve pretty much accepted the fact that we’re not going to go to bed at a reasonable time for the rest of the pandemic.

You know what else I’m not doing for the rest of the pandemic? Wearing a bra. Lockdown may be necessary, but ladies and breast-owning people, there’s no need to lockdown your body. Celebrate the little freedoms!

Celebrate the little freedoms–don’t wear a bra!

How’s everyone doing? Life just seems so weird. I mean a huge part of that is not being in our normal house, which I can say from day 2 was an excellent move (opinion subject to change). But another part is that whole end of the world and quarantine and all that. Our longest stay at the cabin before was probably 10 days, and we mainly lived out of the bags we brought our stuff in, with the food strategically placed in 6 giant Trader Joe’s bags lining the bar/counter area. However, for this time, I’ve decided to fully unpack.

This is not as easy as I thought it was going to be.

First I had to clean out the dresser, which was filled with an inordinate amount of snow suits too small for my actual children and any of our friends. How many 4T snow bibs does a SoCal family really need? How many children under 5 do I actually know? (answer: three, my two nephews and newborn niece, and they’re quarantined in Texas). I should sell these on Craigslist–oh, wait. So all of those tiny snow clothes and adorable little boots and mittens got shoved in the corner of the closet and I unpacked our clothes. It was exhausting and I had a glass a wine and a nap afterwards.

Also I should say that Cal was much more optimistic about this quarantine than I was. From the beginning I said that schools would be out for the rest of the year, and when I posted that on Facebook one of my best friends said “Nobody knows how this will play out. You don’t know everything, Paige” and I corrected her that I do in fact know everything and then the next day Gov. Newson said that school would be out for the rest of the year so I WAS RIGHT. I also assumed that we would be at the cabin longer than the original week and a half Cal thought, so I packed like all our clothes.

And I mean all our clothes like pretty much all our clothes. I was the reverse Marie Kondo. Instead of thanking our clothes for their service and the joy and happiness they brought and then giving them to charity, I rolled them up like I was packing for an extended trip to Europe and said “see you in 90 minutes.” I then went to the freezer and did the same thing. What is this frozen meat in this unlabeled ziploc bag? Well, who knows, but it doesn’t have visible frostbite so into the cooler it goes. I mean, my grandmother had one of those chest freezers in the basement and honestly I thought there was a body or two in there and maybe Grandma was planning to go all Donner Party if necessary. I mean, she did grow up in the Depression. And she did live in rural Wisconsin.

Where there are no large earthquakes but lots of blizzards.

Did Grandma have a body in the basement chest freezer? Turns out, no.

Cal did do a bang-up job getting food. I’ll talk about panic buying in another post, but in our case this was actually pretty legit, since this Small Mountain Community (SMC) only has one tiny little general store, about 1/3 the size of a 7-Eleven, and food offerings are somewhat random. The next closest option is another SMC which has a grocery story about the size of a large 7-Eleven but not as big as those truck stops on the 5 between LA and San Francisco. So let’s just say that groceries are not as easy to get as they are at home.

I know all you people who normally drive like 30-40 minutes to the grocery store, uphill both ways in the snow, are laughing at me right now, but let’s all just validate each other’s struggles, okay?

Anyway, we brought a shitton of food and it’s all over the counter and I’m not sure where to put it. But I’m going to try.

Also I realized this blog template doesn’t have comments which is kind of a bummer because I actually like talking to my readers (all 5 of you–hi Mom and Dad!), so you can chat over on my brand-new Facebook Page here: https://www.facebook.com/Thoughts-from-the-End-of-the-World-101443148166190/