Time — and covid — marches on and suddenly July is here. It has been almost 4 months since I last set foot in my office. Since I have been inside a building other than my house or HEB. And based on the way things are going in Texas, and in my city/county, it’s going to be quite a while longer. My work has announced that we will remain at Stage 3 (mandatory telework) through at least August 3 and honestly, I think chances are high that I’ll be teleworking for the rest of 2020.
The good news is that after nearly 4 months, I think we’ve all settled into our new routines and “new normal.” I’ve had a lot of stress of my ability to do my job well amidst everything else, but the flip side of that is that I’ve arguably had better work/life balance for the last few months than I’ve had in years.
June goals update:
+ Find and highlight black and minority quilters and creatives. I’ve taken action on this, but have also decided that advertising my goals on this front isn’t necessary. Action speaks louder than good intent, and I plan to continue taking action when and where I can.
+ Build my Etsy shop. Gonna call this done, although in a slightly different form than what I had originally planned. I haven’t added anything new to my Etsy shop yet, but in the last month I got 3 patterns added to Quilt Pattern Mart, revised my Intertwined pattern from 3 years ago, and also turned Intertwined into my very first print pattern. (The print version will be here tomorrow, and will be listed in my shop shortly after!)
+ Write Mini Maze pattern. Done! This will be exclusive to Quilter’s Candy members starting this month, and available in my shop early next year.
+ Finish our taxes. OMG I am procrastinating like never before on doing our stupid taxes! Still not done, but obviously will be by July 15.
+ Move my body 4 times per week. Ugh. Fail. It’s too hot to pop out for a run in the middle of the afternoon like I was doing from March into May and I’ve been in a running funk as a result.
Other June wins:
+ The pool opened! For a week. We went twice. And then closed again because of our county’s rapidly rising number of covid cases. Uggggh. That one week was pretty glorious. (And due to fairly light usage, we assessed it as very low risk.) They say it will reopen again when our county reduces the covid threat level. I’m not optimistic. Sadness.
+ Father’s Day. Despite a couple rough spots — the girls were so excited about celebrating Jose that they woke up extra early and therefore had some tired and cranky moments — I think we gave Jose a pretty nice day.
+ Charlotte went back to daycare. This is her second week and it’s going well. It’s different with all the precautions in place and a totally different drop off/pickup process, but we feel like the benefits outweigh the risk.
We had planned to send Emma to summer care as well starting this week, but when the county numbers starting surging the risk/benefit equation for her changed. So she’s still home. (Honestly the decision to keep Emma home after all was probably tougher on me than her. I was pretty excited at the thought of having weekdays to myself again.)
+ Joined the Aurifil Artisan team. This is my first foray into this type of relationship within the quilting world, and I’m excited about it.
July goals:
+ Figure out a way to make Emma’s birthday special without a party. Her bday is at the beginning of August so July is party planning month…but of course we won’t be able to do a party at a bouncy house place or gym as we’ve done in past year. Creative ideas welcome!!
+ Re-publish L Is For quilt pattern. I wrote this 3 years ago for the Modern Quilt Guild and the rights reverted to me quite a while ago. Time to get it repackaged and up in my shop!
+ Buy patio furniture. We talked about doing this multiple times in the spring, but we didn’t. (And actually, we’ve talked about it ever since we moved into this house almost 4 years ago.) I want to finally get something ordered and delivered so that when the weather cools down again this fall, we’ll be able to enjoy it. (Because I think we’ll all still be social distancing then.)
The year is half over. What will the next half bring?
Katie the sister says
following for birthday ideas…
if Emma has school friends I have heard of people doing “drive by” birthday parties where the parents drive by and you can wave and say hi from a distance. But it’s just really hard. We are probably just doing a family gathering for Elizabeth’s party.
Sarah says
There have been plenty of drive-bys here too so that’s an option!
Misti says
*weeps* about daycare…I wish we felt safe doing that. It would just make everything so much easier. I’ve enjoyed this time but it is getting to the point where I’m like, I need to do Part Time or I’m having to work evenings and take afternoons off to do kid things.
Definitely worried about the school year.
Sarah says
It’s increasingly outrageous to me that society is not having a HUGE conversation about the importance of school and how to reopen it as safely as possible.
Gretchen says
Did you see this piece in the NY Times (by Deb Perlman of Smitten Kitchen?) So many valid points…https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/business/covid-economy-parents-kids-career-homeschooling.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20200702&instance_id=19941&nl=the-morning®i_id=110359634&segment_id=32426&te=1&user_id=b9776670ea11268a1e9fdb24f4d02ef8
Sarah says
Just read it and was nodding my head SO HARD in agreement the whole time. I have been asking for months now why no one is talking about this issue. How can we reopen the economy when there is nowhere for the kids to go???