We've now been quarantining and doing school & work at home for 3 1/2 weeks. It's such a short amount of time but also feels so incredibly long.
I am really struggling with food. I have a bad relationship & history with eating, anyways, and I was doing SO WELL from January 2 - March 14 with eating better and exercising... and then this all hit and all of my motivation left and my depression set up shop. I'm trying not to spiral by reminding myself it's okay to just survive, and not thrive, during a global pandemic.
I cooked dinner all the time before this happened, so that's not new, but I'm used to shopping on Mondays for kid lunches/food & M-W dinner, buying healthy microwave meals for my lunches on the way to work Tuesdays, going to my parents' for dinner on Thursday (which I still helped cook but did not have to plan or purchase), grabbing pizza on Fridays, and then shopping Friday nights or Saturday mornings for Saturday-Monday. Having to plan an entire week of lunches & dinners has been a stretch for me, and then having to plan "back-up meals" in case they're out of something has been hard, too. I spent 2 hours (!!) on the grocery store website this past weekend slooooooowly adding food to my cart and then had to change stores twice in order to get a store that had hamburger available. That store is a 20+ minute drive across town, and then they still didn't have a handful of things on my list when I picked up the next day including flour and potatoes.
The kids attend a Title 1 school so it didn't even have an e-learning process in place when this happened. I have to mark their "attendance" on a Google form every e-learning day (currently twice a week and moving into three next week) and then pull their assignments from a Google Drive folder for their school & grade. This has honestly been a blessing for my 5yo as his teacher & classroom were a hot mess & he spent most of his time doing independent learning (because the teacher was dealing with the other students' behaviors) or being punished (heads down, shorter recesses, etc.) because of the other students' behaviors. He was thrilled when his school shut down & equally excited when school was cancelled for the rest of the year. He is still learning to read so balancing my working from home with his need for help in completing his schoolwork has been a challenge. The 10yo had an incredible teacher who has been in regular contact with parents and students since this began, and I have just told the 10yo to be responsible for herself and do the work so hopefully she's getting it done. I'm not even trying to carry the weight & burden of being my children's teacher; they will be fine even if they learn nothing for the next month.
My 5yo's birthday (and my nephew's) is in a couple weeks, and these will be our first "quarantine birthdays." I'm trying to brainstorm some things to do to still celebrate & make my kiddo feel special without breaking the social distancing rules or going someplace.
Work has been interesting but hopefully we will find that new rhythm soon. I'm supposed to work around 28 hours a week T-F and since this began, I've worked more than that including Mondays, nights, and weekends. Much of that has to do with new technology and other staff members learning how to use it so hopefully that will work itself out soon. I have been tasked with learning how to use Adobe Premiere so we'll see how that goes! I'm guessing this will last into mid or late May so I hope I can justify purchasing a new computer and writing it off as a business expense since the one I have is several years old and not really up to the challenge of working on it full-time with all the different software and apps my work is currently using.
Oh, and this was our Disney trip week with my kiddos' first time in Florida, first time on a plane, and first time at Disney. I just shake my head when I think about all the time I spent in January and February researching and reserving and planning... for nothing. With the parks actually closed, we have until July 2021 to reschedule (no refund on the park tickets or plane tickets --- just credit) but it's still really disappointing.
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