Where are your costumes?

My best friend from high school had my second cousin's baby on Sunday and he weighs eight pounds. When she sent me the photo I said "I'm going to learn how to knit in isolation and knit him 100 sweaters—one for each year of his perfect life!" And then I started crying because I'm not going to do that.

My parents have been texting me, and suddenly they're very funny. My dad sent me a GIF of an extremely muscular cartoon woman with terrifying eyes, who I think is meant to be me after I spend the next year working out in my house. He's just driving around the Rochester area, sending me photos of the bottles of Patron sitting in the backseat of his truck, hoping this will entice me to come home and self-isolate with him and mom and Sophie instead of with just myself, my cat, and my vague idea of "my city." But no one who has ever had a conversation with me has failed to hear me promise to go down with the ship. "Joan Didion is a coward and a quitter," I say at least once an hour.

My mother did the costumes for The Addams Family musical at the high school last week, and they're still lying around the house. So, today, she posted a series of photos of herself in full costume makeup as Uncle Fester, getting drunk at 1 PM. "I put a knee-high on my head. I had a black lipstick from the show, and voila!" she texted me proudly. Then she posted another video as Cousin Itt in a full-body poncho made of yarn that looks shockingly similar to human hair. She was sorry to say that she did not have a bowler hat, so the outfit was incomplete.

A knee-high is a type of pantyhose, just in case you're unfamiliar. My grandma loves to talk about them. My grandma also used to say "biscuits" instead of "butt," and she says "up the piker" instead of "down the road." Can you believe I bought three pairs of black tights at Duane Reade on Friday afternoon, as if I had somewhere to wear them?

The boy I met on Tinder 16 days ago and have already written about on this blog multiple times told me he was wearing a wig today during his Zoom calls. Don't know if that's true. He also said he'll keep hanging out with me even if it becomes literally illegal. Really doubt that one is true. I'm wearing normal clothes and I'm pretty upset with myself: I don't have any costumes in the house except for a skeleton suit from when I was Donnie Darko for Halloween. This feels tonally inappropriate to put on. Lizzie was the guy from Mr. Robot that year and I distinctly remember sitting on the ground waiting for the B48 bus—her with her mask, me with my plastic ax—talking about how good it felt to be dressed up as boys. She was like, I think we could get away with some crimes, and I was like haha. Well, now we could for sure.

If I think about the next time I will be allowed to see my sisters I throw up!