Covid-19 Life, 3-23-2020 Nothing is Normal

If I were to list today’s events it would look like a pretty “normal” day.

• School
• Work
• Groceries
• Home

That’s the funny thing about life right now though. We are all desperately trying to do “normal” things in a world that is anything but normal. School today meant Marissa getting up and coming down to my office to start trying to make head or tails out of her online assignments sent to us by the middle school. For Chase it meant me heading to the elementary school to pick up his packet of school work for the next 30 days. It also meant me arriving to the school to find hundreds of other cars in line and teachers and staff wearing gloves running back and forth from car to the building and back again to deliver the packets.

Next was work. It was a pretty ordinary day there. I am blessed to have a part-time job doing office work for a trucking company. I thank God (and my boss) for the flexibility to adjust my hours as needed, especially now that I am also a “teacher”. I’m also glad that since it is considered an “essential business” I can still work during the “stay at home” order.

We needed bread which has been hard to find so I stopped in the store and was happy to discover the bread shelves weren’t bare and there was now a limit to 2 per customer so hopefully they will stay that way. The grocery store is just about the only place people go anymore though and every trip the reminder that nothing is normal grows harder to ignore. Social distancing signs, gloves, masks, and even goggles this trip.

Once home I started our dinner of canned soup and grilled cheese sandwiches (now that we had bread). In our “normal” life this was a meal that was made often when we had multiple practices to pick the kids up from and no time to make anything more complicated. Tonight it was simply making use of what we had on hand and what was available. After dinner the kids made cookies. I’ve noticed a lot of people baking more since this all started. It’s funny because this whole experience is a like strange combination of Christmas vacation and a horror movie all at once. Hallmark Channel has even brought back their Christmas movies to watch while stuck at home and some people have put their Christmas lights back up to “spread joy”. I’m all for spreading joy, but it’s spring and Christmas wasn’t long enough ago for me to miss it yet. I’m ready for sunshine, flowers, and most of all normalcy with a new appreciation for it.