Hi Everyone! I hope you’re all staying safe and sane  out there in this disease-ravaged world. 

So, there’s  a lot of advice  floating around right now  on how to take care of yourself (and your community) during plague-timey times.  Wash your hands, social distancing,  flatten the curve and  STAY HOME.  ALL THINGS YOU SHOULD BE DOING ANYWAY.  But since I have a wandering, worrying kind of mind, I have come up with some of my own  suggestions for managing anxiety during the plague. And maybe they might help you too. If not, I sure hope it was fun! 

1. SHOWER KARAOKE. Sheltering in place can bring up a lot. When will it end? Will I die? Will people I know die? Will I run out of toilet paper and have to make my own from collected twigs I’ve crushed in a bowl? So many feelings. Big feelings!  But, a lot of these big feelings can be exorcised…simply by taking  a hot shower/bath and  singing one of your Power Songs. What? You don’t have a power song? You don’t even like to sing? I don’t believe you. I don’t believe anyone who says they don’t like singing, unless they legit don’t have vocal chords. When a person tells me they don’t like to sing, they’re telling me they don’t like to sing around anyone who can hear it. However, the loofah sponge, the rubber duckie, the bottle of pantene conditioner…these lifeless objects become a rapt audience when you bust out your special song, don’t they? SING TO THE DUCKIE. 
2. ONANISM. You can’t touch your face anymore,  but you know what you can touch? Mmm-hmm. That’s right. Your very own genitals.  It’s simple math: one clean hand, plus one genital, plus your spotify make-out playlist= NO CORONAVIRUS.  Plus it helps boost the immune system and frankly you need all the help you can get right now–(bonus points for those of you who had to look up Onanism, and who are enjoying some cool 1970’s beaver shots right about  now)–. Love yourself! It helps keep the Rona away. 
3. DRESS AND GROOM YOURSELF.  Shower or bathe daily. Scrub your molars, and put on deodorant. Then, dress yourself for “work” even if your only work is taking out the garbage. Put on real shoes. (The sound of slippers shuffling through kitchens after noon is known to cause depression in plants.) Wear anything you like!   If you do venture out on a  business walk, try  to avoid public places. Also, make sure to arm yourself with cleany-wipes, face-mask, and some bear mace. And upon re-entering  your house, strip nude and burn all of your clothing. 
4. PLAY YOUR BELLY LIKE BONGOS.  You’ve got a nice big belly now that you’ve eaten all your quarantine snacks in the first week. Pick good songs with drum solos and smack your belly rhythmically, it’s a cool noise! And the bigger you get, the deeper the bass. Feel the groove! 
5. PUT TOGETHER YOUR   APOCALYPSE PLAYLIST. What? Don’t tell me you don’t have one yet!! Pick 100 of your timeless classics. The songs you want played at your funeral. The songs you want playing while you’re being  vaporized by a nuke, or staggering buck naked down the street in a fever trance, with radioactive goo dribbling down your chin.  WHAT WILL YOUR FINAL SONGS BE? Make sure you’re locked and loaded for your grand finale. 
6. IF YOU ARE BORED IT’S BECAUSE YOU’RE BORING – I don’t know any other way to tell you this. But if you find yourself being bored stuck indoors, the problem my friend, is you. You need to find something meaningful to do.  In the house. Clean? make pickles?  Sort your socks by color? ONANISM?? There are so many, many things to do! If you don’t know, just ask me because I can  think of a few things you can do right now. 
7. GO EASY ON YOURSELF. We place such a premium on being productive, we literally don’t think we’re allowed to exist unless we’re “doing” something “valuable”  with our “time”. If you’re motivated to take on a big scrap-booking project, or knit yourself a death shroud, that’s great!  If you spend all your quarantine time looking at cat videos and drinking wine, that’s okay too. This is a special time–a dark time to be sure. But a time that doesn’t ask you to do anything more than to take care of yourself and your community’s health and safety. 
8. TAKE NAPS : Your body’s #1  bio-weapon is sleep. Above all else (probiotics, vitamin C, onanism, etc) you need lots of sleep. Which is hard to come by, given the amplified anxiety levels we are all  experiencing. Many of us are not sleeping well, imagining apocalyptic plague scenarios unfolding in real time. But if you can, if you’re able to, sleep. Sleep whenever you feel like sleeping. 
9. DON’T PANIC, GET ECCENTRIC. During times of  danger, it’s tempting to panic and do something impulsive or reckless, like fly to another country, change your name to Bernadine and marry a stranger.  Or get drunk and send a boob pic to an ex. DO NOT GIVE IN TO THIS PANIC, FOR IT IS OF SINISTER ORIGINS. Rather, dig in and let the fear warp you and make you weirder. Let it darken your humor.  Let it shape your actions. Not in an impulsive way, but in an intentional way. Why do harm to yourself when you could do something like go through your closet and pick out some nice burial outfits? Try them on, take selfies and send them to your friends. Ask them to rate your corpse on a hotness scale. Too dark? How about  doing a “reverse” vision board where you cut out pictures of horrible things, and paste them onto a poster board. Your worst fears come true. Right on the board. Then, burn the board and watch your nightmares go down in flames!!! (These may be shitty suggestions but they are better than drunk dialing an ex, or giving yourself a bikini wax in the kitchen) Think outside the box. 
10. HUG YOUR PETS MORE THAN USUAL.  I feel sorry for people who are having to shelter in place without some hairy freaks to pet. If I didn’t have my two cats, I’d probably be drinking way  more wine right now. Pets help bring down the anxiety levels, just by being themselves. In the eyes of your pets, shelter in place means you get to hang out with them all the time just like they’ve hoped and dreamed since the day they came home!  They don’t know about the plague outside. All they know is their dreams have finally come true; you are with them, they are with you, and they will stay with you until you die, and then they will eat your corpse. 

Take care everyone! Stay foxy!