Author: Elise Patkotak

There are people in quarantine who are using their time to run up and down their stairs and around their house while carrying heavy loads to keep their cardio workout going. There are those who have finished completely renovating their house, including installing new bathtubs, toilets and sinks throughout. You will find these people on their roofs now replacing tiles. There are those who have finally finished that scarf they’ve been crocheting or that sweater set they’ve been knitting and are now starting on a cozy that will wrap around the entire living room to line it with warmth and Continue reading →

Is it week two or three… or forty?

What do you do if you are Italian and stuck at home all day? You order a gabillion dollars’ worth of groceries and cook it all even if there is no one else in the house to eat it except you. Based on this premise, I am proud to now announce that I have chicken broth, chicken soup, chicken salad, broiled chicken, boiled chicken and a meatloaf in my refrigerator. I have a gallon of my mom’s Sunday sauce in the freezer accompanied by about three gallons of beans and cabbage soup. Continue reading →

I’ve been publishing some helpful – ok, I think they are – corona virus stay at home ideas in our local paper here. So for all of you who are silly enough to not read the Anchorage Daily News, I’m going to post them here. So that’s what you’ll see for the next four days and then who the hell knows. We may all be dead by then.

Cheers!

            I like to think of myself as a helpful kind of person. I help birds. I help dogs. When pushed, I even help some people if I like them enough. Continue reading →

Don’t know how to explain what happened between this and my last post. Seemed like it was only days. Turns out it was almost three weeks. Time is different in isolation.

I realize my days are becoming numbingly alike. Feed dogs. Feed birds. Watch TV. To keep myself from going totally crazy, I’ve assigned specific tasks to specific days. Certain days I do the wash. Certain days I clean the bird cages. Certain days I get stoned so I can forget how miserably boring all the other days are getting.

But, in my continuing effort to provide a public service, Continue reading →

I am trying to not become a formless mass of overweight protoplasm during this quarantine but it is not easy. I mean, seriously, am I the only one who hears my refrigerator calling me, like ALL the time.

I am back to being a teenager. I stand in front of an open refrigerator door that contains any number of healthy foods and snacks and all I can wonder is how long it will get the pizza to arrive if I order it immediately.

So, it turns out isolating me is not the answer for getting me excited about eating healthy. Continue reading →

I have my first telemedicine call with my diabetic doctor today. I have spent the last hour straightening out my house, making sure my desk looked clean and clear, checking out the background to make sure nothing showed that was messy. Yep, he will only see my face on the screen but should he somehow get his camera to pan around, my house will be spotless… just don’t open the closets. Stuff may have shifted as I shoved it all into them.

I actually got dressed and put shoes on for reasons I don’t understand either. I could have just Continue reading →

We are barely into the third week of what seems like it will be a very long quarantine. And what do I find myself reading? An article in National Geographic about what people did before the invention of toilet paper.

I read the whole thing. Why? Because why not? I have a lot of time to kill and even if I reread all of Dickens and Austen I’ll still have time left over… unless, of course, I throw in Thackery’s Vanity Fair. Then I might be able to stretch it out until the quarantine is over.

Or, I’ll just go Continue reading →

Is it week two or three… or forty?

What do you do if you are Italian and stuck at home all day? You order a gabillion dollars’ worth of groceries and cook it all even if there is no one else in the house to eat it except you. Based on this premise, I am proud to now announce that I have chicken broth, chicken soup, chicken salad, broiled chicken, boiled chicken and a meatloaf in my refrigerator. I have a gallon of my mom’s Sunday sauce in the freezer accompanied by about three gallons of beans and cabbage soup. Continue reading →

It is day who cares of self isolating in the hope of not dying before casting my vote in November. Things are starting to fall apart more rapidly than I thought possible.

I have to remind myself to shower… well, actually, I know it’s time when the dogs won’t sleep with me.

I feel as though I’ve accomplished something if I actually get out of my bathrobe at some point during the day other than to go back to bed.

I feel as though I’ve accomplished even more if I get dressed and then don’t get back in my bathrobe Continue reading →

Ok, so isolating because people annoy you and you periodically need a break from them is understandable and fun – at least in my world it is. But this mandatory stay in place crap has really got me going crazy.

I AM SO BORED!

Now that is a terrible thing to say considering I am suffering through this pandemic in the comfort and safety of my own home with enough food, drink and pot to keep me very happy and enough books, magazines and tv shows to keep me amused until the Rapture.

So why am I bored?

I don’t Continue reading →