Life in the Time of COVID-19 | Week 50

It’s hard to believe we that the 1 year anniversary of Austin and I being home full time due to COVID is just 2 weeks away. The world has been completely out of sorts for nearly a year! That’s insane.

Looking back at the blog it seems I haven’t posted since just before Thanksgiving so I’ll give a whirlwind update of what I’ve been up to.

Austin and I made a lovely Thanksgiving dinner for ourselves. This was one plan COVID didn’t end up changing as we had been planning to have Thanksgiving home alone anyway. We had done it that way the year before and it was the most relaxing, enjoyable Thanksgiving I’d had in years. Previously we would make a ton of vegan friendly food at home and tote it all to my grandma’s house so the whole day was a rush and a blur. Anyway, it was such an amazing dinner. This year went with the Gardien holiday roast. It may be our new favorite!

Right after Thanksgiving we put up the Christmas tree and, of course, Fran loved it.  Luckily, she had outgrown her desire to climb the tree so we didn’t need to do as much Christmas tree policing this year. Around this time my best friend had a Zoom baby shower (baby Amelia is here now). We also took a field trip to Ikea to get me a longer desk top, which might seem like a minor happening, but it’s made a huge impact on my day to day working from home so I felt it was worth noting. A week or so before Christmas Austin’s mom and grandma came to stay with us for the holidays. They headed for his brother’s house after Christmas and we rolled in the new year quietly at home on our own.

January was pretty low-key for us. I did the YogaWithAdriene Breath challenge and actually stuck to it the whole month! That was quite the accomplishment for me. I don’t think I’ve ever completed a fitness challenge. It was a good way to start the year to get me consistently active and I’ve been able to keep active since. All February long we’ve had snow storm after snow storm. Just when the snow starts to clear we get another storm. Thus, we’ve not left the house much at all this past month.

There have been other little things happening here and there but those were the highlights.

Now for more recent happenings. I’ve been on and off just out of it – I think we all have been to a certain extent. The monotony of doing the same things every day over and over gets exhausting at times. I can definitely tell I’ve been feeling more lively as the sun slowly stays out longer and longer each day. I’m really looking forward to spring and being able to sit outside. We still haven’t been going out or interacting with nearly anyone. Hopefully Austin can get a vaccine in the coming months since he should be in the pre-existing conditions group. I highly doubt I’ll be able to get mine anytime soon, though, as I’m just considered the healthy general public. I would feel so much more comfortable being around people in public if we both had vaccines. I honestly just don’t trust everyone else out in public to be following all the best safety practices. Hell, I don’t trust most of the people I know.

Honestly, winter has been super tough. I can handle not seeing friends/family/coworks, but being stuck indoors 24/7 due to the weather has been the biggest drain on my spirit. I’m looking forward to warmer day, planting a garden, sitting in the sunshine (hopefully the cicadas don’t ruin this for me), and maybe going to the beach (I still don’t know about that one).