Here we are in the fall of 2020. We seem to be ramping back up to spring pandemic levels but life is still moving forward.
I thought I would quickly give you a run down on how things are going with our household. It’s also nice to jot these things down for posterity. Having some sort of record will be nice to look back on when we’re reminiscing: “Do you remember how it was during that Coronavirus epidemic??”
So let’s take a look at our fall, and how things have changed as the year winds down:
School and extracurriculars
The girls went back to in person learning at school. They don’t love wearing masks every day, but that’s their only real complaint. There won’t be any “events”, and if I want to talk to the teachers there’s only email and telephone, but that suits me just fine.
Dance classes nearly fell by the wayside, though Rose is taking a ballet class with two of her dance friends at a small studio where they are excellent at distancing and dealing with the pandemic lifestyle.
Emma, on the other hand, chose not to dance at all this fall. I think she’s loving this quieter time, and I don’t blame her one bit! Life feels so much more relaxed without running around every evening.
Mask wearing is here to stay, don’t you think? We stocked up on kids masks and I have to make sure to keep the laundry cycle going so there are always a collection of clean ones (and my mom has made us some, which is awesome!)
Related: Where to find masks in Kingston
Home renos/redecoration
This week we had our main floor refinished. (Because what else is there do to during a pandemic than redecorate?) We also had the walls painted and we have a new dining room table coming next week.
Why all of a sudden are we updating our space? Well we needed new chairs for our dining room table, and it all spiraled out from there. We’ve been wanting to repaint for a while now, and it looks great so far!
Staircase before Floor before Staircase after Floor after
Next task is returning the living space to a “living” space. The bare walls and floor feel amazing, but we have to unearth everything from our basement to repopulate. We are being pretty ruthless with the decluttering though.
Related: We have so much stuff
My job
You may be wondering what is going on with me – employment wise. (If you need some background on my pandemic working life, jump over here – my story is the last one on this page.)
Since then I’ve been picking up a few freelance opportunities, and I’ve been working on my “in” at Kingstonist. Something seems to have worked – I’ve signed an Employment Agreement with them to start working full-time!
This will be a work-from-home writing position, with some social media work as well. I will continue to source sponsored article ideas (and businesses to participate in them), as well as create local news stories from press releases. There will also be occasional assignments, and maybe some media events, but it feels like exactly what I want to be doing right now.
I have created a contact list of local businesses that I use when I’m creating articles, sponsored or otherwise, and I reach out occasionally with interesting or relevant opportunities. If you would like to be added to that list, fill out this form.
What’s next?
So how do things look going forward? Pretty good, I’d say. With an employee position just waiting for me to step into it, and the kids on track with their new routines and mask wearing, things feel alright.
Thanksgiving and Christmas will be different, as we’re limited to indoor gatherings of 10 people and an outdoor limit of 25, (Patrick’s immediate family is over 25 people.) We’ll play it loose for these seasonal events. And Hallowe’en – well, we’re not really making and actual plans for that as yet either.
As we have been doing since this whole pandemic mess started, we are taking things one day at a time. Cases are spiking, and we’re scaling back our “going out” (which is easy now that we have a fresh living space needing some rearranging), but life is comfortable enough for us right now.
Can I hear about your fall?
How are you coping? Have you had big changes over the last few months? I’d love to hear your experiences – leave me a comment!
Jess
