Crafting Your Way To Armageddon

A throwback to Aug. 2020 during the COVID-19 quarantine

When in the grip of a global pandemic, you may find crafting to be a delightful way to pass the time. Today or tomorrow or whenever, who cares, you can create this DIY classic, “Lemon with Googly Eyes,” by following these simple instructions. You will need:

• A lemon
• Two googly eyes
• One black marker

Pick a lemon from the tree in your backyard. You don’t have a lemon tree in your backyard? Oh. Maybe you should have thought of that before the lockdown. Maybe you should have gotten your financials in order. Maybe you shouldn’t have married him. Maybe.

Substitute fresh lemon with the store-bought one that you’ve only ever used as decor after seeing Martha Stewart, in 1997, place one on a distressed farm table and call it a day. 

Wash lemon in cool running water for 40-45 minutes as your dissociative disorder kicks in. 

Find googly eyes. Somewhere. Most likely in the detritus of your sepia-toned existence. (If you have young children, these should be readily available. If you have never really grown up, and wanted to be known as the “fun” lady who keeps things like googly eyes, a tiara and something called “Gone Mom” juice in the cupboard, you are good to go.)

Decide which size eyeballs to use depending on the size of the lemon. Realize diameter of the eyeballs or circumference of the citrus fruit does not matter in the gloaming.

Answer front door while keeping a safe physical space between you and the person who is urgently knocking. After person verifies that your name is, in fact, your name, and then serves you papers, watch as she social-distances by speeding into the maw of an empty street, a street silent of the laughter of children and the tintinnabulation of church bells.

Toss divorce papers on counter next to magic marker. Get ready for both to leave an indelible mark on your soul. Magic!

Place lemon on a flat surface. Wonder how you will find your way through this soft mortality and back into a body once forged from Stygian iron.

Feel your face cradled by ghost hands. Time. What is time but an abstract? Except for the measurable weight gain, totally abstract.

Stick googly eyes on lemon. 

Notice cat sleeping on armchair, not giving a chicken-flavored fuck about a worldwide plague. Play “My Ever Changing Moods” by The Style Council. Remember the 90s. Remember those lean days, everything ahead, how Grace Jones growled “baby” at you in the bathroom at Limelight. Meditate but not really. 

Have an epiphany that when you finish this crafts project, this little rascal will move with you from room to room, a zesty pilot fish to your dead-eyed shark. 

Draw a smile and eyebrows on the lemon. 

Et voila! Celebrate by wiping down all surface areas with handcrafted disinfectant.