A Change of Plans

There is nothing I love more than a good surprise. Why? Because I love trying to figure out what the surprise is. Last week I was able to piece things together and figured out that Rob graciously used his "storm money" to buy me a side by side for my birthday. What I didn't figure out is that he had planned a huge surprise party for me tomorrow. So many friends were going to show up tomorrow afternoon to celebrate my birthday with me. But, alas, hurricane #268 of the year is about to hit Louisiana. Rob didn't want to chance him having to work or us losing power so he played it safe and cancelled the party. As much as I would've loved to have been surprised with my friends coming over, I am glad he changed the plans. Today I was going to take the boys to the gulf for the day. We were going to go to an aquarium and to a new restaurant. But, this morning we decided to stay home instead. I am glad we changed the plans.

Why am I glad the plans have changed? One of the reasons is that the weeks have gotten so busy that it's nice to have a day to relax once in awhile. As I said in a previous blog, we've gone from zero to sixty in a short time. While I'm glad some things are getting back to normal, I'm still not ready for all the busy schedules. For the first time in my life, I'm okay with the fact that I'm still kind of a home body. As much as I love doing new things with the boys and having friends over, I am thankful that we have a relaxing weekend ahead of us. Time to recharge after a busy week!

Grass is Greener

 I know the old saying “The grass is always greener on the other side.” But, this year I have really been feeling that. In March, when the world literally shut down, I would’ve given anything to have social interaction outside of our 4 walls. I felt claustrophobic and at times, lonely. I don’t do well being cooped up so I made the best of it by doing endless house projects that I never have time for. By July, things were slowly getting back to normal. We were busy to some extent but a lot of things were still closed due to Covid. In August school started, but we started on a hybrid model. Some students came Monday and Wednesday while others came Tuesday and Thursday. I had a lot of “prep” time due to our schedule so life wasn’t crazy busy. Then we had hurricane after hurricane after hurricane hit the gulf. The thing with hurricanes is that you don’t know exactly where they’ll hit until about 24 hours prior to making landfall. So we had a lot of days off of school in August due to “storm days”. Then all of a sudden...BOOM...life went completely back to normal. Talk about a shock! For 5 months, life was pretty much slow and easy and then within two weeks, life gets crazy busy. Between the boys’ activities, hair cut appts, car issues and errands, this week has been insane. Not to mention, I no longer have a lot of prep time at school so I bring work home in the evenings and weekends. This week it was overwhelming. I was so thankful that yesterday was the first day where we didn’t have any after school commitments. Usually on the weekends I run around, trying to get everything done for the new week. But today I had to decompress. I worked all morning and then I sat on the couch around 2pm and haven’t done much since then. I need this time to rest- physically and mentally. I do NOT want to go back to life being shut down but I am ready for a slower pace again. I’m not quite ready for life to completely go back to normal yet. That’s one thing I learned during the pandemic. That being said... how’s  the grass looking on your side of the fence??