Plans to Return

Someone's having fun this summer!

I realized today that this week marks my official last week of working from home full-time. Can I continue to be "remotely yours" if I'm no longer remote? I planned to use this blog to document these strange coronavirus times, and those times certainly haven't ended yet. Plus, thankfully, when I go back to work next week it's only for two days a week. The rest of the time I still get to work from home. So in some ways things are changing and in others they continue to be as safe a situation as I can hope for right now.

I get to work at a location closer to my house, at least for the rest of the summer, so that's a benefit. My parents are still able to babysit my son on the days when I can't be there, and he's old enough to not need milk during the day though I still nurse him when I'm there and he wants it. At over a year old, he's eating a variety of fruits, veggies meats, cheeses, yogurt, and tons of his favorite pancakes/tortillas/carbs (at least they're mostly whole wheat)!

Aside from going to my parents' house for some babysitting while I worked from home at their house, I can count the places I've visited during this coronavirus on one hand. One drive-thru coffee. One pediatrician's appointment. Three visits to an outdoor cafe to have breakfast alone on their porch. And that's in three months. So it will be a big change to even be spending two days a week at a different location, working with other people and talking to complete strangers as I interact with the public behind our new plexiglass desks.

I'm not as worried as I thought I would be--maybe because the location where I'm working is usually quieter than others and we have new safety protocols in place. Maybe because I'm more worried about everywhere else. As more businesses and states open up, our virus cases are naturally rising. But it keeps hitting closer and closer to home. My brother's coworker. My husband's coworker (in a completely different building, but still near). And two very close members of my husband's family. One has been on a ventilator in the hospital for 40 days.

On a work from home day when I'm overwhelmed with job duties, Baby won't sleep, and then I hear news about someone close being ill or potentially exposed, my anxiety goes through the roof. I wonder how much more my brain can take, especially when I'm trying not to let it show and affect my son. But then he falls asleep at last, and I finish my job duties, and my mom comes over to give me a food and bathroom break, and my husband comes home from work to cuddle on the couch, and I'm reminded of the blessings that I have. We are so lucky and have so much good. I have no right to feel overwhelmed. I can get through this.

My parents are a BIG support and BIG part of why I'm blessed. Not only can they babysit while I'm back at work but they take care of me, making sure I eat and rest and get done what I need to get done, kind of like when I was on maternity leave with a newborn. It's also nice to have some place to go to since I don't go anywhere, and a house that's a little bigger than our own for my son to run around in now that he can practically run. To celebrate my last week of being a full-time work-from-home, stay-at-home mom, I'm hoping to do a little swimming in their backyard pool with Baby (seems much safer than any community pool right now), and maybe even have a movie night on their TV with my husband while they watch Baby (my mom's idea, and we haven't had a proper date since...I wanna say December 2?). 

Speaking of my husband, he's also a BIG support and BIG part of why I'm blessed. I wrote on social media for Father's Day talking about how he's the reason my son and I are okay. He goes out to get drive-thru dinner. He watches Baby when I have an early morning Zoom meeting and helps me "hose him down" on my lunch break when Baby's lunch covers his entire body. He talks to us and finds entertaining videos for us to watch, and if I had to be quarantined with someone indefinitely, I'm so glad it's him. I think we've only fought twice this whole time, and they were extremely short arguments over misunderstandings to begin with.

The next BIG support and blessing we have is our friends. In a scary physical climate and scary political climate, we have such wonderful friends to be able to talk out big issues with, whether it's Black Lives Matter or our own mental health. A friend came in from out of town to see her mom who lives here and we were lucky enough to do a real social distanced visit--we hadn't had friends over in ages! My husband went to pick up food I ordered at a local coffee shop. Then I put chairs out six feet apart in the garage and a table in the middle for drinks. It was our own little outdoor cafe! Our friends came with masks and gifts and we sat out there talking for two hours while Baby walked around in shoes for the first time. We even pulled his high chair into the garage so he could have lunch with us and gave him his first taste of ice cream since it is summer after all.

Just ignore the messy floor.

While this in-person visit was a break from our normal isolation, we continue to keep in contact with friends--mostly online, though my husband gets to see some coworker friends now that he's back at work. I stay in touch with my friends through Facebook and email. I even started organizing my monthly writing group again, and it felt good to be able to talk to fellow writers about the state of the world and the state of our novel drafts.

So things are okay. They're better for some, worse for others, but we have to hold onto the things that work for us. I'm sure I've said that before on this blog but it's worth repeating that all our experiences are unique and bad and good in their own ways. We're all grieving our past routines and past lives and sense of normal. We're all feeling a little scared or at least a little uncertain. Some may be suffering economically. Others physically. Others mentally. But we do our best with what we have. I count my blessings and try to find the joy I can in this new normal. Because how can we live if we can't find any joy in any day?

I'm not excited about returning to work, but I'm not unhappy about it either. It will be another change. Another chance to hope for something positive. My loved one in the hospital is off sedation from her ventilator and as we wait for her to wake up there was a positive change there too: new movement! Her eyes have opened a couple of times before, but today she moved her head and her hand. This might just be the beginning of recovery. We wait. We hope. We love.

And as we use all that to get through these times, maybe eventually we can return to some sort of normal.

Tired, Nervous, Happy

After those baby steps on May 16, Baby started officially walking on May 27, travelling from chair to couch and more without holding onto anything! While he still thinks crawling is faster and more stable, he's spent the past few days practicing his walking around the room more often, an adorable little jerky sidestep that makes him look like a crab. He's even started standing up on his own instead of needing a piece of furniture or parent to pull himself up on. It's adorable to see him so happy, confident, and proud. It makes the "tired like a mother" feeling and the anxiety of these hard times much easier to deal with.

Summer is a little different than spring was. On Mondays I work and then watch Baby when my husband works his evening shift. Tuesdays my mom stops by in the afternoon to help me while I work. Wednesdays I go to her house to work for the day and get extra help from my dad and brother there. Thursdays and Fridays I'm off because I had vacation days I was going to lose, so I get to spend all day at home with Baby.

Until July when our schedules change again and I start spending some days back at work.

It's been busy this week with summer classes starting where I work. Nonstop meetings and student questions and website updates, which definitely keeps me occupied. But having my son nearby, though challenging at times, breaks up the monotony. I like the schedule of his morning nap, feeding him real food on my noon lunch break, and then an afternoon nap. I like hearing him giggle with my mom upstairs or see him lying at my feet passed out asleep.

I like that he still makes me happy with everything he does.

Since we couldn't do a huge first birthday party for all our family and friends, this week was also busy organizing the pieces I was putting together to make his first birthday (TODAY) extra special: balloons, a photographer, an awesome cake, a virtual party. The planning made me nervous and happy, almost as if I was planning that huge in-person bash. I wanted everything to come together. And despite a few small hiccups (baby woke a little too early, balloons almost arrived too late), we have a content little one-year-old baby AND awesome photos to show for it.

Plus, the day's not over yet! Once he wakes from his morning nap, my son might actually get to play with his presents and then Facebook Live Stream out to family and friends this evening.

Even more good news: as of today, the close family member in the hospital is officially Covid free! It's her 22nd day sedated on a ventilator and she's not out of the woods yet, but this is a positive step in the right direction so she can continue to heal.

The world is still tumultuous, but today I'm going to be happy.