Hello there!
What happened to last week? I remember celebrating Easter and birthdays and having a good time, and then it’s like I blacked out and here I am.
This is hard.
It’s also a gift, to have all this togetherness. To be here to witness new milestones and to be the one to comfort the tiny humans EVERY time they’re upset about something. To have all this extra time with my kitty who doesn’t have a whole lot of time left.
But it’s also insane. No parent should be asked to work full time and take care of their children. Kick ass at work and utilize daycare or nannies while you’re not around. Or stay home and raise those babies. Both are great choices. But BOTH? My brain is exploding.
I know I can’t do it all, I know things will need to slide, but it doesn’t mean that my head doesn’t explode when it happens. My mind also loves to point out all these things that need to be done around the house, or fun projects we could start, but I don’t have the mental energy.
I’m not sure I have the mental energy to finish this post. I feel like there’s so much to say, but at the same time I feel like I’m saying the same things over and over again. It’s kind of what my brain is doing, cycling.
But while I’m cycling, I try to think about the small things that still make me happy.
Photos for one. They’re something I’ve always loved. I’ve always taken them, collected them, bribed friends and family into smiling for them. One thing that I’m very thankful for, is that we got our bunny photos in before everything shut down. Last year, we took our bunny pictures on March 31st. This year we did them super early in February. There was no reason to do them that early, but had we waited, they would have been cancelled this year.
So many things have been cancelled. Trips to Florida, birthday parties, daycare. It’s nice that there’s one thing that wasn’t cancelled. One less thing to be disappointed about, because there are plenty on that list. Big and small. It’s funny, I’ve accepted some of the big things and then get irrationally angry about the much smaller things. Small things like not being able to buy cleaning wipes anymore.
I’ve gotten lazy over the years, and have started to use Lysol wipes to mainly clean bathrooms and the kitchen, because you can take 5 wipes and do a quick cleaning in 10 minutes. It’s more expensive than spraying and scrubbing a bathroom, but it’s quick and easy, and that’s where my life is right now. But with a shortage of disinfectant wipes, we need to use the ones we have to wipe down our cars or groceries or cell phones if we’ve been out of the house. So it’s back to old fashioned cleaning, and that makes me angry.
But then, quarantine gave us an unexpected gift.
Small businesses are finding creative ways to make money, when they can’t do what they’ve always done. And all of us who are sitting at home feeling useless, are happy to support them when we can. So when a bunch of photographers decided to start offering “Front Porch Photos,” we were all in. The idea is that the photographer will come to your home, stand outside on the sidewalk or in your yard, and you’ll step out your front door while they take your photos from a safe distance.
We support a local photographer, and they help us document this very odd time. We decided to fully embrace it, and not change out of our “quarantine outfits.” PJs for the kids, and Tom and I stayed in our comfies. It was a weird experience, but also a small piece of normal. A small treat for us.
I’ll take what I can get.
