Our quarantine is light compared to some people’s. We’re technically confined to essential travel but the cops won’t stop anyone unless they’re acting truly dumb and we’re still allowed to use parks and hiking trails if they aren’t too crowded. Our grocery stores even have flour and rice and paper goods most of the time.

It still feels awful and suffocating, though. I can’t even imagine how hard the official shelter-in-place orders are. What we have is bad enough.

I’ve been walking regularly, both for my mental health and my sciatica, and I listen to podcasts ehile I walk. One was talking about different personality types and their various quarantine challenges. (It was the Personality Hacker podcast, if you want to look it up.) The hosts felt the most sorry for extraverts trapped by themselves, which makes sense, and the group they pitied next was introverts trapped with a house full of people.

I’m definitely in that second group. I love my husband and I love my kids, but I also love it when they all go away and give me some time to myself. This hasn’t happened in nearly a month and it actually gives me insomnia. I wake up two or three times a night, my mind racing, desperate for some quiet thinking time while everyone else is asleep. I spent high school in the same state, what with two dysfunctional parents and four siblings, so I know I’ll get through it easily this time around.

But today I’m thankful for the least stressful membere of our household–our pets. We have two guinea pigs and a corn snake. It seems like a recipe for disaster but they mostly live in separate rooms so it’s been no teouble so far. They haven’t tried to eat each other so far. And they’re all three peaceful and cute and cheap to feed. Thank you Chess, Mocha, and Demon-eyes “Snakey” Buttercup.