I don't know about y'all, but pretty much everyone in my world has been ordering takeout more than usual, ever since this coronavirus pandemic has become a part of our daily lives. What's really a trip about that is, it's not like most of us didn't make doing that a part of our lifestyle routine anyway, being that 60 percent of us were out here ordering delivery or takeout way before the Rona hit. Yet with all of the constantly changing information that's out here, I would totally understand if you're wondering how much of a risk that you're actually taking by hitting up your favorite restaurant so that they can send you something that you've been craving.
As with all things concerning this virus, the key is to be as knowledgeable as possible while not going into a state of panic. While it has pretty much always been holistically healthier to cook your own meals (check out "Why You Should Consider Leaving Fast Food Alone"), there are steps that you can take to insure that you are protecting you, your family and the delivery person, if you decide to bring some "outside food" in.
1. Avoid Peak Ordering Hours
There are a couple of benefits that come with not waiting until peak ordering hours to get your food. One is that you won't have to wait forever (because a lot of restaurants don't have the same amount of staff that they did before the pandemic started) and two, if you decide to go the carryout route, you will be able to avoid coming into contact with as many people.
(If you don't know what a restaurant's busiest hours are, call them before ordering your food. Oh, and if you're wondering what restaurants are currently making deliveries, check out "60 Deals & Delivery Services To Get You Through COVID-19 Quarantine".)
2. Disinfect Your Screen Door
While this step might seem like you're being "extra", choose to see it as a way of being proactively kind and courteous to the one who will be bringing your food to you.
While it would be ideal if the delivery person simply called or texted to let you know that your food is in front of your door or one the porch (more on that in a sec), if they do happen to knock on the door, do them a solid by disinfecting your screen door and door handle before they arrive.
At the time that I'm writing this, it's not a mandate that everyone wear masks and gloves, so it only takes five minutes to make sure that the person bringing your food to you is extra protected. Something like Simple Green® CLEAN FINISH® Disinfectant Cleaner should do the trick.
3. Sign Receipts with Your Own Pen
There really is no telling how many people touch things like a single pen over the course of a day. So yeah, avoid coming into contact with germs unnecessarily by using your own pen to sign takeout receipts.
4. See If Deliveries (and Your Tip) Can Be Left at the Door
These days, when ordering online, there is becoming less of a need to interact with your delivery person at all. For instance, there are usually notes, in the form of special requests, that you can leave online while placing an order about where you'd like your food to be dropped off. If it can be placed at the door without any human interaction, that's awesome. Speaking of, if for some reason, it is a restaurant's policy to get your signature on a receipt or they typically have people write in how much they want to tip their delivery person, ask if there is anyway to bypass this. The more that you can do with your debit or credit card, the less you'll be putting yourself at (potential) risk.
5. Tip Your Deliverer Well
I once read an article that said, on average, food delivery drivers make somewhere between $8-19 an hour. Not bad if you're just looking to make a few extra bucks, but pretty low if you're working to make ends meet and you're basically putting your life on the line to do it.
Because restaurants are doing their best to stay afloat, we are able to still keep a certain sense of normalcy by enjoying some of our favorite foods without having to go out and get them. That deserves the "thank you" in the form of more than a standard 10-15 percent tip, if you ask me. You can also donate to relief fund organizations that are helping out restaurants, bars and food service workers. You can check out more on that here and here. Whatever you decide to do, please be generous. We're all trying to stay afloat right now.
6. Keep Carryout Off of Your Surfaces
Not to get you all paranoid or anything, but you really don't know where food containers and bags are stored or who's been touching on them prior to them arriving at your house. Just to be on the super safe side, avoid placing the carryout bags directly onto your kitchen counters. Instead, put a towel or some paper towels on your counters first. Use gloves to remove the food from the bags and then immediately throw the bags out (preferably into your trashcan outside) once you've taken all of the food out. Do not touch your face, for any reason, while you're doing this.
7. Wash Your Hands Immediately After Removing Food from Packaging
Once the food is out of the bags and the bags have been disposed of, it's important to wash your hands for 20-30 seconds with soap and warm water. While there has yet to be evidence that coronavirus can be transmitted through food (let's all make sure to keep it on our prayer list that it never does), what we do know is it can live on surfaces including containers and utensils (reportedly for 1-3 hours). So, you want to make sure that your hands are as clean as possible after touching on stuff that your food came in. This brings us to the next point.
