In June, my husband and I experienced a huge milestone in our life—we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary!
Hooray! Woo hoo! Yay for us!
We were planning on spending it in Cape May, and later in the year, traveling to London, where we’ve never been, and possibly Hawaii, where we went for our honeymoon (and I got a horrible stomach virus which left me sicker than I’ve been before or since…so we didn’t see much).
Then the pandemic hit, and quarantine came.
Like many people, we changed our plans. We decided, though, that we would celebrate with a Staycation.
We have been taking Staycations since we’ve been together. My husband has always gotten a good amount of vacation, and early on, we couldn’t afford to go away more than once a year. So we jokingly referred to them as “We’reTooBrokeToGoAnywherecactions.” We would go out to dinner, the movies, take day-trips. We’d have a blast.
Then someone came out with the cool word—Staycation—and people stopped giving us weird looks when we said we weren’t going away. Once there was a term for it, staying home during vacation time became accepted.
When I told friends what we were doing, one said, “What are you going to do, take a tour of the linen closet?” Ha ha ha…and bite me. I replied that we might swing by the linen closet on our way to the hall bathroom.
Then I began to wonder what we would do. We couldn’t go out and do any of the fun stuff that we usually did on Staycation. I began to panic—what exactly would we do? Probe the dark recesses of our laundry room? Delve into the boxes in the garage? Explore the basement?
That last one gives even me the shudders…
On the first day, we decided to clean out our pantry.
Please note—I absolutely do not recommend this if you’re actually looking for something fun to do.
While we did clean it out and organize it, we also found expired stuff from 2017 and a ridiculous number of canned beans. (What, were we planning on recreating the campfire scene from Blazing Saddles? I think not.)
That wasn’t fun. So, we decided to explore the streams—the streaming services, that is.
I stress that unless you are made of true mettle, do not under any circumstances watch any movies or TV shows that focus on the following themes: pandemics, quarantines, spreading viruses…you get the idea.
Although we did watch a lot of movies and series, we also read, played games, and talked.
People often ask me if we haven’t run out of things to talk about having been together for more than a quarter of a century.
Not. Even. Close.
There’s always something to talk about. Like what? Like…
If you have to pick only five places that you would be allowed to ever visit in your life that you’ve never gone to before, what would they be and why?
If you could only pick three colors to live with for the rest of your life, what would they be?
If you had to eat the same food every single day for lunch until the end of your life, what would it be?
I’m really good at this because I ask questions as part of my job—writing about people, places, and things. But if we got stuck, I would ask some weird ones.
Like: if you had to choose between living on the moon or Mars, where would you choose?
I’d pick Mars. Why? Matt Damon might come back in a sequel to The Martian. You never know! And Marvin from the Looney Tunes cartoons lives there. He would be fun to annoy.
But wait—the moon is closer. Conspiracy theorists think we’ve never been there, so I could be the first in their eyes.
And isn’t it supposed to be made of cheese? Mmmmm…cheese…
If you choose to celebrate any Quarantineacationaversary, I hope you enjoy it.
As for me, I’m going to go make a grilled cheese and cue up a Matt Damon film.
What’s he been in again?
Michele “Wojo” Wojciechowski, when she’s not coming up with new words that are longer than her last name, writes “Wojo’s World®” from Baltimore. She’s also the author of the award-winning book Next Time I Move, They’ll Carry Me Out in a Box. You can connect with Wojo on Facebook or on Twitter.
Did you know that Wojo has a newsletter? It’s full of fun stories, facts, and contests. And she won’t spam you because she doesn’t know how, and it’s bad Karma. Email her at Wojo@WojosWorld.com to subscribe.