It’s funny how the current lockdown situation makes you want the things you can’t have, even when you maybe never wanted them much before.

For example, all my life I’ve been a poor traveller. I don’t enjoy travel; I tend to panic in new and unusual situations. I am not comfortable when I don’t know the language, or where to get food, or how the public transit works.

When we go on a family trip, I spend hours and hours planning in advance so I feel okay about it, and I have reams of paper detailing backup plans should anything go wrong. During the trip I’m like a drill sergeant keeping us to a strict schedule and freaking out if someone wants to deviate.

And yet now that we are trapped at home, unable to travel, I find myself dreaming of trip planning and new and exotic locations as if they are FUN and EXCITING. I wonder if this will be a lasting change in my attitude? Or will I go back to panicking as soon as the government announces the all-clear on travel again? HM.

Anyway, dreaming of taking a trip has led me to think about my 50th birthday, which is coming up in just two weeks. I am not someone who likes surprise parties AT ALL, they are a firm no (to both the throwing and being the guest of honour). I definitely did not want a big celebration, and one of the hidden blessings of coronavirus is that it stopped anyone who thought they’d plan a birthday-fest from planning such a thing, WHEW.

But now that it is finally here, and I am actually giving it some thought, I have been thinking it would have been so nice, as a first choice celebration thing, to take a trip with Sir Monkeypants to a romantic urban location. Maybe Paris, or London, or both. How lovely that sounds (in my head, when it’s not at all a potential real thing I would probably be panicking about).

As a backup, I would have loved to take a train ride to New York City, and take in at least two Broadway shows, again with Sir Monkeypants but possibly also with my sisters and their significant others. It would have been so easy, in the Before Times, and so much fun. Alas.

So now I’m on the backup-backup plan, which I think is this: wake up to my favourite breakfast of coffee and muffins; visit the new L.L. Bean store in town where I will definitely be buying PJs, slippers, new sheets, and cozy sweaters, assuming I did not get any of these as gifts; return home to do one of my favourite puzzles while drinking a lot of tea and perhaps watching a marathon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Downton Abbey.

Even in regular times, I think such a day fits me to a tee – full of Spoiling Treats, but nothing too fancy, and nothing involving the need to dress up. So although I still wistfully dream of Paris and New York, it’ll probably be a pretty good day, after all.