Good morning, friends, and happy April! Just…wow. What a difference a month makes. Last month, it seemed like we were in a whole different world. I was fresh off two trips to Florida and one to New York, we were getting coaxed to explore by the first touches of spring, we were visiting museums, and getting ready to enjoy more time spent with family and friends.
Now Scott and I are in our third week of working at home as the world still struggles with combating this health crisis. Virginia’s schools are all closed for the rest of the school year and we have a stay-at-home order through June 10th. What states aren’t already there are getting there quickly. The world has effectively ground to a halt because some idiot ate a bat. Talk about a butterfly effect that no one expected {but that really, when you think about it, we should have}.
It’s hard to think of the good when so many people are being furloughed and losing jobs and needing help, but I think most of the good is in the help. There are so many people out there who are helping. I love the amazing work the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does, and it was awesome to see them give $100 million to global efforts.
Scott and I are lucky enough to be able to keep working, so we’re finding ways to share. We’re donating what we can to the local food pantry. We’re hiring our favorite Instacart and Dumpling shoppers and Uber Eats drivers and tipping as much as we can. Instead of buying wine from the store, I’ve taken to calling up my favorite small restaurants and seeing if they’ll sell us wine from their cellar. And we can’t feed everyone, but we can help you come up with ideas for how to use those pantry items or leftovers or ingredients that might otherwise go to waste.
Other than that, here are a few highlights from our March.
1. Extroverts need help through this thing. My work calls are never short. I really have to work on not going up and bugging my husband every two minutes, just for a “Hey, hi, how are you!” This social distancing is tough on the people who need people.
2. The Cherry Blossom 10-Miler {and every other race I was signed up for} have been cancelled. I believe they were very much in the right, but I was still sad to miss out on the cherry blossoms – until I realized while we were walking that our whole neighborhood is full of cherry trees, and they’re all beautifully in bloom. Part of the joy of being home during the day is uncovering the little bits of lovely right in our own backyards that we don’t notice otherwise.
3. Trash pickup has slowed down and changed their processes here in NoVA, so people are recommending that this is NOT a good time to spring clean and throw out a lot of things. And what do people stuck in their houses usually end up doing? Realizing they have a lot of stuff they don’t need, spring cleaning, and donating and throwing out a lot of things. It’s a no-no right now.
4. I love Casey’s #bloggingdesk series on her travel blog, Land of Marvels. She does a great job of honing in on key recommendations for those of us who would like to grow our blogs, but don’t want to turn it into a full time gig. But it wasn’t until I read this post that I realized how many key things about blogging I had ignored – and how much I had to catch up. I’m working on it now!
5. Still running! I fell off my schedule a bit the second week of teleworking {I got hit by a massive amount of gloom over everything going on} but for the most part, I’m back into logging 3-4 runs a week. I need these little bits of time where it’s just me and the road and nature, but I never realized how much until isolation started.
6. There are a ton of benefits to telework that I don’t think my office has begun to capture. We’ve been talking about how to employ distributed teams and matrix people onto projects, but we haven’t actually done it until now! I’m trying to figure out the best way to capture this and effect some change in my workplace.
7. If you’re looking for ways to help, consider Baby2Baby. They provide necessities to families with children who are impacted by COVID-19 across the country. Your donation helps them provide diapers, formula, and hygiene products for children in need.
8. What’s for dinner tonight? These chicken taco lettuce wraps! They’re light, they’re easy to make, and you can make them pretty easily out of fresh ingredients if you can get them or out of canned ingredients and leftover shredded chicken {I like stealing from my chicken chili leftovers}.
9. Hang in there, you guys. Dig into your garden or into your baking or into the things that bring you joy. And even though you can’t reach out a physical hand to anyone these days, reach out to everyone you can and see if you can give them a virtual tug up. You never know who might need it.
What things have you discovered during social distancing that you’re grateful for?
