March 2021 Update

Hello my online friends… It’s been a while… again…

This post started initially as a draft in the Fall of 2020… And I never finished it, so it sat in my drafts until I started looking at it last month… And it has taken until the end of March to actually hit publish on it…

But, I have decided that one of my goals for 2021 is to once again return to blogging. This may start with a simple monthly update, but hopefully I will be able to go back to my multiple postings a week schedule eventually. I need the motivation and external accountability to help me tackle the projects and goals on my ever growing list.

So that all being said… How is everyone? What has happened since my last post?

On my end, it feels like nothing has happened since then… but at the same time it feels like everything has changed… Does that even make sense?

I hadn’t really talked about the pandemic much in my last couple posts, other than to comment about working from home… At first it seemed like the pandemic wouldn’t really affect us that much. Sure, my husband was pretty much instantly laid off (his job was tourism/travel based)… but it was supposed to be temporary… which dragged on… and on… until they gave him the word that it would be a full layoff. Our government did support those that were affected, so we weren’t out financially really. (Very fortunate – I know!)

Since daycare also shut down for a while, and I was still supposedly working full time, albeit from home, my husband became responsible for full time childcare, which is not his cup of tea, nor his definition of productive… And he’s not a person who likes to sit around and do nothing, he needs to feel productive and have purpose… So, lots of stuff got “done” around the house and yard… and the little monster and his dad definitely grew closer, had lots of adventures together (mostly beach and lake walks because the playgrounds were all “broken” – how do you explain to a 2 year old that he can’t go to the playground because of invisible germs?) But, the kid also didn’t really understand that even though I was just sitting in my room on my computer, I was not really available to hang out or help him out… Needless to say, my normal 40 hour work week was diminished significantly…

When my office opened back up to some of us, I jumped at the opportunity to work from my office. In the summer, it was great. The kid was home with dad, so I biked to work, and we saved money on car insurance by parking one car in the driveway uninsured, and only using one car. We’ve experimented with being a single car family before, so I know we can do it, but we really enjoy the convenience and flexibility of having 2… Anyway, the point being, during the summer I biked to work, and it was great. I loved the exercise, and got to get some fresh air and clear my head on the way to and from work…

All that being said, we were very happy when day care opened back up again, although they were only taking kids where both parents were working, so we didn’t get in right away… not until we started explaining that my husband wouldn’t be able to look for a job if he was taking care of the kid all the time… they eventually gave us 2-3 days a week (split with another kid) so he could start looking for a job.

And then we lucked out and my husband fell back on his previous career and got an amazing, albeit temporary, position. Well-paid, and he enjoyed both the people and the work. The kid went back to full time daycare, and from there things went back to “normal” or at least a new consistent routine… The only difference was really that daycare’s hours had been decreased… so I still struggled to get a full 40 hours of work done in a week. But that’s another issue…

During the early days of the pandemic, when we were all locked down and working from home, we realized that if we were going to stay that way for an extended period, it might be nice to have a bit more space… I know it’s a luxury, but with 3 adults (my husband, myself and my 20-yr-old stepdaughter) and a high energy toddler in the house, we thought it would be nice to have more space for us to spread out, especially in the fall/winter months when being outside isn’t as much fun or as nice of an option.

So, we started to renovate our basement… though it was supposed to be done in the summer, we got the last bit finished up in February… So we didn’t really get much use of it during the “fall/winter” but we have it mostly done now, and are enjoying it.

This means the stepdaughter has moved downstairs to have a bit more privacy and her own bathroom. Which opened up her room for the little monster to take over (it’s a bigger room, so more room to play, and to fit the big boy bed) and that opened up the little monster’s old room to be my office. I’ve been wanting a dedicated office/craft room FOREVER!

My husband’s temporary contract ended at the end of December, and so he got on a call list for work, and kept his eye on the job postings… Lucky for us, he got a permanent full time position about a month ago! It is great news for him because we aren’t sure when things will open up again with his pre-COVID career. The downside for me is that his week is Tuesday to Saturday, so me and the little monster are alone for Saturday, but it also means that my husband has Mondays to do all the errands and tasks that really need to be done on a weekday when things are open.

That ended up being a lot more long-winded than I intended, but there is basically a year’s worth of life updates… Now that the update is out of the way, I can concentrate on writing about my current goals and projects…

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