8. Reheat Food in Your Own Containers
If you're anything like me and you enjoy your food when it's about as hot as you can stand it, avoid reheating your food in the containers that they came in because, remember, someone handled before you did. It's best to immediately put the food in your own containers and to toss the delivery ones out as well (which yeah, basically means washing your hands just one more time). The other reason why you should do this is because you never know if the containers happen to contain harmful chemicals like BPA; the less you have to worry about, the better.
Oh, and I'm hoping that since I'm sharing that it's not a good idea to reheat in your delivery containers that it's a given to not eat straight out of them. It's kinda hard to eat out of something without touching it. Feel me?
9. Consider Eating Outdoors
Yes, most of us are living in Safer at Home status at this point, but no one said that you can't go outside. If you live in a house or a townhome (that has a yard) it can do you some good to get out of the walls of your home and go outside; not just for a change of scenery but for some fresh air too. Since indoor air pollution is 2-5 times higher than outdoor air pollution, it could do you some real good to have a little picnic, a couple of times a week.
10. Don’t Leave Your Leftovers Out
Food poisoning sucks and since hospitals are being pushed to their absolute limit as it is, you want to avoid getting it as much as possible. One way to do that is to make sure that you don't leave whatever food is leftover out for too long. How long is "too long"? Two hours. Also, make sure that whenever you do reheat your leftovers, you do it at a temperature that's around 165 degrees Fahrenheit.
BONUS: Support Those Who Are Lookin’ Out
Thankfully, as if this month, "Federal law mandates new paid leave requirements for restaurant workers affected by coronavirus". But there are restaurants who are going above and beyond the bare minimum (and paid sick leave is definitely a bare minimum). Starbucks actually offers "catastrophe pay" (two weeks on top of their standard two-week sick pay) for employees who've been diagnosed with coronavirus. Recently KFC donated $400,000 to Blessings in a Backpack which is a non-profit that gives weekend meals to hungry kids, free of charge while Taco Bell donated $1 million to No Kid Hungry, a campaign that also feeds children. Domino's is donating million of slices of pizza to essential workers and school children. Several restaurants in New York are making free meals for hospital workers. I also want to give a big shout-out to Houston-based chef and restaurateur Jonathan "Jonny" Rhodes for recently turning his restaurant Indigo into a grocery store for low-income families (ain't nothin' like a good Black man, y'all!). I also found David Cabello's new app Black and Mobile to be a cool addition for such a time as this.
Other chains are being proactive about taking less money out of our pockets. For instance, if you use Burger King's app, they will give you two free kids meals with a regular order. TGIF Friday is giving a free kid's meal for every order over $20. Olive Garden has a two-for-the-price-of-one promotion. Several chains are offering free delivery (read more on what other chains are doing here). Figuring out the restaurants in your area who are helping their workers, you and the community and then ordering from them first is a great way of saying "I see you and I appreciate you" as they try and keep their doors open.
Do you feel a little better (and safer) now? Good. Now how about getting off of here and ordering you something to eat? With all that's going on right now, you deserve it.
Want more stories like this? Sign up for our newsletter here and check out the related reads below:
15 One-Pan Dinners That Are Perfect For Women Who Don't Feel Like Cooking
Naomi Campbell Dropped Her Immunity-Boosting Vitamin & Supplement Routine
The Foods You Should & Shouldn't Be Eating On A Plant-Based Diet
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RELATED
Let me start this off by saying that of course, to a certain extent, the answer is subjective because it’s mostly opinion-rather-than-fact driven. However, I personally think that sex is hella impactful, which is why I hope that my personal breakdown will at least cause you to want to think about what you do, who you do it with, and why, more than you may have in the past.
Because although, at the end of the day, the physical aspects of making love, having sex, and f-cking are very similar, you’d be amazed by how drastically different they are in other ways…at the very same time.
Making Love
GiphyBack when I wrote my first book, I wasn’t even 30 at the time and still, one of the things that I said in it is, I pretty much can’t stand the term “make love.” Way back then, I stated that sex between two people who truly love each other and are committed for the long haul, when it comes to what they do in the bedroom, it’s so much more about CELEBRATING love than MAKING it. To make means “to produce” or “to bring into existence;” to celebrate means “to commemorate,” “to perform” or “to have or participate in a party, drinking spree, or uninhibited good time.”
