Hellobee Boards

My family has been extremely lucky through this process. No one closer to me than a family member of a good friend (who I knew but didn't have a relationship with) has died, though family members of mine have contracted the virus. When it became clear that, due to leadership changes, my job wasn't going to support working parents on double duty anymore I was able to quickly find another position that offered me healthy balance, growth and additional compensation. And DD is big enough now (16 months) that I have so much less fear about what happens if she is exposed. All that said this has been HARD. I am honestly really thankful for the extra time we've gotten with our daughter while she is little. We were here when she rolled over for the first time, took her first steps and said her first word, most of which we probably otherwise would have missed. But I also feel like there are so many things we've missed out on and DD has missed out on in her first year and a half (basically anything in a public space or with other kids...)

I feel like my relationship with DH outside of being mom and dad has completely been lost to pandemic exhaustion and lack of childcare and I really don't know how we get it back even once things lift a bit. We don't have local family and all our friends have kids or risk factors so we've never left our daughter with a babysitter. We're not fighting and we still love each other, but we also don't talk to each other anymore (what would we say?--we're one wall apart at most 24 hours a day and exhausted).

We're trying to plan some 'vacation' because I have two weeks I need to use or lose by the end of June but it's probably just going to be time off work at home because where are we going to go? Hopefully it will be better once the weather warms up a little, but this winter has been LONG even in the best of circumstances.

The last year still feels surreal.

The 4 of us are still at home all the time. DH works from home. I am self-employed and I just stopped looking for new work so I could care for the kiddos. I am grateful we can afford me not working but I miss the mental stimulation. My industry has been really badly impacted by COVID so between that and my not working for more than a year, I'm not sure what my career will look like when I get back in the game.

DS1 (6) will go back to school in April, but only 9 hours a week. The rest of the time, he will have asynchronous (=parent-directed) learning. DS2 (4) will go back to preK in September.

The dreary weather is not helping my mental health. I also don't know when I'll be able to see my folks. We have no local family so we haven't seen anybody in 1.5 years. My parents live in a country where the vaccine rollout is REALLY slow - at this pace, I may be vaccinated before them. And the borders are closed anyway. So I couldn't go home if I wanted to right now. If we can't go again this summer, it will be a blow. I can't imagine my kids going 3 years without seeing my parents in person. Kids change so much at that age, it makes me sad to think my parents are missing out on so much.

At least nobody close to us has gotten sick. My mom got a scare this week. It was a long 24 hours to wait for the test results. Negative thank god.

I feel so isolated right now. I keep up with friends but I think none of us want to complain too much because we’re relatively privileged. Appreciate people being so candid about how tough it’s been. Even though we haven’t been directly impacted just the huge burden of worry, research, planning over everything has been huge. I always forget that and then wonder why I feel so exhausted and burnt out. I do feel like my husband and I have been forced to work through a lot of tough stuff in our marriage and as individuals. I think we’ll come out of this stronger. On a larger level I can’t get my head around the horrific loss of life. I worry about all the kids who have lost a year of school and may not catch up. I hope there is a way we can come together as a country after this is all over. It is such a struggle not to be cynical about that.

The transition to working from home, virtual learning and trying to keep a 3 year old entertained was tough. I broke down a couple times. But once the 3 year old was able to start back at daycare in July it was so much better. My 3rd grader has been distance learning, but after winter break he was able to start going in-person 4 days a week (only a small number of students in each class have been going). If all goes well in the next couple weeks our district could move to the next hybrid phase.

As for me, it sounds like WFH is going to be the norm now with maybe 1-2 office days a month. Even though my commute wasn't that long, it has been so nice not having to drive anywhere. Daycare and elementary school are both within a mile of our house. We haven't seen any family in over a year though. My mom used to watch my kids for a week a couple times a year, I miss it so much! I never realized how much that time allowed me to recharge.

Pros:
I now work from home permanently and am still employed.

