Stress Awareness Month

While doing my daily ritual of perusing social media, I noticed a post that mentioned National Stress Awareness Month (it was a Crayola ad LOL). I did a google to see if this was a thing and turns out, it is. Stress Awareness Month has been held every April since 1992. During the month, healthcare professionals and experts across the country do their part to raise awareness about the causes and cures for our modern stress epidemic.

How fascinating that it coincides with this pandemic.

Now, as of last Friday, I am officially furloughed until further notice. As stressed as I was at work, I just feel this deep deep sadness. Sadness for the state of the world. Sadness for our country (oh good God, don't get me started on what has been taking place across our country recently). Sadness for all the sick people and their families. Sadness for all the people hurting right now. Sadness over the absolute uncertainty of everything. Just sad. I know this is all temporary, and as a very wise and very good friend of mine keeps reminding me, we can do anything temporarily. THIS is temporary. THIS will not last forever. I don't know what the new normal will be like when everything gets back up and running, but I do know that every single one of us HAS to do our part right now to keep us safe to get to that new version of normal in the future. Stay home. Temporarily. Keep you and your loved ones safe. Your hair will only be wonky temporarily. Our lawns will only be overgrown temporarily. Your boats will still be there when this is done. This is a horrible situation that is no one person's fault. No one wanted this. Not one single person. As another very wise and very good friend of mine keeps saying, we are all victims of corona.

Hang in there a little longer. Please. It's so hard to disregard these rules and regulations if you aren't seeing how bad things are first hand and if you aren't personally affected by the virus. Believe me, it's bad. It's excruciating and heartbreaking and I have had more than one person I know experience tragedy from it. So please, sit tight a little longer. Stay home and bake bread a little longer. Enjoy the time with your families a little longer. Consider yourselves lucky if you haven't experienced any heartache from this and remind yourself this is temporary.

Other things!

- Jeff suggested we have a movie night with Charley last weekend and hang out on our new pull-out couch in the living room for the evening. Charley chose the movies and we had popcorn (courtesy of me and my trusty Whirly-Pop) and soft pretzels (courtesy of Eastern Standard Provisions) and Coca Cola. We had a lovely time watching Onward with Chris Pratt and Tom Holland, as well as Ferris Bueller's Day Off (C's pick. No kidding). So fun to watch an old timey movie with Chuck and see him truly enjoying it and belly laughing at it. Made me happy.

- You guys, the cast of Chuck got together last Friday and did a live virtual table read of one of their episodes (Chuck Vs. The Beard) and it was DELIGHTFUL. I cannot even express how fantastic it was. I smiled so much that it made my face hurt. They raised money for a good cause but also threw a ton of happiness out there to a lot of people who haven't experienced any in a long time. Here's the link if you have an hour to kill and miss that show as much as I do: Chuck Vs. The Beard

- Confession: I am more comfortable in jeans than I am in leggings. I keep seeing a lot of memes about people quarantining in jeans and that there must be something wrong with us. Truth is, I feel real weird in leggings. They make me feel like I am naked. So, I stick with my jeans. After all, I am truly a jeans and t-shirt kinda gal.

- We painted our living room and hallway. We wanted to do this before we even moved in but there was a huge catastrophe with the moving company (they cancelled on us while we were waiting for them to arrive) and it just never happened. We ran out of time and motivation. Well, we have had lots of time, so we got it done and I love it so much. We will start on Charley's room sometime this week.

- While Charley and I were taking Bryn for a walk yesterday, we saw a drive by birthday parade for one of our neighbors. It was about 10 cars long and they were all honking and had signs and bullhorns and it was just the coolest thing. A few of them shouted to us how much they loved Bryn and that made me smile so much, which eventually lead to me tearing up and starting to cry because you guys, I am just an emotional wreck these days, but mostly it made me cry because it makes my heart so happy to see people go out of their way to make other people happy. Charley promptly rolled his eyes and told me to knock it off, while laughing at me, of course.

- Does anyone else find it strange when you have to do normal, every day life things these days? Like doing laundry, or paying bills or studying for a test? Life is so not normal right now, so it is so bizarre to me when I have to do something that used to be so mundane before. Now it seems odd.

- Circling back around to National Stress Awareness Month, there is an account on instagram called The Quarantine Coloring Book that different artists from all over contribute to and you can print the pages out and do what you want with them. I printed a few out for Chuck and myself.

Anyone have any good recipes for peanut butter that they want to throw my way?
Anyone have any good book suggestions that they want to throw my way?

I hope you are all managing okay and staying safe and taking care of yourselves. No matter how dark your days get and how sad you get about our current situation, please remember that this is only temporary and that by staying home, we are preventing things from getting worse in the future. Cook something great, bake something fantastic, color, write, read, exercise, play a game, facetime or house party your friends and family. Do whatever you need to do to keep yourselves entertained and keep the stress at bay. I'm the first to admit that I am all over the place with this-- and that is okay too. Have a good cry (it's so therapeutic!), be sad, be mad.

Just stay home.