Skip to main content

I Thought I'd Be Better at This Quarantine Thing

Okay, so we're not really in quarantine. In southwest Florida, we're all living under a suggestion to stay off the beaches. Apparently, grocery stores and gas stations are the acceptable gathering places, and I feel like I'm living in central Florida in the 90s all over again when Walmart was the place to be after the bars closed. Because, you know the bars are closed here too.

In all fairness, I'm living my dream right now. I'm able to work from home, and I like the flexibility it gives me to balance this work and home life thing. I seriously could get used to this. I like having bites of time in which to complete the small tasks that all too often gang up on me. I feel like I'm doing a better job keeping up with it all.

My early morning routine is fairly established. I get up and take the dogs out. While they eat I fill a bucket with some water and toss a handful of clothes in a galvanized steel bucket and let them soak for a few hours. I get myself ready for the day (a process that involves washing my face and slathering it with whatever anti-aging potion I'm trying). Then coffee and work.

I'm still working on the afternoon and evening routines, but I'd like to squeeze some housework and exercise into them. I'll report back on the progress.

For now, I'm working remotely and trying to stay out of the grocery stores. Unfortunately, I'm down to two rolls of paper towels and God only knows when the paper good vultures will calm down enough to let the stock refill. We have enough water, food and dog food to get us through the next two weeks. I have a paycheck coming on Friday, and I'm grateful for that even though I'm back to juggling which bills to pay since my night job is also in quarantine.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Busy Days Ahead

It's been a busy week for me. I left my house at 4:30 Monday morning for my drive down south and pulled back in my driveway at 1:20 this morning. The days have been long, too, between working at the new school from 7:30 until 3:00 or 4:00 and then working at the new place until 9:00 or 10:00 each night. I now have callouses on my fingers and not one intact finger nail. I think I've also developed a new twitch somewhere on my face. One afternoon this week, I stood in the middle of our new living room and took in the sight of missing drywall, a growing hole in the floor and soaked up my husband's predictions that we still won't be ready to paint by the weekend. All I wanted to do was cry. All I felt was nothingness. Numbness. Anyone who has ever reached the point of numbness knows that it's scarier than feeling like you're falling apart. It's one step beyond feeling like you're falling apart. I couldn't help but wonder just what we had gotten ourselves

The Carnival

It's a beautiful Saturday afternoon here in southwest Florida, although still a bit too warm for my November tastes. I'm learning to enjoy my weekends with as much unstructured and unscheduled time as possible. Last Saturday was a delightful unstructured day. A new friend of mine (the one from the Everglades excursion) and I went to a local carnival. Now, here's the thing...I LOVE carnivals. The food. The people. The rides. The lights. I can easily spend an entire day wandering through the crowds. He's no carnival slouch. The first thing we did was walk through the entire place, scoping out the rides. Then the fun began. We rode almost every ride there (except for the kiddie attractions and the broken Tornado). The Wild Claw. The Scrambler. The Orbiter. The Space Oddysey. The Swings. The Pharaoh's Fury. The Ferris Wheel. The Giant Slide. The Haunted House. The Avalanche. It was all good. How can you top a ride that uses centrifugal force to plaster your body against

Stranger Obligations

I had to make a few difficult decisions this week. At least, they were difficult for me. I wish I could be the kind of person who completely makes decisions based on his/her own needs and wants and boldly moves through life with unabashed freedom from how our choices affect others. But I'm not built like that. I had placed an ad for my former stray. I felt like it was time to find her a more permanent home because so much in my life right now is uncertain. One person answered the ad, but she did not seem like a good fit, and I gave up further thought. This week I received another response. As long as this person is telling the truth, it's an ideal situation for the dog. Yet, I had a strange feeling and could not sort out whether or not it was my intuition kicking in or that fact that I actually like the dog and don't want to see her go. In the end, I decided that it was in my own (and my Winnipeg's) best interest for her to stay with us through the summer. (I seri