Déjá Vu

My son is currently participating in a martial arts class. In our living room. On zoom.

It’s truly the worst kind of deja vu.

Honestly, we wouldn’t even be doing zoom martial arts (we’d be skipping it), except my son wants to because he wants to test for his red belt and he agrees that his attendance at zoom classes during the closure might affect his ability to test. I’m trying to focus on his commitment to his own martial arts practice, and his (mostly) positive attitude about taking the class on zoom today. He really has made huge strides in delaying gratification and working toward long term goals the past two years, and I’m trying to focus on that, and not the fact that it feels like we’ve taken a bunch of massive, giant steps backwards in our management of the pandemic.

I’m also trying to focus on the fact that I have an elliptical machine to work out on when it’s clear my body needs a break from running. I’d MUCH rather be running today, but when I woke up it was clear my body needed a break. Every pain point was improved yesterday after my Thursday chiropractor’s appointment, but today I feel the familiar pain in my right glute and I know that while it won’t hurt while I’m running, I will feel it afterward. So I’m on the elliptical while my son takes martial arts on zoom. There are worse ways to spend a Saturday morning. (The cloud cover is definitely helping me feel better about not being able to run.)

Yesterday was an okay day. I had a light day planned in the classroom and I was able to get a lot of work related tasks crossed off my to-do list. That felt good because a few of them had been lingering there a while, as I kept going to bed early instead of staying up to get them done. It’s nice to start the weekend feeling not too behind.

And while I was NOT pleased to have to hit up TWO DIFFERENT Costco’s yesterday, I’m so glad to have that unpleasant task behind me. I actually really like Costco, but it never feels like there is a time when I can assume it will be less crowded there, so I do my best to avoid the weekends and cross my fingers that it won’t be a mad house when I go on a weekday afternoon. Yesterday it wasn’t a mad house but the first Costco didn’t have three things I needed, so I hit up the other one on my way home. That one did have two of the three things (of course kid sized surgical masks was the one thing both stores were out of), so I guess it was worth it. Again, I appreciate knowing I don’t have to go again for at least a couple of weeks.

My husband and I watched The Lost Daughter last night. It was really good. I want to write more about it, but I need to process a bit. I had very complicated feelings about parenting small children, and this movie tapped into my ambivalence in… uncomfortable ways. Olivia Coleman was (for course) amazing and I like Maggie Gyllenahall’s style of storytelling a lot (this was her directorial debut). It not a “lighthearted romp,” but I definitely recommend it.

Today my parents are picking up the kids around 2:30pm and then my husband and I have 24 hours alone together. We REALLY need the time to reconnect, and I think my husband ultimately recognized that and decided our separate needs for a break from the kids, compounded by our shared need to reconnect, convinced him that the opportunity warranted possible exposure in either direction. We are letting our daughter continue with the swimming practice we signed her up for in December (that starts next week), and if we’re going to let her spend 30 minutes in an indoor pool with dozens of maskless kids all around her (because she has been waiting for this for two years and we promised her when she was vaccinated she would get to do this again), letting her spend one night with my parents seems totally acceptable.

{My parents might not be as cautious as we are, but they also aren’t totally careless: mostly they are just less likely to turn down an invitation to eat inside someone’s house or even occasionally indoors at a restaurant. But it’s not like they are doing either of those things frequently. And my mom has mentioned multiple times that right now no one (none of her friends) is doing anything. For the first time we both know a lot of people that have caught Covid, so that is definitely altering their behavior somewhat.}

Before I sign off, I wanted to thank everyone who reached out on my post yesterday. It really does help to hear that I’m not alone. I struggle with deciding whether or not I should write about feeling so done with the pandemic, when I’ve weathered it better than 99% of the people in the world. Ultimately I think it’s worth publishing those posts on occasion, because I suspect other similarly privileged individuals are also struggling, and normalizing those feelings is important. We can have it better than others and still find it really, really hard. My (our) struggle does not dismiss or diminish the suffering of others. It’s important to recognize that.

And here is Friday’s time tracking! I might set myself an hourly reminder to update my sheet today – I have a feeling the weekends are going to be a lot harder to keep track of.