Yesterday, on March 16, 2020, the announcement came via text message that our schools will remain closed until April 10th. Around an hour after that, Harris Country announced the mandatory closing of all bars, and take out and delivery only for restaurants. I started my day at 4 AM this morning, with the mindset that I am not going to survive the present situation, rather I am going to thrive. I am going to spend the next 15 days at home, aside from going for my long runs and walks around the neighborhood.
In the next 15 days, I am going to become a chef, a maid and most importantly a teacher. I have an extremely intelligent friend that teaches; my friend once told me that the most important thing he does is teach home room. He says that the first 20 minutes of the day sets the tone for a student’s entire day. Having no teaching experience, I am going to take things one day at a time. Today, I am going to work on mastering home room.
I am going to optimize my new normal, which entails time that I did not have before. I normally spend about 3 hours a day driving, an hour a day getting ready, and a couple of hours networking each day, and a couple of hours socializing with friends or dining out with my kids. That is 8 hours that I get back everyday for the next 15 days.
I am going to adjust my routine to maximize my new found time. My normal routine is the alarm goes off, and I literally sprint out the door for my morning run. This is healthy for sure, this is my time “to get my mind right”. For the next 15 days, I am going to begin with an hour of prayer and reflection, and a blog post. Then I am going to head out for my run.
I am going to spend 2 hours a day playing teacher. I am fortunate to have a genius 17 year old, who can self study, and then help the younger child, so my home school responsibilities are around “teaching homeroom” , and keeping the kids organized, rather than actually teaching.
I am going to spend another 2 hours each evening working on my writing. That will be 3 glorious hours of writing each day! Teaching and writing take up 5 hours total, still leaving me with 3 free hours. One would argue that I should extend my nightly sleep from 5 hours to 8 with these extra 3 hours. Nah, I am going to use 1 hour to clean the house top to bottom each day. Cleaning is supposed to be healthy for a person’s mental wellbeing. I am going to use the remaining 2 hours to work on the massive backlog of ideas that I have for work.
Like I said at the start of this blog, I am planning to survive, I am planning to thrive.
Going forward each morning blog will go like this:
What is new in today’s news: The latest news is that President Trump has asked Americans to not gather in groups of more than 10 people. Harris County has issued a mandatory closure of all bars, and only allowing take out and delivery from restaurants. Brainy Bird and Little Chirp’s school has announced that the school district will remain closed until April 10th.
Challenges with present situation: I am worried about our local bars and restaurants. I love the Tomball community, and so many of my friends are now without work for the next 15 days due to the bar closures. Restaurants were already hurting as folks spent their income on hording groceries, and had nothing left for dining out.
On a personal front, I am doing fine; I am extremely focused on the positive.
Update on the Birds: Neither of the boys have said much about the Coronavirus. During Harvey, they told us to keep with our normal routines as much as possible to help ease the stress in our children. I have done this to the degree possible, but me cleaning house for the first time ever and school being closed, is throwing them off. Little Chirp is not his usual out spoken, “challenge everything self”; in contrast, he is unusually accommodating.
Brainy Bird has more than stepped up to the plate. He spent yesterday doing minor repairs around the house. He too seems to be leveraging his new found time. He has spent a great deal of time programming on his end of year project for computer science, and playing his guitar. He has also spent a great deal of time with his little brother and step brother. (Their dad is remarried, and his wife has a son the same age as Little Chirp.)
Brainy Bird is down about the cancellation of robotics, and he shared with me that this makes him feel guilty because there are so many bigger concerns in the world.
Things I am grateful for: I am grateful for my boys, and for my fur kids. I am grateful for all of my friends, my sister, my brother-in-law and my little nephew Charlie.
I am grateful to have means to not be stressed about possibly losing my job if the economy extensively collapses. A lapse is employment would delay my plans to retire at 50, but I would not lose my home. My cars are paid for.
I am grateful for HEB. I love my HEB.
Shout out to a friend: Yvonne – I love you girl. Thank you for the amazing dinner last night, and the time together. I am taking you to Vic and Anthony’s when all goes back to normal. More importantly, thank you for being my doggie advisor when I adopted Potatoe. I cannot articulate how much my fur kids mean to me. Potatoe was the beginning of the fur kid adoptions. I emailed the head of our company’s HR yesterday, with stuff to be aware of with our current situation. To not be all doom and gloom, I added a warm fuzzy of my fur kids surrounding me while I work from home. Right now, all the furs are sleeping in a pile on the couch.
Thank you for sharing your family with me during the holidays. Thank you for being one of those friends that I know always has my back. Thank you for always building me up, and thank you for loving my boys as if they are your own flesh and blood.
Thank you for being you. <hearts>.
Positives with present situation: As I said, having newfound time is a positive of the present situation.
Seeing everyone come together last night at my friend’s bar in support of our favorite local business, her employees and in support of each other meant a lot to me.
This is actually my fifth work from home day, as I started working from home mid-week last week. This means making my own coffee. I have almost mastered making coffee with my French press pot.
Little Chirp is not going to miss the bus for 4 whole weeks. 🙂