Even if, during a blizzard-ridden February, when the last thing you would ordinarily want to do is bundle up and pull on your boots, weaponized against the ice with steel crampons, to clear the snow from your car and then drive off through the pelting precip to far-off lands, like Best Buy in Plattsburgh for example–even if such an expedition would be the farthest thing from your mind under ordinary circumstances, during quarantine–or, presumably, under house arrest–you find yourself staring out the window at the storm and longing for the open road.

“If only I could drive to Best Buy,” you think.

Of course, there is always television. I have friends who eschew television for high-minded reasons, and I don’t know what they will do if and when they are under quarantine. Catch up on their reading, probably; read and put into practice every chapter of the “New York Times” former best seller, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing,” by Marie Kondo. Or maybe create a masterpiece.

I found “The Detectorists” and “Rumpole of the Bailie” on Roku, both wonderful British television series, and I watched plenty of current American television as well. There has certainly been no lack of politics or disaster to enliven the news.

I found, during quarantine, I scrutinized and pondered television advertisements more than I would during normal times.

One such advertisement shows a roomful of well-groomed middle-aged people attending a sort of seminar or lecture given by some kind of gutter enhancement salesman. Something doesn’t feel right about the scenario.

For one thing, the attendees are seated on metal folding chairs much too close to each other. Furthermore, no one is wearing a mask. The set-up makes me uneasy. Someone in that room, I postulate, is a COVID super spreader. How many of these clean-cut suburbanites will leave the premises with a burgeoning infestation of corona virus microbes?

And another thing–how many couples do you know who would devote their precious leisure hours to an informational meeting to learn how to cap their eavestroughs? Not many, you would think, and yet this audience not only pays attention but participates enthusiastically.

“How many people here still climb ladders to clean their gutters?” asks the speaker, and practically everyone raises a hand.

“I tell him not to!” a woman insists, glaring at the man next to her, presumably her husband.

“You’re right!” exclaims the speaker. “It’s far too dangerous!”

By this time he has riled up the crowd to such an extent that we assume nearly every couple in attendance will soon be lining up to purchase his product, with only one or two saying they are going home to think about it.

In fact, even I consider it for a moment, before remembering that I am a renter, not a homeowner, and I have never climbed a ladder to clean an eavestrough in my life.

Ordering on line is another occupation favored by the quarantined, an occupation just as dangerous as climbing ladders, though in a different way. It is also frustrating, because anything you order while on quarantine will take ages and ages to be delivered. You will be anxiously awaiting purchases that seem to take forever to arrive. Eventually, you will forget all about them–this must be a form of self-protection–and when you finally discover them at your door you wonder, what in the world are all of these Amazon boxes?

While quarantining, no one will be allowed into your living quarters, so tidying up may seem to be of less significance than in ordinary life. (Do you remember “ordinary life” before COVID?”) Still, during quarantine you have more time. Should you tackle Marie Kondo’s book?

Ask yourself, during “ordinary times,” do you put off inviting people over for fear they will judge you and then discuss you on the way home, comparing you to individuals they saw on one of those hoarding television shows? How many useful or necessary objects–reading glasses, credit cards, books, gloves, documents, bills, addresses, garments, anything–are you now counting on to simply “turn up” during the course of the day?

No matter how you answer, remember it is easier to read, or even write, about tidying up than it is to actually do it.

Have a good week.

——

(Martha Allen lives in Keene Valley. She has been writing for the Lake Placid News for more than 20 years.)