Between COVID and social unrest I admit I was having a really hard time there and things were starting to get dark. I am a social person (much more than I realized). The kids were out of school and home with my husband all day who was having a hard time keeping them entertained with no activities and not even a playground to take them to run out the extra energy. The trampoline broke. We ordered a new one but it is delayed because of COVID and still has not arrived when we were hoping to have it well before Memorial Day. We ordered an inflatable water slide, yeah that is MIA as well leaving the kids with apparently nothing to do but fight with each-other. With no social outlets my life had been reduced to going to work in healthcare with multiple COVID updates a day and going home to an exhausted husband and two fighting kids only to clean the house, do laundry and try to figure out a solution. I had to change something.
After talking to a few friends it was decided that this is BS. There is a small group of us that have been quarantined at home for 2 months. The only person still going to a work was me no one else left the house except to get food and walk the dogs. None of us were doing well and all of us were getting really depressed. We started getting together once a week in our garage bar after the kids went to bed. It has been an amazing change. I don’t care how much you Skype, Zoom, text or talk on the phone nothing is the same as face to face interaction. Almost 6 weeks later we are all doing much better. Everyone has started eating better and exercising again.
After a month of getting together we all decided it is time to take the kids to see the grandparents. My parents were even more depressed than we were and even more isolated. Taking the kids over there on Saturday mornings is now the highlight of their week. After the first visit my Mom told me that the isolation is horrible. At her age and with her health problems she is high risk. But she would rather the world open up and get to go out and see her friends and live her life and take the chance that she may die rather than me “safe” at home that has become her prison. That really made me think. What good is being alive if you are not out there living your life to the fullest and just existing?
That thought changed something in me. I started to look at my life and my goals again. With refunds from everything that was canceled because of COVID and our tax return and stimulus check we paid off our credit cards. We now just have our monthly bills, my car payment and our mortgage. It is weird not being in debt and we still have money leftover. Our plan was to go to Hawaii in December. Once we started looking into it Hawaii’s COVID restrictions would leave us quarantined in our hotel room for the entire trip. We decided against it. New plan, A trip to the UK in May for our 10 year anniversary. My husband really wants to go to London and has never been. So the plan is London and somewhere else. We are still figuring out the “somewhere else” part.
Then another cancellation happened and my educational conference in Las Vegas in November was canceled and turned virtual. Since I returned from the UK in September I have been looking at my next item on my bucket list…the Northern Lights. I had the trip pretty much figured out. So when Vegas got canceled I decided “screw it” and went ahead and booked my solo Northern lights trip for February and ordered myself some snow pants on Amazon and a few pairs of fleece leggings to get started on my packing list for my Northern Lights adventure for this girl who likes to live in sundresses, leggings and tunic tops with flip flops. I do however have an awesome winter coat thanks to my recent trip to Scotland where I was terrified of freezing my butt off. I may have overdone it because my coat was much warmer than I needed there but it should be perfect for my Northern adventure in February.
Working Mom - Travel Dreams 