COVID

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Sept Goals

So…August goals were like a complete, 100% fail. Just absolute. We got two separate fever/rash diseases, I had a raging UTI almost all month. Absolutely no fun in our household.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this sort of whirlwind life pace. The weird thing is we’re like not busy. We don’t really do much scheduled stuff at night or on the weekends, but I think there is a sameness to the days that makes them really blurry.

Winter is coming up, or at least Fall. September is always when I start to get really down in the dumps SAD-wise. So I’ve been thinking about what I need to make winter WFH work for me, again, as we go through what will be almost two full years of WFH in our two-bedroom apartment. Like, what is a god mental health routine for me?

30-day challenges sound appealing, with some breaks built in. For Sept. I was thinking about decluttering to really set up our home nicely as we are entering the era of spending more time in it. In the winter, likely some things were I make sure to take an hour-long walk daily. Or starting to go to yoga twice a week. I am just feeling really down about delta, another WFH winter, and a lack of indoor spaces with an unvaccinated kiddo. Like, do I have to make another pod this winter??? And my podmate moved away, as did my last other friend in NYC with kids. But it is really, really, really hard to make new friends right now. So probably instead of moping, trying to also focus on the friends that I do have.

So I guess Sept goals will be doing my 30 days of decluttering and finding some sort of WFH routine that works for my mental health. And then, I’ll try to take things one month at a time instead of forecasting out to forever.

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Fun

I have realized that I used to do stuff. Nothing crazy, but I had dinner my with friends (w/o R, w/o baby). I would do karaoke, I would browse at stores, I would take a weekend away with my sisters, I would deadlift (!) and go to yoga, I would read books, I would get interested in stuff like fermentation and try new recipes. I would have a list of hiking places I want to go or movies I wanted to watch.

In the last 15 months, all of those parts of my life have been stripped away and I’m left with work and motherhood. Like that’s it. I honestly can’t think of much that I do outside of self-maintenance (e.g. showering, basic exercise) that is not in those categories.

Now, I am fully vaccinated, R is fully vaccinated, our baby is a lot less feral than she used to be but I still don’t really do anything that is not work or parenting.

So what is fun to me? Or what even might be fun and I can just try it and see how it goes?

  • going to in-person meditation
  • going to an in-person yoga class
  • trying a new restaurant with friends
  • cooking my way through a cookbook
  • having game night
  • going to a browsing library and browsing

Honestly, none of that sounds very fun. But I thought as a baby step, I’d try to go to a yoga class this week and see how that goes.

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Weekly Rhythm

I’ve been thinking lately about rhythm. I feel like my life, like that of most working parents in our era of COVID, is just frenetic. I’m working at home or I’m working at work but I feel like I am always (or almost always) working. I spend a few hours during the week doing things that aren’t strictly working but are almost like performing maintenance work on myself so I can survive for another week (making healthy dinner, riding my spin bike, meditating). I really have almost no fun and no leisure.

But – something does change in my life as I go through each week and I am curious about what that is. On weekends, I try not to use my computer or phone for internet at all. I do text people, and video call my family, but no internet browsing (sometimes my kid is being totally insane and I brake this rule for a tiny dopamine hit). This means, conversely, that I spend a disgusting amount of time on the internet during the week, because I am doing my work and I am doing what R and I call “internet errands”. During the week, my laptop is like a sticky molasses from which is it more difficult to extricate myself than to continue doing whatever it is I am doing.

On Fridays, I have 1-2 hard cocktails. I like to get drunk on Fridays! The minute I’m done with work! In recent weeks, I’ve also taken to eating half a pint of ice cream out of the carton! I also try to “finish” work and I have this insane nesting urge to prepare for the weekend. Sometimes, this includes going grocery shopping twice so I know we have ingredients on hand to make any dinner I could ever aspire to. Friday nights also generally involve making a batch of granola for eating a breakfast of yogurt and crunchies on the weekend.

Monday is sort of a hazy day of thank god I survived the weekend. I want to nap and watch TV all day but I don’t. I sometimes have a lot of work and if I don’t, I try to do a lot of personal productive things, from the to-do list I keep that conveniently has all my work and life tasks.

Tue-Th are these sort of hazy days where I get the bulk of my work done and just sort of vaguely exist. I talk to coworkers on conference calls and see my kid for about 3 hours but I’m just a shell of a human being. After bedtime on these days is like I am a zombie. No one knows me and I do not know myself. There is nothing to aspire towards and nothing to help you relax. Sometimes, if I can snap out of it, I’ll do some restorative or yin yoga. Sometimes, I can read (I have only finished 1 (!!!!!) book so far this year). Sometimes, I call a friend. But mostly I painfully pass the time between 7:30-9:30 pm and am thankful when I am tired enough to go to sleep.

