COLUMN: Quarantine Party, Pt. 4

Okay, this is officially starting to get old.

I'm a homebody. If somebody told me I could spend a week at home doing nothing but lounging on the couch watching TV, I'd be the first to sign up. But it turns out its a little less fun when somebody tells me I HAVE to spend a week at home doing nothing but lounging on the couch watching TV. And instead of a week, it's two months. And all the TV kinda sucks and no better shows are coming because all the people who make all the shows are ALSO staying at home doing nothing. This is not ideal.

The only original show left to watch is this one science-fictiony soap opera that's allllways on, and it's SO boring. It's about this dystopian society where an unrelenting virus attacks the world, and the leader of the free world is this orange guy who's only concerned about his re-election chances, and then the rest of the show is just a bunch of people bickering about how wrong and/or right the orange guy is. It's like "Game of Thrones," just with WAY fewer dragons. I don't give it high odds of getting renewed for another season.

I am, however, happy to see that "Days of our Lives" is still thriving. I haven't seen a second of DOOL since college, when it was pretty much required viewing in the Augie student center. I caught five minutes the other day, just in time to see Patch awaken from his coma with amnesia after Kayla operated on his brain to remove the implant that made him think he was Stefano. In other words, it's business as usual in Salem. I'm sure I'll be hooked again soon. Curse you, Stefano!

I can also attest that I've begun holding lengthy one-sided conversations with my cats. I now understand why Grizzly Adams had chats with a bear. I'm pretty sure two of my three cats fully understand what I'm saying -- they're just too aloof to respond. The third just wants food and is deeply irritated that the human keeps hanging out on her favorite daytime sleep spot.

You guys may have noticed a lack of ME in the paper last week. I'd like to tell you I was off on some exotic vacation or doing incredibly fantastic things that would provide weeks of column fodder, but I can't because fun has been cancelled. Truth be told, I was sick. This is not a good position to be in for someone who's already a bit of a hypochondriac living through a global pandemic. In the course of about twelve hours, I went from "I feel a little off" to naturally assuming I was days away from death and pondering who to bequeath my vast fortune of mixtapes and cats to.

Thankfully, it was a bug that (knock on every piece of wood in here) came and went. Three days of fever, chills, and grossness and then fine. Was it COVID? Doubt it. I didn't even have enough symptoms to merit testing. Truth be told, I'm wondering if I didn't give myself food poisoning -- a possibility that seems a little more realistic once I noticed the expiration date on the pickle relish I had up to then been eating with gusto. I am virtually incapable of self survival. And being sick DOUBLE stinks when there's no one to baby you.

What HAS gotten me through, however, are family and friends. My parents had my back when that stimulus check didn't show up as fast as I needed. I've already mentioned my friend Dianna, who's done all my grocery shopping for the past month (as well as a most excellent and appreciated surprise Easter doughnut.) I also need to shout out the Isbells, who sorted me out with an insanely stylish mask -- if you've got to walk around looking like a bandito from a spaghetti western, you might as well do it with some flair.

The best part of the weeks have been Saturday nights, when my closest friends gather together on the internet for solid evenings of socially distant debauchery -- or, in our case, Pictionary. Still, it's good to see the smiles and faces of those I too often take for granted. Life without their companionship is weak at best, so even if we can only muster it via webcam, it's a good hang. Even our friend Chris who moved to Japan years ago has joined our weekly fray -- and in these homebound days, Nagoya suddenly feels about as close as Moline.

There's just been one problem with our online hang. Google thinks one of us is racist.

We've been using Google Hangouts for our little webcam meet-ups, and the other day I decided to fiddle with the settings to see what all I could do while logged in. That's when I discovered Google Hangouts has captioning. If you turn captioning on, it'll try to figure out what your friends are saying and it'll appear in typed print beneath their camera feeds. I thought it was kinda fun, so I turned it on. Sure enough, with about 90% accuracy, Google could understand even our most demented ramblings.

EXCEPT when one of my friends coughed and her microphone caught it. This happened twice the other night. Each time, Google translated it as -- well, as a word that no one should say ever. (Just ask recently fired NASCAR driver Kyle Larson.) For some reason, Google thinks my friend coughs racial slurs. (She doesn't. I promise.) Plus, we were playing Cards Against Humanity at the time, a game that already requires liberal usage of some salty and tasteless language -- but Google's captioning made it WAY saltier than it actually was.

So if someday we all finally emerge to greet the toxic-free dawn of a new day, my friends can all rest assured that I have some screencaps of varying accuracy that could probably get them fired, ex-communicated, and looked down on by civilized society should any of them wrong me. And yes, if you're curious, at one point one of my cats jumped onto the laptop close enough for my microphone to pick it up. And Google duly translated it as "Shane: Meow." So, according to Google: I'm a cat, my friend is a racist, and we're all potty-mouthed heathens.

