Pandemic life…

What strange times we are living in…

We are way deeper into social distancing/self-isolating than I ever expected we’d be. Hubs has made accurate predictions about how things would play out right from the beginning, but I confess I’ve been a major doubter, mostly because I haven’t wanted to believe it. Now here we are, 80 days in, and life is…changed.

The only time I’ve left my house in the last 2.5 months has been to pick up my prescriptions from my local drive-thru pharmacy, and once to buy an emergency pack of nighttime pull-ups for my daughter from the grocery store. I haven’t seen any friends, family members, students, or coworkers in person since mid-March.

My social skills are suffering.

I’ve been providing speech therapy services remotely, facilitating my daughter’s own online learning (preschool), having my groceries delivered to our friends’ house in a neighboring town (local stores don’t deliver to the sticks…), holding plenty of virtual hangouts, and finding creative ways to entertain myself without leaving the comfort of my own small neighborhood.

I’ve had wayyyy more screen time than I’d care to admit, but I’ve also had the luxury of eating three meals a day with my family, dressing primarily in yoga pants, and spending lots of time outdoors.

Things are slowly starting to feel more normal. We’re finally feeling like small-scale get-togethers are a possibility and we’re planning for how to safely host one or two people at a time al fresco. Perhaps after we break the ice with our first set of guests, I’ll be able to wrap my head around how this could possibly work out for the remainder of the summer.

I know I can’t be the only one who feels anxious about moving toward “normal” again. Our pre-corona normal was to crowd as many people into our house as would fit – the more, the merrier. Now even a small group opens the door to so many possibilities. My, how things have changed!

We’re luckier than most – I get that. We have each other. We have space. We have woods. We have a lake. We have income. We have introvert tendencies. We are homebodies. We didn’t have any scheduled vacations to cancel. As far as negative impact goes, we haven’t experienced very much. And in the current cultural and political climate, I admit that home with my loved ones is exactly where I want to be.

As my husband has reminded me recently, this will end. Things will get better.

And he’s right – they will.