May 8, 2020 4 min read

Being in lockdown is like being on a diet.

There are things you can’t have – Keebler shortbread cookies with M&Ms, for example but there are things you can have, and those are the things that keep you on track.

As the days and weeks of this pandemic drag on, I keep adjusting my activity diet, reminding myself of the safe things I can still do, my consolation prizes, if you will.

On this lockdown diet, I cannot do TV work as usual. We producers are finding ways to make content for the web, using only our iphones, zoom interviews and stock video. And I’m using my car as an audio booth to record my voice narration. It’s not ideal.

But the consolation prize is that I’m still working, and my colleagues are producing content that’s informative, entertaining and helpful.

Like all of us, I’m missing my life.

I can’t safely host a dinner with my extended family, have the usual chatty lunches with my friends, go to the movie theater, or have a restaurant dinner with the farmer.

Or go to the salon. Do I have to describe my hair? Without the expertise of my stylist and her magic straightening iron, I’ve gone furry. It looks like I’m wearing a small dog for a hat.

Our everyday lives are rife with loss. But when I put pencil to paper, I come up with a list of things I still can do.

Riding my bike is my favorite thing, and happily, I still can. Now, if only the weather would get with the program.

I still can take my nightly power walk, old Smoothie the sheltie and I. It’s done wonders for my mental health, but almost nothing about the creeping coronafluff.

Here are the other things on my “Still Can Do” list: pet the dogs, converse with friends through texting, FaceTime with my kids, get a Diet Coke at the fast food drive-thru, watch Netflix, have French fry night with the farmer, take a drive in the country, shop online (mostly putting things in my cart and then not buying them), watch the deer in the side yard, play Ruzzle on my ipad, and download and read books.

Oh, and nap.

These are the things that keep my chin up, the way allowable foods keep us on a diet – the egg whites and the tomatoes and the yogurt and the carrot sticks and the almonds of this quarantine – whatever it takes to get through this long tunnel of self denial.

The farmer found and brought home a watermelon the other day. It was as if he was carrying a chest of gold into the house.

“Cut into it and see if it’s any good,” he said, suggesting it’s too early for an edible watermelon.

But I wanted to wait, not just to let it ripen a bit more, but because this was a special treat, something juicy and good to balance all the dry and dull. It would be the best consolation prize of all.

After three days, I got out the knife. Inside it was deep red and sweet. Watermelon might not be on some food diets, but it’s now in the “allowable” column of my pandemic activity diet.

So let there be weekly watermelons, bike rides and chats with friends, seeing my kids on FaceTime, good books and walks with the dog. String enough of those together and I can get through this.

But I still miss being with my friends and family. We all are. There’s no replacement for that.