An Ever So Slightly Entertaining Blog

 

Back in March, when Corona break began, I started a journal to record our time together and to try to maintain some sort of sanity.  (Look how that's turned out!!  If you need any proof of my mental stability, please refer to recent blogs about Alexa).  The journal began on Monday, March 15th and ended abruptly on March 31st, where there appears there was some sort of revolt, as there IS a heading listed and then a big empty page.  At the time, we thought that in a couple of weeks everything would be back up and running, how naive we were back then.  Here we are 10 months later.  I thought this might be entertaining, but who really knows anymore what exactly is entertaining?  

One idea suggested on the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast was making lists to record this time.  Here are 3 lists that we all helped fill in

Things We Are Grateful For

• Having Tony Evers (governor whom we do not know the proper pronunciation of his name, so we have to call him, Tony E.)
• New Zealand (a country that did an extremely excellent job of managing the pandemic)
• Justin Trudeau (I am not completely sure why the prime minister of Canada made the list, other than Benja who is extremely fond of Canada.  I mean I am SURE there is something specifically great that they did, but I cannot recall now.)
• TV
• Family
• School Computer (which I think had been newly acquired at this point)
• Food & Water
• Abundance of toilet paper (bought PRE pandemic on SALE at Costco.  Not as significant as what perhaps New Zealand accomplished, a win nonetheless.)
• Time together
• Time to organize (I worked hard at the beginning of the pandemic to arrange the house so that it was conducive to all of us working from home.  This meant rearranging the front porch so we could utilize the space, putting the leaf into the dining room table to give us more work space, placing a shelving unit to store computers and school work in the dining room.  Really just rethinking how we use our spaces and how they could better serve us during this time.)
• Time to play games (we were SO into games at the beginning).
• Homebody children
• Remote Access
• Strong Work Environment (Exact Sciences has worked hard to support people who feel safer working remotely.  They have implemented lots of testing and even have helped the state with processing Covid Tests).
• The internet (giving us access to such excellent entertainment and information and communication.)

Things We Miss  

• Going to a store without worrying about interacting with strangers
• Going on vacation
• Agogo (my mom moved to Madison in November and she was in quarantine)
• Obama having a leader who leads with thoughtfulness and intelligence.
• Friends
• Protests
• Life, as in normal life.
• Teachers
• My desk (it was the first and one of the only years that Lotta would be afforded her own desk at school.  In our elementary schools, you only get your own desk for 4th and 5th grades, in middle school, you switch classes, in previous grades you share tables.)

Words that Became Popular

• Corona-break
• 6 feet
• Coronavirus
• Pandemic
• Face Covering
• PPE--Personal Protective Equipment
• GIF (During this time I have discovered my love of GIFs.  Benja has thoroughly discouraged my reveal at this late juncture.  He feels like it only signifies how behind in technology I am. Still, I am including it as a late entry.)

It is interesting have time traveled back to the beginning of the pandemic, I wonder what in another 10 months we will be thinking/feeling/saying.