{"id":2630,"date":"2020-06-04T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-04T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/?p=2630"},"modified":"2020-07-10T12:36:27","modified_gmt":"2020-07-10T16:36:27","slug":"diary-of-my-plague-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/diary-of-my-plague-months\/","title":{"rendered":"Diary of My Plague Months"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em>Making pandemic lemonade<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n\n\n<p><strong>By Annis Pratt<br>Current Contributor<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I have not worn a bra in two months. However, I wear a mask every day on my daily walks. But nobody else wears a mask. I have a pleasant (6-feet-apart) chat with a young woman who is not wearing a mask, at the end of which, she says that she is a nurse anesthetist at the local hospital. I rush home to wash my mask. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I have always felt naked without lipstick. With a mask over my mouth every time that I go outdoors, I do not need to put on lipstick.<br><br>My mask leaves me breathless from walking uphill, and it gets all foggy when I breathe excitedly while bird-watching.<br><br>My engagement book reads like a Wile E. Coyote cartoon\u2013Zoom! Zoom! Zoom!<br><br>Zoom is intrusive: it lets a whole committee into my home office. And then, when they disagree with me, there is no place to run.<br><br>I discover that I can mute them: all of them!<br><br>Carol tells me that, deprived of her volunteer comings and goings, she cleaned out her garage \u201cright down to the gnat\u2019s eyebrow!\u201d<br><br>(I am moved by no such impulses.)<br><br>I am not changed in any way by social isolation. But I can no longer get into the bathtub without my rubber duckie.<br><br>You know those bras I have not worn? I cut one up to make masks, but it sure feels weird to stick my nose where my nipple used to be.<br><br>As I wait on the sidewalk for my friend to come out for a (socially distanced) chat, I realize that in my tweed cap, black jacket, mask, and umbrella, I look like a British robber ready to cosh her.<br><br>Instead, I devise an outfit consisting of a pink windbreaker, a pretty cotton mask, a baseball cap, and sunglasses to look less threatening. I look so utterly anonymous that I post it as a joke on Facebook. In the park, a dear friend comes running up to me. <br><br>\u201cHow did you know it was me?\u201d I ask.<br><br>\u201cOh, I recognized you from your picture on Facebook!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Annis Pratt has a cottage on the Betsie River. She has been a bird watcher since 1947 and finds the banks of the Betsie an absolute bird paradise. She is author of <strong>The Infinite Games Series<\/strong> of adventure novels about a marshland folk who are threatened by the draining of their homeland and of three non-fiction books about the way that myths are used in literature. She is a nature writer, a columnist for the international e-magazine<strong> Impakter.com<\/strong>, and was an early contributor to <strong>The Betsie Current<\/strong>, back in the 2005-06 days. Visit <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"AnnisPratt.com (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.AnnisPratt.com\" target=\"_blank\">AnnisPratt.com<\/a> to learn more.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Featured Photo Caption:<\/strong> Annis Pratt, the author, ready to meet a friend for a socially distanced walk during the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo courtesy of Annis Pratt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Making pandemic lemonade<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":2631,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[227,231,171,41,233,44],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/web-mask-2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3TDCr-Gq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2630"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2630"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2697,"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2630\/revisions\/2697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}