Still, it's way better than the show with the orange guy. I wish they'd cancel it.

COLUMN: Quarantine Party, Pt. 3

Isolation Diary, Week 3. Or maybe Week 19. I'm honestly not sure. Time has lost all meaning. The other night I went to bed at 5 a.m. and woke up at noon. At Castle Shane, there are no rules. I sleep when I'm tired. I eat when I'm hungry. I haven't stepped outdoors in four days. I think. Welcome to my new normal.

To anyone concerned about my welfare flying solo at home for the foreseeable future, no worries. I have loads of company -- they're just not human. Thankfully, my cats are unaware what's going on in the world, and I'm not sure they'd care even if they knew. They're far too busy doing what they want to do. And what they want to do most is kill each other.

Is this the kind of nonsense that goes on EVERY day when I'm at the office? I was living under the assumption that my cats for the most part tolerated one other. Boy, was I wrong. As you may know from my previous ramblings, I have three feline roommates. Two are the elderly gals I've raised since kittendom. The third is a young vagrant I took in last year after months of well-practiced sad eyes at my back door. Each of them feels strongly that this is THEIR house and the rest of us are uninvited interlopers. 

Co-habitation was a bit of a struggle at first. New Cat (whose true Jellicle name shall never be revealed by me) was used to a life of opportunistic meals before suckering me into room and board, so she'll eat absolutely anything and everything I leave out for ANY cats or humans. This also includes any form of shiny cat toy, which she will disembowel and consume in its entirety. And yes, this was a skill set I only became aware of after finding a litterbox full of glitter and tinsel. Cats are magical.

After a few really intense food fights and some meet-and-greets of varying degrees of success, I thought our house had eventually settled from a warzone into a state of at least resigned acceptance. I'd come home from work to find cats peacefully sleeping in separate rooms, each in their own territories and seemingly tolerant of one another. Over the past three weeks, though, I've realized the only reason I find them asleep when I come home is because they're exhausted from spending all day trying to kill one another when I'm gone. 

It happens like clockwork. Every morning, just around 10 a.m., old Bez (the alpha of my house) gets off the couch, stretches, saunters into the kitchen, and lays down directly in front of New Cat's food bowl, hissing every time the other comes round to eat. She's not protecting what she thinks is HER food -- she eats completely different food from a completely different bowl. Bez is a thinker, and I'm pretty sure she's just playing the long game of trying to starve the new cat into non-existence. I may live with a depraved wannabe murderer.

In the afternoon, all three cats will take up different spots on the sectional while I try my best to work from home. New Cat is big on cuddles, so she usually won't leave my side. Except, that is, for the other day -- when she randomly sat up, gave me an adorable meow, and suddenly ninja jumped across half the couch, landing square on sleeping Bez and pinning her in a move the WWE would be jealous of. Suddenly, both cats were making noises I didn't even know cats were capable of. Let's just say they weren't pleasantries.

Normally this would only be moderately alarming. However, I WAS ON THE PHONE WITH A CLIENT at the time, trying to talk advertising strategies while it suddenly sounded like I was in the tiger pit at Joe Exotic's house.

Working from home just altogether confounds the cats. Usually when I'm lounging on the couch, it's time for attention and skritches. In THEIR minds, the fact that I'm typing away on a laptop computer and talking to advertisers shouldn't alter those plans in the SLIGHTEST. I can't go ten minutes with a curious meow, a complaint meow, or yesterday when Bez just sauntered up and batted my laptop shut on my hands as a less-than-subtle hint that no computer shall ever replace her as the alpha. My new bosses are CONSTANTLY up in my business, hovering around my workspace, and micromanaging every thing I do. 

Earlier today, I decided to reach out to some of our advertisers struggling in this crisis to make sure they didn't need anything. I was half a sentence into the e-mail when I decided to take a brief pause for a coffee refill from the kitchen. I returned to the living room to find New Cat comfortably curled up ON the keyboard -- and somehow, she had managed to hit send. THAT is why one of my favorite advertisers got an urgent message from me today that read, and I quote, "Good morning! I hope this e-mail finds you fzzzzzkweddl"

So that's where things stand -- or, more accurately, that's where things lie sprawled out on the couch. I wish I had the answers, I wish I had a miracle to erase this spring and demand a do-over. I'm just like you -- stuck at home and hoping for the very best. We're going to get through this, come hell or high water -- and we're all pretty experienced at handling high water. Until then, please know that myself, Bez, Isobel, and New Cat wish you all a very good morning, and we hope this column finds you as fzzzzzkweddl as possible.