Hello again, readers. It’s been a minute since I’ve posted here. I’ve stepped away from blogging for a bit for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I’ve been working on a writing project that has been taking up a lot of my already limited free time. It’s a little passion project that I’m still a little insecure to talk about – but the day will come, I’m sure. It has been keeping me sane, having something to work on that is (at least for now) just for myself, and not subject to any outside judgment. More on that another time 🙂

Secondly, and what this post is about: quarantine/pandemic/the shitfest that is 2020. Gosh, where do I even start? I think like many others, this situation has given me a mix of good and bad.

The good is, well, I’ve learned to get through extremely mundane days at home without wanting to pull my hair out. Most of the time, anyway. (I have given myself 2 haircuts during this quarantine though). Prior to this, I always *had* to find a way out of the house with Julia, daily. It was a means of survival for us both because of course, it’s healthy to get out of your house. The change of scenerary was a nice way to break up the day before or after nap time. But during quarantine we’ve had fewer options. I’ve had to come up with new things for us to do (lots of arts and crafts) and also learning to sit with the boredom at times. Which has been a learning curve for all of us. Being home all day with a toddler can be difficult. Before this all happened I was already struggling with stay-at-home-mom isolation. I was making plans to get out of my shell and get out more, I even had a good friend offer to be my accountability and make sure it happened. But then everything came crashing to a halt in the world and my plans to get out there are postponed – probably to next year. Which is…hard to think about.  But the point here is, I’ve had some good days where I feel really proud of my parenting, and feel as though somehow amidst all this, we are thriving – at least a little bit.

And then there are the bad days, often products of less sleep, headaches and of course, cabin fever. Bad days come whether the world is facing a pandemic or not, obviously. But I’ve had some dark days recently. My mental health has taken a few dives. It’s difficult to feel as though I can never get any time alone to be somewhere truly quiet. We’ve been dealing with a new issue: our new downstairs neighbors. When Julia goes to bed used to be the time of day where I could get some “me time”, a couple of hours of quiet after chasing around a rambuncitous, 100% energy from 6a-7p every day toddler. However lately, the new tenneants have been making noise comparable to what I imagine a zoo set on fire would sound like. Always at night. I haven’t been able to go to bed at 10pm like I used to. I’m lucky if I can fall asleep by midnight or later because of their excessive banging, stomping, and screaming. Literally – screaming. Not even words, sometimes just bizarre noises. I could rant about this for so long. I’m so tired of the noise. I cannot focus on anything let alone relax when there’s hell going on below me, wondering if today will be the night it wakes Julia up, etc. It really sucks. We were hoping to move this year but of course the pandemic is affecting the chances of that too. But hopefully it will still happen.

Becuase of all the isolation and night time chaos, there’s nowhere to escape to and as an introvert, I really need that alone time. If I go too long without it, I break. And I’ve broken a few times over the course of the past few months. Once in a while, I can get out of the house while Kevin is able to watch Julia and go park by the beach or somewhere and it helps a little but man, I just miss the old routine. I miss not feeling like I’m hanging on by a thread – every single second of the day.

I’ll end this post with what has helped, even if just a little: Walks. We try to go on a walk or two every day. Now that the weather is starting to get a little warmer, its been really nice to get some fresh air. Julia loves picking dandelions and on a day where the weather is right for it, we’ve been able to bring her to the open field at the school yard and fly her kite which she’s really enjoyed. So if you can get out of your house and go for a walk, do it!

We’re going to make it out of this mess eventually, somehow.

I know there are lessons to be learned from a time like this, and silver linings, sure. But I think the most important thing to focus on right now is staying safe. Taking precautions to help yourself and others. I think it’s also important not to get too caught up in the Facebook memes and what not talking about how this was a message from God or some vieled “miracle” because, I mean, just my opinion but, no. People are dying every single day. Lives are being cut short. Sure, you can choose to see some silver linings if you’d like, there’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s not ok to push that message to the degree that you forget the reality of the situation. We cannot downplay the loss and devastation. 

Stay safe.

Sending love & light,

Kat