Make the most of this endless time warp by doing all those things you meant to do over the past ten months or in the existential vacuum between Christmas and New Year’s, but instead ate, drank, gossiped and shamelessly napped your way to January 1, 2021. A few suggestions...
Unsubscribe from all those emails you never wanted in the first place but were hoodwinked into receiving because regrettably, you once ordered something online. Surely the need for weekly coupons for Gourmet Jellybeans in Bulk and diversity effort updates from Discount Mattress! have passed?
Unpack all the toiletry samples you’ve collected in 20 years of travelling to subpar resorts. Toss gently together in a beaker, add paprika, heat over a Bunsen burner and package artfully using homemade paper and spare but exotic fonts. Sell on Etsy as a miracle anti-aging serum.
Pull an all-nighter to create a scavenger hunt activity for your children, where the last clue leads to the charred remains of their electronic devices. Leave the house before they wake, pretending to go to “work.”
Self-pedicure with a hammer, anvil and stirrup.
Do one of those frigid mid-winter plunges into the North Atlantic while fully naked. Then, light yourself on fire and do it again. You won’t believe how alive you’ll feel.
Repair dry skin cracks in your fingertips by sealing them with highly toxic glue you saw advertised on late night TV. When the wounds burst open again in tiny explosions of agony, make ventriloquist performance art. Sample script: Tiny as a paper cut / I am as painful as Caesar’s stab wound / with its own thunderous heartbeat.
Marry the seven half empty bottles of ketchup in your refrigerator. Send them to Bali for an amazing honeymoon they can’t enjoy because guess what – fucking COVID! Then arrest them for polygamy, if your state laws warrant.
Take a luxurious, soothing hot bath in motor oil. You missed every holiday party this year and you deserve it!
Explore cooking with dairy alternatives, like trolls’ feet. Explore cooking with fire, and lightning.
Go vegan.
What are you, a vapid celebrity or some elite athlete with something to prove? Go Paleo.
Ponder the dilemma of the omnivore.
Eat Michael Pollan.
Rearrange the spice cabinet. Rearrange the Spice Girls, so that Sporty Spice married David Beckham and Posh ended up hawking questionable root-based diet schemes and twerking half-heartedly on Dancing with the Stars. Then ask yourself, who won? Turns out not you.
Raise miniature horses. Do not eat them, but pay your neighbors to do so when they begin to demand more affection than you’re capable of giving at this point.
Attempt anti-aging by putting up calendars around the house from 5 years ago, when you wore actual pants and the sound of your spouse breathing was tolerable.
Teach your hamster to speak Russian. Then ask him who was really behind the election meddling. Book him on Tucker Carlson for an outrageous fee and laugh all the way to the bank.
Watch your children sleep. People do this, it seems. Poke them. If they don’t wake up and hit you, marinate in the holy silence of no one proclaiming, “he was in my room!”
Watch your husband sleep. Then, add more Nyquil to his hot milk so he forgets to ask you where his socks are or how to find the socially distant soccer field.
Set your pet monkey free. In your boss’s house. Which is way bigger and nicer than yours. Or, at least it was before you hired an escort service to fill it with live cobras. And to think he once accused you of being unimaginative.
Wake up and pretend the last 10 months were just a dream. Go through your sunny day as if it’s early 2019 and ask everyone what their problem is. Then launch a career in performance art starring your talking hamster and split fingertips. Guess what? You win.
They're all great, but my favorites? The all-nighter and eating Michael Pollan.