Today is Lila’s birthday! She turns two today, so now I have two little toddler kittehs on my hands. 🙂 I’m not making the mistake of trying to bake a special “cat cake” this time around. Yesterday, I picked up a can of wet food to give the girls for breakfast today and some mini vanilla cupcakes for tonight, so we’re all set on the birthday celebration! Yay! I know I’m crazy about these birthday celebrations, but birthdays are so special to me!

Currently, Florida is in Phase 1 of reopening. We have reopened beaches, public pools, and state parks. Restaurants and retailers are also open at 25% capacity. Non-essential medical services have resumed. Bars, gyms, and salons are still closed. All schools are online for the remainder of the school year, visits to retirement facilities are prohibited, and travel is still highly discouraged.

I’ve been keeping a list of the reported cases in Florida (because I’m just that obsessed) and we’re still in the 500-1,000 range for daily reported cases. I can only imagine that’s going to increase with these reopenings, but we’ll see. Right now in my county, people can get tested for free, even if they’re not showing symptoms, which is a very good thing! We need this option to get an accurate look at how these reopenings are affecting cases. My plan is to stay away from restaurants, retail stores, pools, and my gym for the foreseeable future. Through May and probably also through June.

Salons and spas can reopen in Phase 2 and at 75% capacity (which sounds crazy high to me!), and that’s where I become less sure of what to do. My body is craving a massage and my hair is craving fresh color and trim, but none of these are essential needs. Of course they’re not! But if my hair salon opens up and my massage spa does as well, then I have some big choices to make. It’s really a wait-and-see game since we just started Phase 1. I know my salon is planning a soft opening when they do open up. (I’m not exactly sure what that entails just yet.) Thankfully, these aren’t decisions I have to make any time soon. Even if my salon/spa can open back up in May, I’ll probably wait until at least June to even think about scheduling an appointment. Or maybe later, depending on how this pandemic is looking with all these reopenings.

I’ve been saying this to people a lot, but I really think I’m going to need a gradual return to normal life when all of this is over. I’m still pretty anxious when I’m away from home. Last weekend, I went to a friend’s surprise birthday celebration (socially distanced, in a backyard, etc.), and I was out of my apartment for about two-and-a-half hours and I was wiped by the time I came home. I mean, part of it probably had to do with being outside (Florida, why must you be so damn hot in early May?), but I’m also not used to being social for that long anymore. I was strugglin’. My body has become very used to being at home and my mental health, too. I feel less stressed out, and I just love not having any plans and not feeling guilty for not having any plans. Don’t get me wrong—I miss meeting friends for dinner, spending time with my mom, and just strolling through TJ Maxx and Homegoods for nothing in particular. But it’s also really nice to be a full-on hermit right now, and my body’s going to need to slowly get back to its normal social pace.

I’m going to see my mom for Mother’s Day. I’ve thought long and hard about this decision, and it feels like the right choice. I need to see my mom. I’ve never gone this long without seeing her, and it feels unnatural. I also can’t imagine not visiting her on Mother’s Day. (And it’s a really hard day for her, too, ever since Grandma died.) We won’t be going to a restaurant or anything—we’ll order in and keep things as safe as possible. We’ve both been super careful over these past two months, neither of us is high-risk, and we’ve both been healthy throughout this pandemic. Could either of us be asymptomatic? Yup! We definitely could. But I truly believe we are both fine and we will be fine. Maybe you have strong opinions about this decision, but unless you also have been totally, completely alone since March, I don’t know if I’m interested in hearing them. If you’ve spent this pandemic with a partner or roommate or children, it’s hard to express how difficult it is to spend all day, every day without human contact or connection (unless it’s through video chats or social media, which is not the same). Humans are not designed for this level of seclusion, and it’s been hard on my mental health. I need to see my mom on Mother’s Day—and not through a screen.

My sleep has been a bit wacky for the past week, and I’m not really sure why. I’m taking 5mg of melatonin every night and meditating, but I’ve been having trouble falling asleep and then also waking up with panic in the middle of the night. And then Wednesday night, the girls decided to be all sorts of crazy. They were running all around the apartment and Lila kept jumping on me and gnawing on my fingers. It was the weirdest thing because they’re usually pretty calm and low-key at night. Sometimes I hear them playing, but it’s never enough to fully wake me up. There was also cat puke in my bathroom, ugh. Maybe they polished off my six-pack of White Claws and had themselves a night of debauchery?! 😉 Who knows? I hope I can start sleeping well again. I miss when sleep came easy for me!

I decided not to set any goals for May because I didn’t exactly kill it with my April goals. I think this is just a time to put my goals to the side. I mean, I’m living through a global pandemic. I think I’ve earned the right not to set goals! I want to try to keep up with my workouts and I’d like to devote some time to working on my novel (outside of my weekly Zoom writing date with my friend, M.), but honestly, that’s about it. And that’s enough for me.