On the weekends, we have a very standard routine of inside house time – playground – naptime – playground – inside house time – bedtime. I wash probably 150 dishes a day. We get the NYT delivered and I fritter away a lot of the day reading it while kiddo plays nearby. I almost love to go to the playground and spend a few hours in the frigid air doing nothing. I also love when R is on playground duty and I have alone time at home, which I spend tidying up while listening to a podcast, working out, and showering. Then, they are back. (I know R has the same routine bc he is always in the shower when we come back from the playground). I love also when we all three go to the playground and/or see our playground friends, and life feels a bit like pre-COVID. The most fun we have on a weekend is watching a movie, in two parts.

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What a Year

I have been struck, as is pretty usual for me, to do a recounting of this year and a planning ahead for 2021. But every time I start to think about this year I just stop. I don’t really want to go back. I keep thinking about the holidays for 2019 – MG’s first. She was sick from daycare and basically up all night for November. Then she was a bit better and she – and then all of us – caught HFMD for Christmas. I spent my birthday feverish in bed. By February she was better and we felt like we had survived a really difficult window and things were turning a corner. Her birthday party was probably the last time we had people in our house.

From there, it has been a total shitshow. WFH with her, the total fear and panic of living in NYC in March and April, the house fire, five months of living with parents and in-laws. When daycare reopened and we moved back home it was like reaching the promised land. There were a few rough weeks of transition but since then, our life has been stable and happy once again, even in light of occasional COVID quarantines, masks, no indoor playdates, etc.

But it was hard again for other reasons – I had a miscarriage at 7 weeks, the fear and panic of the election. I just feel so wrung out and tired, like I need three years to recover from this one. And we still had it easier than so many people. We have stable jobs that paid us the same amount even when we were doing childcare half the time, we didn’t lose any loved ones to COVID, we didn’t get sick ourselves. But it was so hard in so many ways.

I have been looking forward to 2021 but softly. Thinking about doing a weekly tech sabbath which I have been finding really restorative and a way to bring the pleasure of boredom back into my life. And I long, I honestly long for, a cold rainy weekend day when indoor play dates are allowed once again and the kids can play with trucks and the adults can have some pizza and wine and we are all warm and dry and safe. I feel thankful and I am filled with so much longing.

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Back in New Yak

We’ve been back in NYC for about 3 weeks. It has been like going back to an easier but still familiar life. I can’t believe how much leisure time I had in my day before COVID. Even sitting down to do some writing…I can make a cup of coffee, organize my workspace, turn off my email and just write. Without having a full third of my brain elsewhere or knocking (which progresses into crying) outside of my door.

The transition has been okay for MG. The first week was pure unhappiness when she was at school, and we’re down to about 30 minutes of unhappiness when we drop her off and then mostly happy all day. And miraculously at school, she sleeps for 60-90 minutes longer than at home so her mood is so good. And when I pick her up, she’s so chatty and happy. She’s sleeping more, eating more, drinking more milk from a cup. I feel the decision to bring her back was right.

The guilt around my parents is slowly easing as this becomes the new normal for us and for then. We have been doing outside visits which are nice and I’m willing to see how it goes for now.

 

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Habits

March, April, May, June, July. Five months of quarantine for us and 3 months or so of having a pretty static routine (different houses, but the same two houses and more or less the same daily schedule). Long enough, as I read in a newsletter, to set a whole new era of habits even if you weren’t intended to. Long enough for stuff to sort of slip up on you.

Time for a habit review.

Daily habits have included: meditation and exercise (sometimes just MS, sometimes the elliptical if I’m at the ILs). Those have been pretty solid. I feel like I use the internet waaaaay too much – on zoom meetings often for a few hours + internet browsing + phone general waste of time. I’d love to cut that down. I definitely have this ennui after bedtime. Like, what is there to do? Often, I choose lazier activities rather than more rewarding ones, like vegging out rather than calling a friend. My social life has definitely dwindled down to just texts. I do spend a lot of non-directive time with the baby which I like a lot, and read a lot. It would be nice to have some more variation in my day…I’m not even sure what that would look like but more walks, more mini-trips, stuff like that.

Overall, seems like I’ve stayed pretty even but could swap some less enjoyable leisure time for more nourishing stuff like calling friends, making a new meals, taking a mini-excursion, etc. Voila, life is solved!

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Making Plans to Go Back

Our daycare reached out and we are making plans to go back. I have so many feelings about this.

I have absolutely missed having a chunk of time away from the baby everyday…AND I have grown use to spending all day with the baby and will miss having that.

I look forward to going back to our apartment…AND I worry about life without backyards to play in like we have now.

I look forward to not having to live with my parents/in-laws…AND I want to cry when I think we may not see them again for quite a while.

Life has definitely been altered because of CV. My parents are high-risk and risk-averse in general. Living in a geography with a winter climate, and without a car, and in a dense city, I’m not sure if we’ll find a way to safely visit them. At the same time…I really want to start trying for a new baby and don’t feel into the idea of being pregnant and not living in my own house on a permanent basis. So we will go back in August. I think the baby will be very happy with it, R will certainly be very happy with it, and I will likely adjust. But, I really worry for my parents and how they cope.