Yesterday marked day 365 since life got turned upside-down. It was the Sunday when my work officially went remote, the day after the kids' schools shut down for at least a couple weeks. At the time, those two weeks seemed daunting. How would we manage school and work, let alone figuring out how to mostly stay home without our usual extracurriculars or visits with family? Two weeks stretched to a month, which stretched to the rest of the school year, which went through the summer. We got a little normalcy back in the fall when Jacob went back to school and Carter got back two days per week, but our working from home stretched far beyond that, into the new year, then to a full year, and now officially beyond. A year ago today was the day I went into my office, picked up pieces of my computer, and started working out my new work station at home. Here I sit a year later. If I'd known it would be this long, I certainly would have upgraded my chair and maybe my desk. My guess is I still have at least six more months of this, but if I've made it this long, is it worth upgrading now? Probably not, considering the many other expenditures we have happening around here.
But hitting the year point definitely gives you perspective. For example, it's been a year of socially distanced grocery shopping with product shortages. At least the paper product aisle and the disinfecting wipes are finally consistently back in stock, but inevitably some shelf is still empty--today it was the store-brand snack baggies, last week it was the Worcestershire sauce. It's been a year since Carter has been in normal school. When all is said and done in June, if nothing changes before then, he will have essentially missed out on a full year of in-person instruction during his three years at the school. It's a bit of a bummer because Jacob really got a great foundation there and I feel like Carter has had a very different experience. Ironically, my niece in Oregon just went back to her first (shortened) day after a year remote. Today I was trying to remember what mileage my car hit right before the shutdown. I think it was 78,000, and that means I only drove about 5,000 miles in the last year, which is less than half of what I usually do. Most of that was driving Jacob to school in the morning since September, and prior to that it took months just to get the next thousand.
Today I went to the allergist and had the same view from the exam room that I did in early April last year, when every parking lot (including the entire mall) was nearly empty mid-afternoon. This weekend I should be able to hang Easter eggs on the tree and bushes outside, which I vividly remember doing last year in late March, at a bit of a loss as to how we were even going to celebrate Easter. Even just seeing Easter candy in the stores brings back memories of my slight panic to make sure I got enough stuff for the kids' baskets in the very few trips out I did. All of these little memories about the weird and wacky things we lived through are coming back.
It's funny because life is inevitably full of phases and stages, and the very monotonous existence we've had in this last year make some of them even more noticeable as they come and go, We've gone through a couple hardcore Simpsons-watching phases (when we've had Disney+), the first of which drove me nuts and the second of which I am now just sort of accepting as permanent background noise. Craig also watches The Office and Friends nearly non-stop during the day, so those might always be a part of this time, too. For a while we did Jacob's Xbox NBA2K trivia every night, to the point we did it over the phone with a friend of his, but that faded away after a while. Playing dominoes was in a movie we watched the other night, and it brought back memories of our board game phase, which included buying a set of dominoes and learning the game Chicken Foot. But sore loser behavior ended that phase pretty quickly, so more recently we seemed to go into a puzzle phase. Our next one just got purchased today. My summer was full of my flowers, which I am poised to do again, and hopefully I will get back to my porch sitting phase when the warm weather comes back. I got out of my baking phase a while ago, but I feel like maybe I should try again sometime soon. I had my diamond painting phase, which I also want to get back into (with one I ordered in April that took until about July to arrive), but I keep telling myself I need to get my other one framed first. I also have more redecorating to do, just to spruce things up around here--in between new appliance purchases apparently. The new washer and dryer arrive tomorrow! In the meantime we seem to have entered the purge phase, where I am making it my mission to get some baby clothes out of here, to make progress on ditching or converting VHS tapes, and to organize my thoughts (and stuff) for my mom's garage sale. Sometimes it keeps me up at night thinking about the things I need to do. I posted something years ago, shortly after we moved in here, that if I ever said this house was too small, it was time to get rid of stuff. Admittedly, the kitchen and bathroom feel cramped with two bigger kids now, but the idea still holds true and I am working to get rid of enough stuff to make the house feel more comfortable again. We rid ourselves of our old giant tube TV, our old dehumidifier, our old VCR (whose remote stopped working, making it useless), and our old microwave (which broke shortly into the shutdown last year) over the weekend, and I made great progress on baby clothes and VHS tapes over the past few days as well. One thing at a time, I guess.
I'm hoping that we're not facing down another full year of altered life, that maybe this time we'll be able to count Year Two in months, more like we thought we'd be doing last year. We have vaccinated parents now, so there's a bit less fear about gathering. Even something like that could make a huge difference. Jacob's travel basketball season should be starting soon, which will give us some reason to move around a bit more. We'll have to be careful, of course, especially since Jacob is hitting the three-month mark post-COVID, which could mean his antibodies will start fading soon. But rates are getting lower and we likely won't be going far, so hopefully we can start tiptoeing back out into the world of travel, too.
There's so much to look back on over this past year, and I know that among all of the hard stuff there were good things. In daily life we all sort of hope for a break from the monotony, and while more (different) monotony wasn't really what we all wanted, getting us out of old habits provided a different opportunity to start fresh. I've had a couple friends post about changes they've made, and while I can't say we had any major life revelations here, things like porch sitting, daily pool time, Saturday dinner takeout, and my new urgency to clean out the house probably wouldn't have happened without this. In the midst of the stress of the sibling battles, we've had a front row seat to our kids growing and changing in ways we never would have otherwise. Speaking of which, who's that deep-voiced, giant-footed, taller-than-me kid on the couch these days? At the very least, we have a deeply rooted understanding of second grade curriculum, and hopefully we'll have a good opportunity to see if Carter can handle it better once we get him some help in the way of medication in the coming month or two. Certainly there are are a lot of struggles and a lot of things that have changed for the worse (less adult quality time, including the inability to catch up on our DVR, more time to battle with the kids, no changes in scenery), but it's good to know there have been good things, too. We've gotten to sleep in for over a year, after all! As a result, I know we'll probably look back on this wistfully once we're rushing around like crazy again--Carter already knows he had a lot less school, which he appreciates--but I hope my posts are a good reminder of how this was hard, too. We overcame a lot and should be proud of that. It's been one heck of a ride, and while we're all hopeful this part of it will be over soon, I'm determined to find the positives in the meantime. Here's to Year Two...
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