Over the weekend cities shut down like so many dominoes collapsing. No bars, no restaurants, no gyms, no casinos, November!
We are (mostly?) all on board. Yes, social distancing. It will hurt more now to make it hurt less later. I get it. We all get it. We’re doing the thing. I have only left the house once since Friday - for a short hike up to the boys’ school yesterday. Too many people out - I crossed the street a lot, didn’t touch crosswalk buttons. Still washed my hands when I got home. Some people estimate pretty much everyone in New York City is infected by now. Good times.
When the fed dropped the interest rate to 0% I immediately called the guy who did my last refinance back in 2004. He told me that no, it doesn’t mean I can get a 0% mortgage, but that yes, it’s probably a good time to refinance. He says he needs things to settle for a few days but he’ll be in touch. My hope is I can borrow upwards of $100,000 off the house now and just have it sitting there in case I can’t run my event this year. The sense of well being I could get from that would be tremendous. Cancel, don’t cancel - it won’t matter any more. It won’t be the first time this house has saved my ass. I hope I’m able to do all this. We shall see.
But for now...I can’t get motivated. It’s cold and rainy, I have a cold, I’m probably getting my period today, and I just don’t want to do anything. The groups and posts and lists of “things to do with kids” are multiplying. People are getting up at 6 AM and making their kids sit at desks to do schoolwork all day. They are coordinating theme outfits, making cute videos of dance parties, baking with toddlers, making revelatory poetic statements about how great it is to have the opportunity to slow down and spend time with their families. It’s great. Right?
Yeah...no.
This is the worst thing that’s happened to all of us. People are going to be broke and desperate. Businesses that have been nurtured through 9/11 and recessions and trends are going to fold overnight. Even if our health survives our economy won’t. Which then changes the lives of the businesses that do survive, like mine. Oh, I’ll survive this, thanks only to my home equity. But what will my future look like, with these super bugs sweeping through humanity every few years? It’s very uncertain. Maybe I should start manufacturing toilet paper.
Beyond this...I resent being put into a position of having to be my kids’ school teacher. There, I said it. I hate it. I don’t want to do it. They don’t want to do it. They want to play video games all day and I want to stay in my bedroom and watch trash tv. All these services offering free educational stuff to keep kids busy...they all require logging on to websites and creating accounts and picking user names and passwords with at least one number and eight letters and one upper case letter and one special character and I just can’t deal. I’m a horrible person. I’m ok with that.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll rally and get us out for nature walks and make them turn everything off and read and start making them do some chores. Maybe this is just my PMS talking. But yeah. Not feeling it.
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