Hey everyone, it’s the last Friday in June in the year 2020… and I haven’t posted since Mother’s Day – May 10, 2020.

First of all, please accept my sincere apology. Life during the COVID-19 pandemic has really changed my schedule and how I do things.

Previously, I used to be able to get my blog posts written in the mornings before my work shifts. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic, I needed to try to get my kids to do their school work (Kylie) and preschool work (Lucas). In general, I just couldn’t find the time to write blog posts… and they’ve kind of fallen by the wayside.

Yea… we’ve noticed…

That said, my son has recently started preschool again, with COVID-19 precautions in place, utilizing small class sizes (only 7 kids), and liberal use of masks and hand washing. Also, while Kylie doesn’t have summer school, she is self-directed enough to be able to get her Kumon done with a little bit of IXL and typing class mixed in. As such, I’ve recently been able to regain some of my morning time.

We’re going to start off slow before trying to ramp up to Monday, Wednesday, Friday again. So for now, we’re going to do alternating weeks of Friday and Wednesday, because that is what works out the best for my work schedule. That means my next post will be Wednesday, July 1st.

Soo… what you been doing?

I was going to talk about this more in depth, but I think COVID-19 has caused people to do a lot more self-reflection and be forced to make difficult decisions. For example, tackling hard questions like whether to stay where you are or move somewhere else… or it could be more difficult, life-changing questions about whether to stay together or get a divorce.

For us, my wife and I have been lucky in the sense that we have not been negatively impacted financially by the pandemic. Additionally, in terms of our marriage, we’re as close (and in love) as we’ve ever been. However, being forced to stay predominantly indoors for the last few months (and the foreseeable future) has changed our lifestyle.

Like what?

First of all, our spending is WAY down. When you don’t go anywhere, you don’t really spend any money. I guess I underestimated how much money we spent just by going out and eating out. Also, we weren’t paying for after school care and preschool anymore these last few months either. I’ll go into more depth on this in a future post, since my Attack on Student Loans and 529 plans were slightly affected.

Additionally, I’ve actually lost 10 lbs in the last few months while doing essentially zero exercise. This change came about only from the significant decrease in my eating out — and my eating habits. When I worked my evening shift I would usually grab fast food before or during my shift, or sometimes both.

However, now that I’ve been working from home I just run upstairs and grab a home-cooked meal for dinner on my break. I also saw my cholesterol drop from slightly high (205) to normal (165) during our yearly physical exams. That’s a 40 point drop for me compared to last May. I guess I never really knew just how bad all that fast food was for me.

What about the kids?

My son and daughter didn’t really have a difficult time not being able to see their friends initially. However, as time went on, they really began to miss their friends.

For example, my son used to not like going to preschool, but now he loves it because he gets to see his friends again. I think he really missed them, but he didn’t know it. As for my daughter, we try to get her together we her friends on Zoom with a few playdates, but it’s been difficult for her too. They both want to go back to doing swimming, playing soccer, and other stuff, like piano.

Social distancing has been particularly hard on my wife… who really doesn’t like to be in the house. She is in an office all day Monday-Friday, so on Saturdays and Sundays she really wants to take the kids out somewhere. That used to be the beach, the mall, the pool, the park or out to lunch and/or dinner somewhere before. However, with the pandemic it’s not been possible to do. So we’ve been trying to at least go for walks in our neighborhood and having the kids play in the cul-de-sac. It’s not much, but it’s something.

I’ve talked about the New Normal before…

but this may be the New, Newer Normal… In general, I consider myself a realist, with a slightly tilt toward pessimism. However, I don’t think we’re going to go “back to the way things were” in the foreseeable future. I think we are going to see a second and third wave. In fact, we may see waves until we get a successful vaccine. Only then, in combination with worldwide adoption will we be allowed to go back to “normal”.

The thing is, “normal” may be different at that time. Only time will tell.

Oh yea one more thing…

I really miss baseball. Please let me watch my Dodgers again soon.

TL;DR

I’m still here… and I’ll try to start posting again.

The Newer, New Normal may already be here.

-Sensei

Agree? Disagree? Questions, Comments and Suggestions are welcome.

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