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!
Your mask is ADORABLE. So are your kitties. I am also comfort eating like nobody’s business. There has to be SOMETHING to look forward to these days, and if it’s oreos on chocolate ice cream, so be it!
Happy birthday to Eloise! Oscar turned 5 on Monday. We were sad to not celebrate with her but I know Joan made her day special by giving her some tuna (her fave special treat).
I do feel lucky to live in a state that is handling this well. Early on our governor said we couldn’t rely on the government to provide the tests we need to start to re-open the economy here so he worked with multiple health systems and now we are going to have 20k tests/day which is really good compared to other states (right now we have about 2k tests/day). Our health systems are also making progress on serology testing so we can figure out who has had the virus/potentially has immunity. That said there are people who think he is doing a terrible job (republicans and crazy gun owners) but they can shove it where the sun doesn’t shine! I have no patience for people like that right now. I get that this is very very very hard. But we need to rely on science and experts right now! It would be rough to live in a state like FL right now. Your governor seems like a moron and I’ve seen several articles about how bad the unemployment system is in FL and how delayed payments have been!
We’ve been treating ourselves to take out once/week and it’s been sooo nice. We weren’t big eater outers before COVID, though, so once a week is about right to us. We might splurge and get take out twice this week. We’ll see!
Happy Birthday Eloise! I hope you like your cake tonight!
I am so glad you are feeling better 🙂 Your Zoom writing date sounds fun! As do your weekends. Honestly, they sound perfect. 🙂
I saw this funny quiz yesterday on Buzzfeed to tell you if you are eating healthy or not during quarantine. You had to check that you’d had 7 out of 78 things or something to get the healthy stamp and it said things like “literally a sip of water,” “a single grape,” “one carrot stick.” LOLOL. Now is not the time to be crazy focused on eating things that are “healthy”! (imo)
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELOISE!! Yay!
On the food front — we’ve definitely been doing a bit of both, cooking healthy at home and then…eating not-so-healthy takeout. There are literally some nights where I just…can’t imagine cooking. That said, I think I am going to make. soup this week and maybe a lentil loaf. And some no bake cookies! Maybe that will help with the whole not-wanting-to-cook-at-night thing.
Our weekends are also on the quiet side, but I’ve been enjoying it. I miss my Saturday afternoon writing time at Starbucks, but I’m just trying to remind myself that this is temporary. I find that helpful 🙂
Glad you’re feeling better, my friend (also? That mask is SO STINKIN’ CUTE!)
I think this is one of the “good” things about Corona…. it gives us permission and an excuse to slow down and not feel guilty if we’re not super-productive (although some online articles try to make you feel otherwise) and I feel like that a lot of people needed this “slow down” and a time to re-evaluate their priorities.