Love and peanut butter in the time of corona

It is, by all accounts, early days yet in the Great Pandemic of 2020, and all I want is to know how it's going to turn out.

Don't we all.

The way I see it, there are three ways it could go, each with drawbacks:

(1) We could successfully flatten the curve and minimize the overall impact of the outbreak. The Internet nut jobs who claim it's all media-driven hype will still have been wrong, but they won't know they were wrong. They'll think they were right all along ("What did I tell you? It was no big deal!") This is the best possible outcome for society, of course, but the people who still, this far into it, insist it's some sort of hoax admittedly irritate me. There's a part of me that needs them to understand how dangerously crazy their thinking is.

(2) We could find that we were too late in acting and the hospitals become overwhelmed and thousands of people die. The nut jobs knowing they were insanely wrong is of little consolation in this scenario.

(3) I myself could be one of the people who die, which as far as you're concerned, assuming you survive, is the same as either outcome #1 or #2, but obviously a very different circumstance for me.

Understand, I don't think I'm going to die from this. I probably won't even get infected.

Probably.

That's the morbidly fascinating part of this whole coronavirus ("COVID-19," the cool kids call it) brouhaha. Few people think they're going to get it, even fewer truly believe it's going to be fatal for them. Many of us will be wrong in those assumptions. At this point, we all just want to know what lies ahead in the days and weeks—and months—to come.

Is this the apocalypse? Or have Mike DeWine and his sign language interpreter already saved our lives?

I don't know. What I do know is that the associated working-from-home gig has been the mother of all mixed blessings for me.

PROS: No 70-mile round-trip drive to work every weekday. Also, the dress code is decidedly relaxed.

CON: I am gaining 6 pounds every 24 hours.

That's a big, big con. I am not eating well. I am not exercising. In my defense, I had a nasty cold for a couple of days earlier this week. And my ankle is still slightly swollen four weeks after I twisted it on a run, so exercise has been difficult. But I can at least exercise some discipline in the things I shove down my gullet, because so far that has been nothing but a wild free-for-all.

I start each day with good intentions, but then somewhere round about mid-morning I start feeling a little peckish and walk over to the kitchen cupboard, only to find the jar of Cinnamon Raisin Swirl still there. This concoction, which we swiped from my mom's house, is described on the label as "peanut butter blended with cinnamon and raisins." And It. Is. Delicious. I sneak spoonfuls all the time, racking up the calories without any corresponding physical activity.

So, we wait. We wash our hands. We practice social distancing. And in some cases, we get fat.

This far into Corona-mania, I dearly hope that's the worst thing that comes out of this.

(NOTE TO INTERNET NUT JOBS: In case you turn out to be right, my apologies in advance.)