I turned 49 in quarantine last week. If the members of my family had literally anywhere in the entire world to be other than on their couches, the day likely would have come and gone without much fanfare.

But since everybody has a webcam and a collection of clever, hilarious—and not even remotely annoying—virtual background images in the queue, we figured what the heck, let’s have a party.

So I did all the things you do before you arrive to one of these kinds of gatherings: Took off the bathrobe that I had been wearing over my clothes all day, put on some perfume and dangly earrings, moved the piles of junk on the dining room table out of camera range, and made sure the “Touch Up My Appearance” box was checked on Zoom.

At 7 p.m., my Dr. Amy Acton-appointed clan of four fired up four different devices, hunkered down within a 24-foot radius of one another, and stared into our screens to connect.

A few doorbell sounds and stern admonitions from my daughter to turn down the volume on my Mac later, we were joined from living rooms around Ohio by a gallery of relatives, each of whom was waving frantically and encountering varying levels of difficulty with the technology.

It was a raucous affair, consisting mainly of my nieces and nephews making sure everyone realized that they were experiencing a level of boredom heretofore unfelt by humankind.

After 40 minutes of making camera adjustments and practicing silly faces, the crew sang me the worst version of the birthday song I’ve ever heard, with the sound toggling between the Hollywood Squares boxes that contained the loudest and most off-key voices on the call. The singing really was godawful. I’d direct you to my Facebook to watch the video, but I deleted it when I woke up from my Coronavirus panic dream at 4 a.m. the next day.

In other words, everything was perfect.

Staying at home is certainly challenging for a society that is accustomed to being constantly on the go. But there are some perks to having an endless amount of time to do a whole lot of nothing much.

For example, I discovered that I had L’Oreal auburn spray paint for my roots when I was organizing all the cans and bottles under the bathroom sink in height order. I’m pretty proud of myself for having had the foresight to make such a vital impulse buy while my hair salon was still operational.

This time at home also has given me an opportunity to reflect on what’s really important and meaningful in life. Turns out, a 49^th birthday celebration with some of the people I love most in the world is pretty high on my list. And all of those people were just a Zoom invitation away all along.

There are going to be a lot of lessons learned during this pandemic. Everywhere you look, you can see people making innovations, supporting each other, and bonding over “Tiger King.” You can also see that there are plenty of problems in this world that we need to come together to fix as well.

On our Zoom call, my eight-year-old niece asked me what my New Year’s resolution is. I think she was talking about my birthday wish. I told her that I didn’t really have one. But as I was sipping last night from my new Wine with DeWine pinot grigio tumbler, I realized that I do have a wish. I wish that I had spent more of the last 49 years appreciating my blessings.

Instead, I’ve cracked more than my fair share of jokes about what a hot mess everything is and I’ve likened my daily existence to being on a treadmill, never getting ahead and never being able to stop. Maybe those things are sort of true, but a more accurate metaphor for my life is the beautiful chaos of a Zoom screen filled with silly faces and off-key voices celebrating the fact that we’re all still here.

We’ll be here tomorrow too. And the next day. And the day after that.

For that, I couldn’t be more grateful.