I’ve been out on a walk with the kids every day this week, plus playing outside in the yard when the weather cooperates. I was worried I’d be snacking more, but so far doing okay.

Checking back in! I’ve made some progress this year and hopefully manage to get some more stuff done. Sold a bunch of kid stuff at a consignment sale a few weeks ago before all the Coronavirus stuff started to got here, so I was happy to get some baby/kid clothes and toys gone. I also took two boxes and a bag of girl clothes to a coworker. Tiny baby steps.

DH and I are each working from home for the foreseeable future and my oldest C (7) will not have in person school for the rest of the school board after a press conference announcement by our governor yesterday. For now, my youngest M (3) will be staying home as well. My mom is coming up this weekend to stay with us - likely through the end of the school year. She retired last month (thank goodness for perfect timing), and lives alone, a 2.5 hour drive form both my sis and me. We would rather have her here in case she gets sick, then we can take care of her (and also no hospital in her town), and we could definitely use her help while DH and I work and have the kids at home. We’re all practicing social distancing, so hopefully we don’t get it, but clearly we can’t predict that.

We’ve managed to set up a work area for DH in our bedroom, and I’m working on setting up my area an extra bedroom we have that’s basically a catch all room. I took off this week as it’s spring break for my oldest, so I’ve got a few more days to get my stuff set up. Meanwhile, I’ve purged some stuff in the process. I also have a bunch of stuff to donate, but I’m not comfortable taking them right now, so they’ll probably move to our basement until things calm down. I’m hoping with the no commute and not being able to socialize in person outside of our immediate family for the next however long, I can keep making progress.

C is officially done with in-person school today after the governor’s press conference announcing that for the entire state. 😯

This is going to be a wild ride. DH and I are both WFH for the foreseeable future, but we still have to work. My mom retired last month, so she’s going to come visit and help with the kids. I’m not sure how well this will work with M, but we’ll figure something out. And I’m guessing we’ve got at least a week and a half before we get any formal direction/instruction from the school as it’s spring break this week and I doubt anything is place next week.

I’m going to be home with kids and WFM for the foreseeable future, so we’ll see how this goes with me trying to eat okay and be active. I’m technically off this week as we initially planned to be out of town, so the kiddos and I went for a walk after lunch, so that was a great way to get some steps in today. Tomorrow is supposed to be rain free, so we’re going to fit in a walk at some point again.

At this point, we still have to go in to work. I could do 95% of my job (at least) from home, though it would definitely make the team leadership/mentoring/training/teaching aspect harder. Unfortunately, not everyone on my team could do most of their job from home, so I think that is part of the holdup right now. I’m already off this upcoming week as we had planned on going somewhere over spring break, so we’ll see what happens over the next week. I think we’re going to end up going to rotating days at home/days at work in an effort to have less people in the office but still allow for people to get work done.

DH and I work at the same company, so we’re in the same boat.

Disney Would has now followed suit.


www.cnn.com/2020/03/12/media/disney-world-close-coronavirus/index.html

We’re still traveling, but no non-essential or client required travel. They’ve cancelled open houses at two of our offices next month and just cancelled our women’s golf event in May (boo - I help plan that and it’s one of my favorite events).

The professional organization I’m in has cancelled two large student events for April, a DC event, and I’m waiting to hear what they’re going to do about our annual meeting in Boston in June (though I’m guessing they postpone a decision on that for now).

Several coworkers are involved in a healthcare conference, and that was canceled for next month.


We are getting at least biweekly updates from company leadership on this as policy evolves with new developments. So far no work from home mandate, though, unless you need to self-quarantine.

But Houston spawned Ted Cruz , so there’s that...

Another trip this week meant I got in some uninterrupted reading time on flights...and unfortunately, it was wasted on two of the worst (to me) books I’ve read in a long time. So on that note, I read and would not recommend:

Let’s Pretend this Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir by Jenny Lawson

You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life by Jen Sincero

I did our monthly update yesterday - blergh. We’re down nearly 5%. DH’s 401k balance went down by about half his annual salary between the end of January and the end of February. Mine only wasn’t that bad because I have less in my account than he does. 🤣

On the bright side, my company hasn’t done the 2019 401k match yet (they calculate match and profit sharing after the end of the year - it’s usually deposited to our 401k accounts in mid-March), so I’m hoping when it happens, stocks are still on sale. 😂

So if we have Amazon Prime but don’t have KU, we get access to all the KU books?

Thinking about you, rukh- good luck today!

Crazy story from today’s work travel adventures (if you’re FB friends with me, you’ve already seen this):


Work travel adventures....

I have friends and colleagues who go to exciting places like Italy, England, San Francisco, Guam, Seattle, NYC and more for work travel. Me? This week I ended up on the roof a building that is a seagull nesting site. And it gets better - apparently they fight each other and eat the dead ones, so the roof is littered with seagull bones. 🤢 My face must have been priceless as the store assistant manager was telling me this before I climbed up to the roof. He said several times it wasn’t a joke, and as per my photo evidence, he was serious.




Seriously one of the grossest things I’ve seen and experienced on a work site visit (which is saying a lot because I started my career doing site visits to beef/pork/poultry kill/processing facilities).


And on a related but different note, DH is probably ready for me to never travel again. Three of my last 4 trips, someone has been or gotten sick. Today I got a call from the school nurse that C complained of a headache so was sent to her office. He had a temp of 101 and we needed to come get him. I call DH, and then make him an appointment at the pediatrician. Turns out the kid has strep. 🤦‍♀️

Okay, just signed C up for National Geographic Kids and it is 10 episodes a year. They also have a National Geographic Little Kids so I decided to try that for M as I think she’ll love it.