Cons:
Covid killed my otherwise very healthy mom. She died alone 1400 miles away from us and I don’t wish that horror and grief on my worst enemy. Per her wishes, I had to make the decision to unhook her from life support and coordinate last goodbyes with my siblings and relatives. Her cremains were delivered to me by mail the day before Thanksgiving and my family has not had a funeral or memorial service.

My favorite coworker was in the ICU on and off a vent for over 2 months before being released to go home. Now he’s back in the hospital for heart surgery. A close friends dad has been in the ICU for several weeks. This is just the most recent people in my life to he hospitalized from Covid.

It hasn’t been the best year.

@Caly: I’m so sorry about your mom ️

We were in the middle of selling our home and moving 4 hrs away when it all started. I was laid off and DH was already not working. We sold our home and moved our family of 5 in with my parents and sister for 5 months. My mom has several health issues that are new and come with a lot of trauma, reason for us moving closer, so that kept us in all the time just to be safe. Had to figure out how to buy a home with no jobs, we did it! We had been homeschooling but just sent the kids back to school last week. Still no jobs, the market in our area is hard but trying to make the most of it all. Lots of family time. We have stayed healthy and all my family had as well. But I did have a friend who lost a parent to covid and several friends that were sick in icu and have recovered but now have other health issues from covid.

@Caly: I'm so sorry

It's a bit hard to know where to start in answering this.

The good: getting to spend a lot more time with my kids due to ongoing childcare disruptions and limitations; not having to commute, getting to wear sweats whenever I want... I also feel like it has actually been good for my relationship with DH, we decided we just don't have the energy to get upset with each other so we're not going to go there, and he's stepped up to help more at home given all the work created by the childcare and other disruptions.

The so-so: Being absolutely utterly exhausted - while I'm very lucky to have a stable job, there were a bunch of covid disruptions that created a ton of work, and we've lost a substantial share of people to deaths and departures, but have a hiring freeze due to covid cuts. Combine that with limited childcare and it's been intense.

The ugly: the suffering so many people have faced is so heartbreaking.. for me personally, advocating through an insane amount of bs to get a relative access to adequate mental health care has been the low point. Mental health care in this country can be pretty crappy, and i learned that many providers don't take depression seriously in older Americans without a history of severe depression. I won't go into details, but in short it blew my mind how much advocating and struggling it took to get this person the help they desperately needed (which ultimately involved inpatient care and ECT treatment). I think covid has ushered in a mental health crisis, and I wish so much we made it easier for people to get support.

@Caly: That is awful, I’m so sorry.

Its hard to even pick up specific things from the last year; sometimes it feels like events didn't happen. Or did they? What interactions were virtual? What was in person? I can't even remember. I remember the death; being unable to grieve the way you would like to is incredibly hard.

DH is still working from home for the foreseeable future. Typical work for him is travel-heavy so unsure when that will resume. His field has been unaffected and for that we are thankful. We moved into our new place about 2 months before we were locked inside our house for 52 days straight (we counted); thankfully it has space, a yard, and an office for DH. I had debated returning to work PRN once the kids were both in school (that would have happened this year) but obviously that isn't happening. Even if I had reliable childcare, I don't think I would willingly go into a hospital system right now. Its selfish, but my family comes first.
My kids have been in school in person the entire year minus a week or two here or there which has gone really well and I am thankful they can go in person, it has been so good for them. In those virtual weeks, I found myself wondering aloud SO many times how single parent households or two-working parking households were making it work. It seems impossible. It is impossible
We've managed to get some things on the calendar as far as travel (driving, to "safe" places). So having something to look forward to is good. My parents and in laws were vaccinated.

This year has been a blur. That’s the only way I can describe it. Obviously, hindsight is 20/20, but last year for March-December, I just felt like I was in a perpetual holding pattern. Not making any plans, just wake up every day and get on the hamster wheel of parenting and working from home, sleep, wake up and do it all over again. Day in and day out. I guess not having an end date made it feel like Groundhogs day. Other people were like, getting fit, or learning. New hobby, and I (like all working parents I assume) have just been trying to survive. I barely remember the entire last year.

