Hi friends!

I hope you are all doing well, that you are safe, and that you are dealing with this situation the best way you can.

This is…weird, right?

Sorry for the title. I try not to let my potty mouth invade my blog, but I didn’t want to think of a more appropriate title at the moment 🙂

I didn’t want to spend much of my blog post talking about the pandemic, but it’d be hard to be like, “AND HERE’S A PICTURE OF MY LATEST MAKE, NOTHING ELSE GOING ON HERE EVERYTHING IS GREAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT.” I also feel a lot of solidarity with you all as I read your posts.  I feel so much better knowing that we’re all experiencing the same thing.  And knowing that we’re isolating ourselves to try and keep this from spreading is seriously beautiful.

If you can’t handle reading more about what is going on, I totally understand. Just scroll down to the picture of embroidered cacti I made.

I guess I won’t focus too much on what I’m scared of at the moment, because I know we all have the same fears (overwhelmed health care system, empty grocery stores, the failing economy, rising cases every day….) Husband and I are very lucky.  We are so, so privileged.  We have enough food to get us through a couple of weeks if the grocery stores are still crazy.  We both have the capability of working from home.  Most importantly, our families (including my relatives in Italy) are safe.  I have to give Mom credit, she was talking about coronavirus long before I started taking it seriously.  And now I’m part of the crowd of Millennials checking in and making sure that their parents are staying at home.

I started working from home this week because my previous excuse for going to work (trying to maintain normalcy) was selfish. I could no longer justify it.  Luckily, work allowed us to take our equipment home so we could get an efficient set up.  I took a large suitcase with me, walked it from my garage to my building downtown, and packed my monitors and files.  Not a bad set up.

We bought a nice chair for me on sale so that my old lady back wouldn’t hurt too much.  It’s been a pretty nice set up so far.  My yarn taunts me throughout the day, since this is in my craft room. Husband is on the other side in the office/workout room.  Our family room is downstairs, so it’s a nice separation from our work spaces at the end of the day.

Everyone has been asking how Apollo has been taking this.  You guys, this situation is EVERYTHING THAT APOLLO HAS EVER DREAMED OF. 🙂

I won’t lie, work has been very stressful. I have had a hard time focusing on work with everything going on.  We have a big proposal due that I need to get caught up on (which I am going to work on this weekend, since WHAT ELSE AM I GOING TO DO?) I have been working later hours trying to get caught up after VPN issues.  There’s just a lot going on with work and not everything is going well, and I tend to go hard on myself when that happens.  Instead of telling myself, “This is okay, you’re still learning” or “You’ll be better at this soon, give yourself time for growth and learn as much as possible” or “You’re smarter than you give yourself credit for,” it’s much easier to tell myself “YOU ARE GARBAGE AND YOU ARE GOING TO FAIL.” As you can imagine, this is not very motivating for better work performance and then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I can’t even say that it’s a great distraction right now, because if I’m not worried about the virus, I’m really worried about work. I think it’ll pass in another 10 days once we hit our internal proposal deadline.  Then maybe I will have time to enjoy all this extra free time we have now.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But it’ll be fine. IT’LL BE FINE. Again, I’m so lucky to even HAVE a job right now in this economy, that I can work from home. My heart breaks for people who are in health care right now (CDC is telling them to wear bandanas since there is a shortage of masks.  BANDANAS).  I’m sorry for my selfish rant.  It could be so much worse.  And now I have all the extra time I need to get more tasks in order.

ANYWAY. HERE’S A PRETTY PICTURE OF SOME HAPPY CACTI YAYYY.

This is from a super-cute DMC kit I bought a couple of months ago.  It’s beginner-friendly and so quick and easy.  Since we’re going to be at home for an undetermined amount of time (¯\_(ツ)_/¯), this is going to be a great time for some stash-busting projects.  I’m already halfway through a project that’s been sitting in my closet since 2016!

I guess that’s all I have for now. I’m going to knit a bit more, then head upstairs to work on my proposal before my anxiety implodes.  Please tell me how you all are doing and what projects are keeping you sane at the moment. If you need to vent, please do so! I am here for you as we all weather this together!  Stay safe, my friends, and I send you all the warmest virtual hugs (from at least a 6 ft distance) 🙂 ❤