The quarantine, social distancing, shelter in place, whatever you want to call it, Covid-19, the coronavirus, has turned our lives upside-down.  There is a new normal, at least for a little while.  This temporary shelter in place order has people finding a whole new outlook on their daily lives.  Kids are home from school.  Parents who are used to spending their days at work are now working from home in the midst of the chaos.  Everyone is being forced to home school or move to online schooling.  Peace and quiet are hard to find.  How are you coping?  Here’s my story.

I’m going to be completely honest.  The first few weeks of all of this, I was a hot mess.  I’m so used to being scheduled down to the minute each day that I did not do well when I had a really open daily schedule.  There was no goal or purpose…just blah.  I was losing track of days and felt like I was going a little bit crazy.

I was ok letting that first week go into oblivion because there had to be some sort of adjustment period.  But when the second week started rolling on down that same slippery slope, I knew something had to be done.  Admittedly, I totally laughed when I saw all the social media posts about the strict “homeschool schedules”.  In the words (and southern emphasis) of one of our dear departed friends, I thought, “Ain’t no way!”  Everyone in my house would be so stressed out if we kept a schedule that strict while also trapped in the house together.  Can we say, “pressure cooker”?  I always expect a lot out of my kids and sometimes they have too much pressure on them. I didn’t really see the need to keep all that pressure on when their worlds had been turned upsidedown.  However, there had to be some kind of middle ground between sloth and busy busy bee.

Middle of the second week, I decided to post up a free-flowing schedule outside my kids’ rooms each morning.  I guess it was more just a list of things they needed to accomplish each day instead of a schedule.  It took some tweaking and guidance but it seemed to work.  I breathed a big sigh of relief.  Was it perfect?  No.  But we were making progress in the right direction and moving away from sloth-hood.

The kids were on some sort of schedule now, but I was still struggling.  I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t getting enough done.  It was like that annoying piece of gum you can’t scrape off your shoe.  As much as I scraped and poked, I couldn’t get rid of that gummy, stringy, sticky mess, aka my inner brawl with guilt.  I got up in the morning and did all the usual things but for some reason, I felt like I wasn’t getting anything done other than laundry and cooking.  It was weird…”Twilight Zone” weird…”Groundhog Day” weird.  Every day felt like the day before.

What to do?  I pulled out my seemingly useless 2020 planner in an effort to get organized.  I started tracking the things I did and other things I needed to do.  Taking a short break, I closed my planner and stepped away for a few minutes.  When I went back to my planner, I thought I had lost my mind.  I couldn’t find anything I had written down.  Maybe I wrote it in another notebook?  Was someone playing tricks on me?  I didn’t really know but my head was feeling all scrambled trying to figure it out.  Turns out I was playing tricks on myself.  I had, indeed, written everything down in my planner…just in the wrong month and on the wrong days.  Sheesh!

After figuring out what was going on and realizing I wasn’t losing my mind, the exercise of writing everything down was really helpful.  While we were not changing the world with all our free time, we were doing alright.  We had taken food to school for the kids that were missing their lunches and made some other donations.  We also did a few small projects like sidewalk chalk in support of all the frontline and essential workers.  I tackled some home projects of which one resulted in me almost ripping my daughter’s fan off the ceiling.  Sooo that project was a net-zero.  Now I have a new project.  Replace my daughter’s ceiling fan.  In any event, my daughter and I laughed hysterically after we did a quick check to make sure neither of us was impaled by fan blades.  Yes, I forgot to turn off the fan.  Yes, fan blades will sheer clean off when the fan is on high and you hit the fan with a ladder.  Oh well.  She wanted a new fan anyway.   Keeping it real, check.  Laughing at the small stuff, check.

At that moment, I made a conscious decision to stop being so hard on myself.  The kids were getting their work done, we had food to eat and clean clothes to wear…if we opted to put them on.  My trips to the grocery store were relatively successful with the exception of finding toilet paper.  (We are getting close to desperate on that but it’s not for lack of searching.)  Everyone is healthy and thriving, thankfully.  The kids are getting along splendidly.  Really, with all things considered, all is good.  I don’t know why I was panicking and being so hard on myself.   I love having the kids home.  I hardly ever get to see them when life is going full speed ahead.  I have to enjoy this slow down while it lasts.  When things gradually make their way back to normal, I will miss my kiddos and want to take every opportunity to spend time with them now.

All of this to say, if you are going through the same struggle I was, take a minute, take a breath and stop being so hard on yourself.  Not every day is going to be perfect or, really, even near perfect.  What is “perfect” right now anyway?  Do the best you can.  Stay in your jammies all day if you want.  If you have kids, enjoy the time you have with them.  The time will go by faster than you think.  Mine are teenagers so I have to resist the urge to get in their “space” too much lest I be deemed clingy.  Thankfully, my son doesn’t mind me in his space too much and my daughter and I take our dogs for walks to get some Mom/Daughter time.  Oh and did I mention, our dogs love having us home?

Right now, the world and our daily lives seem so crazy and complicated.  Try to see through all of the crazy and get to the good.  Don’t sweat the complicated and take each day as it comes.  We are in a time like none we ever imagined we would see in our lifetime.  It’s ok if you have to muddle through until you find your way.  No one has all the answers, even if they act like they do.  We are going to make it through and be all the stronger for it!  Remember to take it easy on yourself!  You’ve got this!

*Many thanks go out to all the frontline and essential workers risking their health to serve others.

*To all the families that have lost loved ones during this crisis, you are in my thoughts and prayers.