We haven’t seen our parents in almost 2 years on my husband’s side, and my mom in over a year. This is rough, because they’re all retired, so we typically see each set 3-4 times a year.

We’ve totally been lucky in that somehow we’ve managed to make it work. I think I pissed off my work greatly, but I’ve managed to work from home from March 2019 until now, and this is notable because I’m a teacher, and my school has been in-person this entire school year. But there were just enough kids who signed up for all remote, that I was able to get one of the remote positions (there were only 5) on the basis of my autoimmune diseases (I have lupus and sjogrens), but I’m officially getting my 2nd vaccine next week and am back to work literally 2 weeks after that. My district had been trying to get me to come back for a bit now. But I managed to get them to hold off until the official 2 weeks after my vaccine, even though they are working with a literal skeleton crew.

And a note about that: in-person school workers are SPENT. They are not okay. This year has been......shit? Teachers are out for Covid exposures constantly—CONSTANTLY. We have gym teachers subbing in math class, and school librarians (me) teaching all kinds of things I am not qualified to teach. Because that’s what in-person school is right now. This week alone, there are 8 teachers out for either Covid exposure (2 weeks) or other serious illness (surgery, child surgery, cancer), and subs can’t be found so the remaining teachers are spread thin. They have to give up their planning periods and their lunch breaks...and their sanity really, for in-person school to even be a thing. So my heart goes out to all these teachers, who are constantly vilified by the public, but are working under horrible conditions. Who wants to go to work every day to do something totally different from what you were hired to do? Would you go to your office job and be fine with being pulled to teach 7th grade gym or 8th grade orchestra all day, when you have no background in either? And not for a day... I’ve been teaching random
Classes for now an entire year. And so has everyone else in my building. Most days, I struggle to remember what I used to like about this job.

Anyway. My kids are fine, and I’m grateful for that. They have grown academically by leaps and bounds. They’ve gotten to go to in person school (well....most of the time). They do virtual dance class, and virtual Girl Scouts, and are even in a virtual school musical. They get to see their friends every day at school. They never, ever complain about wearing masks and willingly wear them outside, at the park, everywhere. We’ve had 9 weeks of Covid related classroom/school closures. One of my kids’ school class has been out for 2 week periods multiple times because of positive Covid cases in the class—but Somehow, none of us 4 have gotten it (that I know of—we’ve all had multiple tests. We test whenever there any sign of sore throat or cough or whatever). My husband, who isn’t eligible for a vaccine now, lucked into a leftover vaccine. By pure chance. My mother is fully vaccinated, so we’ve already planned for her to visit us once my husband and I are a few weeks out from our 2nd vaccines.

Speaking of my husband, we’ve had some pretty interesting Ups and downs. For a while last spring, it was like an extended snow day, and our marriage was probably better than ever. We even had daytime sex during the work day! But this winter it’s like, okay it’s a year now of only seeing each other. I’m honestly so tired of us both working from home all day in a tiny space, having our kids home half the time remote learning. Sometimes just hearing him eat an apple fills me with so much rage I want to leave my house and never come back. So, maybe going back to work will be good for me.

So bottom line, I have so much to be grateful for. Truly, I can’t complain because I know I’ve had it better than most people throughout this pandemic. And I can see light at the end of the tunnel now. But even so, I have moments where I feel like I’m hanging on by a thread, and honestly, I still teeter on the edge of wanting to just quit my job (rather than go back in person) every single day, mainly because—-we still have 3.5 months and a not-so-great track record of kids having to stay home from school because of Covid, even though they are in-person at school. And it’s impossible for my husband to work and homeschool 2 kids, and honestly, it doesn’t make sense for him to try because he makes 5times what I make.

So I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll go back to work, and a miracle will occur and we’ll somehow make it to the end of this school year unscathed. But I’m also like, awake at night wondering how that’s going to happen when I know it’s not likely we’ll have 3.5 months of uninterrupted school time.

So just like everyone else.... it’s a mess, but overall I realize I’ve been very lucky in many ways. Just hoping things get better from here.