The act of sex, standing alone? It can’t make love happen and honestly, believing otherwise is how a lot of people find themselves getting…got.
What do I mean? Tell me how in the world, you meet a guy, talk to him for a few weeks, don’t even know his middle name or where he was born and yet somehow, you choose to call the first time you have sex with him (under those conditions) “making love.” You don’t love him. You don’t know him well enough to love him. He doesn’t love you either (for the same reason). And yet you’re making love? How sway? Oh, but let that sex be bomb and those oxytocin highs might have you tempted to think that’s what’s happening — and that is emotionally dangerous. And yes, I mean, literally.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times before, that one of the reasons why I like that the Bible defines sex between a husband and his wife is by using the word “know” (Genesis 4:1) is because, well, I think that is what celebrating love is all about — we know each other well enough to know that we love each other, we know each other well enough to know that we aren’t going anywhere, and that knowing is what makes us want to celebrate that union by getting as close to one another and bringing as much physical pleasure to each other as we possibly can…as often as absolutely possible.
To me, that is what the peak of physical intimacy is all about — and the people who choose to use the term “make love,” it should be seen through this type of lens. When this type of mental and emotional bond comes together via each other’s bodies, they are amplifying love, enjoying love, embracing love.
Making it, though? Chile, the love has already been made. Sex is just the icing on the cake.
Having Sex
GiphyA few nights ago, I found myself rewatching this movie called Four of Hearts (which you can currently view on yep, you guessed it: Tubi). It’s about two married couples — one that is in an open marriage and another that isn’t although they somehow thought that sharing a night with the other couple would be a good idea (chile). Anyway, as one of the partners found themselves getting low-key sprung, the one they fell for said in one of the scenes, “It wasn’t a connection. It was just sex.” JUST. SEX.
Listen, when you decide to let a man put an entire part of his body inside of you at the risk of potentially getting an STI/STD or pregnant (because no form of birth control is 100 percent except for abstinence), it can never be “just sex” (somebody really needed to hear that too). At the same time, though, I got the character’s point because, if one or both people do not love each other or even deeply care for one another and/or sex is treated as an activity more than an act to establish a worthwhile connection and/or you and the person you are sleeping with have not really discussed what you are expecting from sex besides the act itself — you’re definitely not making/celebrating love.
Not by a long shot. What can make things get a bit complicated, though, is you’re doing the same act that “love makers” do without the same mental and emotional ties…or (sometimes) expectations.
You know, back when I decided to put all of my business out there via the piece “14 Lessons I've Learned From 14 Sex Partners,” now more than ever, I am quite clear that most of those guys fell into the “having sex” category. I wasn’t in the type of relationship with them where “making love” even made sense; however, because I was friends with most of them, we weren’t exactly f-cking (which I will get to in just a moment) either. We had a connection of some sort for the bedroom yet not enough to be together in the other rooms of the house.
We were really attracted and curious, so we decided to act on that. Oftentimes, the sex was good and so we rationalized that “having sex” was enough because if the friendship was, eh, “sound enough”, that we could justify the physical pleasure.
And y’all, that’s kind of what having sex is — it’s the limbo (or purgatory, depending on your situation) between making love and f-cking. The thing about limbo ish is it’s a lot like something being lukewarm: it’s not really one thing or another which means that it can completely blindside you, if you’re not careful (and totally honest with yourself as well as your partner(s)).
So, if you are contemplating having sex, I really — REALLY — recommend that you figure out how you feel, what you want (outside of the act itself) and if you are prepared for what “not quites” can bring. My mother used to say that the consequences of sex don’t change just because the circumstances do — and there is some solid “wow” to that, if you really stop to think about it.
GiphyAnd finally, f-ck. Although most experts on the word (and yes, there are some) agree that its origin is rooted somewhere within the German language (although some say that it might’ve come from Middle English words like fyke or fike which mean “to move about restlessly” or the Norwegian word fukka which means “to copulate”), you might have also heard that it is an acronym that once stood for “Fornication Under Consent of the King”; and there is actually some data that is connected to that as well.
