Truth be told, I was feeling pretty “blah” as my birthday weekend approached last week. With so much going on in the world as result of Covid-19, it didn’t feel right to go out of my way to celebrate myself… I was super good with not making a big deal about turning 33.
The only plan I had for my birthday was to go grocery shopping, take a Zoom dance class and bake myself a cake… But then Charles came out of nowhere and plot-twisteded the whole damn weekend because “birthdays should be one of the few days we get to focus on ourselves without guilt”.
As a result, I found myself letting go of control and following in his lead – an unexpected gift that ended up being exactly what I needed.
And so here’s a little recap of this past weekend – celebrating my 33rd birthday in quarantine and making the most of our stay at home order situation (Virginia’s current stay at home order has us home until June 10th):
Friday, April 10
In response to mitigating the spread of Covid-19, WMATA closed a whole bunch of train stations a few weeks ago and our local station was one of them. So even if Charles and I wanted to go somewhere, we couldn’t since we don’t have a car and travel by public transportation exclusively.
Luckily, the nearest grocery store, Safeway, is about one mile away from our home and so, every week, we’ve been walking to the store and getting whatever food and household items are in stock and carrying them back home in our reusable grocery bags. Without a car though, we haven’t been able to really stock up for two weeks worth of food (as recommended) because it would be too much/heavy for us to carry back home.
So, as a special treat, we rented a car on this day (Enterprise is now providing home rental car deliveries) and went grocery shopping with our homemade scarf masks on. We stopped by Wal-Mart and Trader Joe’s in search of items that were out of stock at Safeway, i.e. toilet paper and canned/frozen goods.
We found toilet paper at Wal-Mart and got most of our frozen goods at Trader Joe’s. We didn’t find any antibacterial hand soap or spray/wipes so I just bought a spray bottle and bleach to make my own spray and 2 bottles of antibacterial dish soap to use as hand soap ’cause antibacterial is antibacterial, right?
And that was Friday.
(No photos of our outings because I didn’t want to take my phone out while we were out and get germs on it.)
^^^ Oh wait, also on Friday was this amazing sunset that I watched from our living room window. Definitely can’t forget this calming, colorful passage of time.
Saturday, April 11
My actual birthday and I woke up to Charles declaring we were having a spa weekend at home. :)
But first, my Zoom dance class with Luam.
Luam is one of my most favorite dance industry choreographers ever! She’s based in NYC and I have been wanting to take a hip-hop class with her since forever but, every time I’m in NYC, I’ve always had conflicts with the day/time she teaches.
But then earlier last week, she announced on Instagram she was going to teach a private Zoom dance class, on my birthday of all days, so I took as a sign from above and registered! There were about 63 other dancers in attendance from around the world and it was my most favorite virtual dance class I’ve experienced so far. I felt rusty AF in my body trying to pick up the choreography but, overall, it was FUN. Annnnd it all took place in my living room.
Afterwards, Charles implemented Spa Day 1 which included a full body sugar scrub and him gifting me with my first fluffy white “hotel” robe – I’ve been wanting one since our visit to the MGM Grand a few years ago. I don’t know when he ordered it or when it arrived since we’ve been together 24/7 these past 4 weeks but somehow he managed to surprise me with that robe.
Then Olive Garden delivered our dinner – their Zuppa Toscana soup is my FAVE. We did a contactless delivery where they left the food in our building lobby and called us so we could go down and get it. It was our first time ordering out in a long while and it really hit the spot.
After food, we sang songs at the top of our off-key lungs using a karaoke app Charles found and then I went about making a pineapple carrot cake with honey cream cheese frosting.
After it was baked and frosted, Charles sang “Happy Birthday” and I blew out candles to mark the occasion.
Sunday, April 12
Cleaning day (’cause I’m happiest at home when it’s clean) and Spa Day 2.
We woke up, made chocolate chip pancakes and went straight into deep cleaning our kitchen, dining room, both bathrooms, did 3 loads of laundry, sweeped and swiffered our floors.
Then we showered and did two facemasks (Charles allowed me to do a self-portrait session of this – more of those photos coming on Sunday) and then Charles painted my toenails for the first time ever – and he did pretty good!
(No photos of my toes because the internet has a foot fetish problem and I don’t want any parts of it lol)
Afterwards, I had an hour to myself and read a book (and did another self-portrait session).
We then ate our Olive Garden leftovers, a few more slices of cake with ginger tumeric tea, watched the Pokémon Pet Detective movie (I was big into Pokémon and Digimon as a kid) and fell asleep on the couch before waking up around midnight to migrate to bed.
Annnnd that was my birthday in quarantine weekend.
Super simple but thoughtful and exactly how it was supposed to be… Spent at home with my love and filled with many connections from family and friends who reached out via phone, text or video chat to wish me good health and a happy day.
An experience I wanted to make sure I recorded via this online journal to remember for always.
Writing this post brought me back to the “old blog times” when every blogger used to post their weekend recaps (no matter how basic) on Monday and link up their posts to share and comment and commune online. Mannnn, those were the days.
A special shoutout to all my fellow Aries folks! Wishing you all a happy and healthy birthday!
xo, Setarra
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