Week in Seven Words #529

This covers the week of 3/8/20 - 3/14/20.

cancellations

In one day, most of my calendar evaporates. One cancellation after another. Businesses close. Classes are cut short.

elsewhere

I ask her why she's looking through Zillow. "Escapism," she says.

reportedly

Mixed messages from politicians, pundits, health experts. I wonder if I'm underestimating the seriousness of this virus. Or maybe it hasn't fully sunk in that we're in deeply unusual circumstances and nobody knows how any of this will turn out.

restlessly

Distracted during synagogue services, my eyes and mind roaming the room. 

speculations

We're in a building that tomorrow we won't be able to enter. We talk about the virus and how people think it spreads. We have little idea of what we're talking about. Sharing things we've heard on the news produces a mixed effect: heightened anxiety combined with the relief of unburdening some of our anxieties.

stockpile

The supermarket is clotted with thick lines. People are stocking up.

strangeness

By this point, I'm used to working from home. But it's not the same now. There's an intensified uncertainty and a constriction. The city where I live has become much less familiar.

Week in Seven Words #528

This covers the week of 3/1/20 - 3/7/20.

coughing

I'm starting to look at snifflers and coughers suspiciously. Like the young guy sitting at the other end of the room who keeps coughing wretchedly into his hand. To the person he's sharing a table with, he says he's fine. But he does admit later on, with a sigh, that he's tired.

dated

We use the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to look at Apple's website from the 1990s. It had a blocky table-based layout. It looked so amazingly clunky and amateurish (by today's standards). 

horror

The students say they don't want to learn more about the Holocaust, because it's too horrible. At least they see the horror in what happened.

overlooked

"Does he ignore me because I'm not as smart as my brother? Is that why he barely talks to me?"

reminder
The dog flops onto my lap, face-up, to remind me that she hasn't gotten tired of belly rubs yet.

unpleasant

I cringe at the dynamics in that home, the disrespect that flows casually to the mom, the vulgar comments about women and girls.

viral

Two things people are talking about all the time: the virus and the presidential election. The presidential election and the virus.

Week in Seven Words #527

This covers the week of 2/23/20 - 2/29/20.

convincingly

He's convinced that he's a loser, and he speaks to himself the way he wouldn't speak to anyone else. After years of such self-talk, the words are almost comforting. They've become something like a reliable truth, even though they aren't true.

dragged
She doesn't want to finish her homework, so she stretches out each question with pretend thinking, bathroom breaks, trips to refill her cup with water, and off-topic questions. 

drones

A row of old computers chuntering on through the same tasks, year after year, under different masters wielding different tools.

floaty
Her skirt floats around her as she dances, as if it's a flowing extension of her energy and grace.

gobbled

Mounds of laundry fed into the maw of a washing machine.

pent-up

Her dragon sculpture looks as if it will come alive at any moment, whipping its tail around and stretching its jaws open to unleash fire.

slogging

I force myself to finish something I'd rather not be doing and that I wish I wasn't doing alone.