Legend has it that way back in the day, in order to keep reproduction rates where a particular king wanted them to be, he would instruct his residents to have sex with each other — whether they were married or not (hence, the word “fornication” being in the acronym). However, because sex outside of marriage was taken far more seriously at the time, residents had to apply for a permit to participate so that the king could determine if things like their occupation and lineage would prove to be beneficial for the kingdom overall. F-ck: no love; just necessity. And although some believe this to be more myth than fact, what is certain is it was only over time that f-ck was seen as a profane/swear/cuss word — a word that was perceived to be so offensive, in fact, that between the years 1795-1965, it didn’t even appear in dictionaries.
Personally, when I think of this four-letter word, the first thing that actually comes to my mind is animals. Take a dog being in heat, for instance. That’s basically when a female dog is ovulating and wants to have sex the most. It’s not because they are “in love” with another dog; they are simply doing what instinctively comes to them — and since animals do not reason or feel at the same capacity that humans do, although they science says that many of them do experience pleasure when they engage in their version of sexual activity, it’s not nearly as layered or even profound as what we experience.
Let’s keep going. Another reason why f-cking makes me think of animals is due to the doggy style position. Hear me out. Ain’t it wild how, most of us pretty much know that the term comes from how dogs have sex, even though most animals have sex that same way — and think about it: Doggy style doesn’t consist of making eye contact or kissing while having intercourse. It’s “hitting from behind” without much emotional energy or effort at all. Just how animals do it. And so, yeah, f-cking does seem to be more about pure animal — or in our case, mammal — instinct. I don’t need to feel anything for someone, so long as the sexual desire is there. Hmph.
Something else that I find to be interesting about f-cking is how dictionaries choose to define it. Many of them are going to provide you with two definitions: “to have sexual intercourse with” and “to treat unfairly or harshly (usually followed by over)” and that definitely makes me think of another term — casual sex and words that define casual like apathetic, careless and without serious or definite intention. So, the dictionary says that while f-cking is about having sexual intercourse — just like making love and having sex is — it goes a step further and says that it can include being treated unfairly or harshly.
And although that can make you think of assault on the surface, for sure — sometimes being treated unfairly or harshly is simply feeling like someone had sex AT you and not really WITH you; instinct (i.e., getting off) and that’s about it. Yeah, the way this puzzle is coming together, f-cking seems to be more about lust and self and not much else.
Now That You Know the Difference, What to Keep in Mind
Y’all, this is definitely the kind of topic that I could expound on until each and every cow comes home. That said, here’s hoping that I provided enough perspective on each act to close this out by encouraging you to keep the following three things to keep in mind:
1. Before you engage in copulation, be honest with yourself about what you’re ACTUALLY doing — and that your partner agrees with you. You know, they say that our brain is our biggest sex organ and honestly, breaking down the differences between making love, having sex and f-cking helps to prove that fact. I say that because, although the sex act itself is pretty much the same across the board, you and your partner’s mindset can make the experience completely different. That said, if you think that you are making love and they think y’all are just having sex — stuff can get pretty dicey. Bottom line: communicate in the bedroom before attempting to connect outside of it. It’s always worth it when you do.
2. Yes, you can feel one way and do something else. I can just about guess what some of y’all are on: Shellie, we can love our partner and still just want to f-ck. If what you are saying is you can emotionally love someone and physically lust them and want to act sometimes on the lust without really factoring in the love — yes, I agree. Doggy style continues to be a favorite sex position for people, in general, and I’m more than confident that many of the participants polled are in a serious relationship. However, having lust-filled sex with someone who you know loves you is vastly different than doing it with someone who you have no clue what they think about you or you barely know at all. Y’all, please just make sure that you know…what you should know. Sex is too amazing to have a lot of regret after it.
3. Have realistic expectations about sex. Listen, so much of my life consists of writing and talking about sex that I will be the first one to say that it deserves a ton of props for what it is able to do, in a wonderful way, for people mentally, emotionally and physically. Yet again, I’m not a fan of “make love” because something that feels really good doesn’t always mean that it is good for you. Meaning, you’ve got to be real about what sex with someone will do to your mind and spirit — not just what it will do for your body. An author by the name of Gabriel García Márquez once said, “Sex is the consolation you have when you can't have love.” For no one, should this be a constant norm. Feel me? I hope you do.
____
One act. Three very different experiences.
It’s kind of wild that sex has the ability to create that — and yet, clearly, it does.
Please just make sure that you know which experience you’re signing up for.
So that you’re having sex (you know, in general) instead of sex having you. Real talk.
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Featured image by Giphy