So that’s where I am this week. My mental health ebbs and flows, and I feel like I’m on a downward trend right now. But that’s okay. It’s normal. I’m reaching out to my people, giving myself tons of grace, and letting myself feel all my feels. And that’s all I can ask for myself.

Tell me how you’re doing! Has your state/province started any reopening processes?

Today is Eloise’s birthday! She’s a big, bad two-year-old now. I’ve been celebrating her birthday all week, starting with Monday when I woke up and excitedly exclaimed to her, “It’s your birthday week!” Tonight, I’m baking a little treat for her and Lila (recipe found here) to enjoy and we’ll spend copious amounts of time playing with the teasers since those are her favorite.

This week, I’ve felt remarkably better than previous weeks. My anxiety is manageable, and I’m actually feeling positive about things. I mean, not postive-positive. I understand that people are still getting sick and dying, that families are worried about loved ones, that people are losing their jobs left and right. But from my little bubble of social isolation, I’m feeling good.

I had a writing date with my friend M. on Sunday morning on Zoom, and it was so nice! It felt so normal to be sitting there, talking about writing with her. Even though we talk multiple times a day through Marco Polo, it was still nice to just see her in real-time and talk to her about life. And I worked on my novel a little bit! It felt so good to be able to make a wee bit of progress on my WIP and I would really like to set aside more time to do so. And yet, I haven’t opened up my WIP since our writing date. Maybe that’s a goal for May.

One of the things I’ve been struggling with a lot during this whole isolation stage is making food for myself. I feel like I should have more motivation to make home-cooked meals for myself every day, especially since I’m at home. And yet, I don’t. Then again, I’ve never been someone who likes to cook—it usually stresses me out!—so it makes sense that it’s the last thing I want to do right now. I’ve been ordering from UberEats a lot (I’m trying to only order twice a week, but usually it’s 3 to 4 times a week, eeks) and also making really simple freezer meals. I’m not eating healthy at all right now but damn, I just don’t care. Comfort eating is where it’s at and if that’s what keeps me going through this pandemic, so be it. I’m trying not to put stress on myself to make an elaborate home-cooked meal. If all I can manage is a frozen pizza or cereal for dinner, then that’s what it will be. It’s not ideal, of course, but it’s just hard for me to muster the energy for much else.

Work has been stressful this week, as it always is as we near the end of the month. But it’s been a good distraction from everything that’s going on. I’m going to have to do a little work this weekend (a few hours, nothing crazy) to make sure I hit my deadlines next week, but that’s okay. It’s been nice to have something to focus on and feels good to be really busy. May is going to be a really insane month. One of our writers is leaving, so divvying up her clients will be interesting, but I think I’m up for the challenge. Keeping busy, at least in terms of my work life, is helpful for me right now and I enjoy what I do so much that I don’t even mind when it gets crazy like this.

My weekends are so damn boring right now and there are times when I think about trying to be more productive—maybe doing longer workouts or baking a complicated dessert or doing some much-needed cleaning chores (my oven needs a deep, deep scrubbing)—but I am just really enjoying taking it easy. I allow myself to wake up whenever I want and then spend the morning puttering around. I’ll usually do my grocery shop for the week on Saturday morning and then otherwise take it easy: reading, catching up on blogs and emails, etc. I’ll take a nap in the afternoon, usually three or four hours, and then when I wake up, I go for a long walk, eat dinner while watching Netflix, take a bubble bath, screw around online for a while, and then go to bed. Rinse and repeat every weekend. I’m taking advantage of this time to be lazy because, really, there’s nothing pressing on my agenda. Nothing I really need to be doing. I’m choosing laziness over productivity. And I’m okay with that.

It’s hard to know what’s going to happen in May. Our stay-at-home order expires on Thursday and while our governor and local officials have been discussing what happens next, there’s truly nothing in place for reopening businesses. I think that’s what’s so scary about this whole pandemic—there’s no exit strategy here. I don’t trust my governor and I sure as hell don’t trust our president to do what’s right. I’ll be interested to see what steps our local officials take, as they seem to have the right look at things (my county and the neighboring county where I work both issued stay-at-home orders weeks before our governor did). All I really know is that my company plans to keep us out of the office throughout May and most likely into much of June. I’m glad for that, as I feel really anxious when I’m away from home right now and I know it’s going to take me a while to feel safe in public again.

So that’s where I’m at right now. I feel pretty good, as long as I don’t think too much about the virus and plans for reopening the country. As always, what’s getting me through each day are my sweet, funny girls who keep me company on work calls (Eloise literally laid in front of my computer and let me pet her for an entire hour during a call yesterday) and jump onto my desk randomly just to rub their faces on my laptop. I don’t know how I would get through this time without them!