Life in the time of COVID

Good morning friends!

I'm sure you're all sick and tired of hearing yet another business come out with a COVID post, but hear me out. I'd like to take a very brief moment of your day to talk about my new normal.

As you may know, I recently moved to Beaumont to be closer to my day job at the airport. Unfortunately, I have been temporarily laid off from work until the pandemic cools off and flights are once again going at full capacity. Those of you who know me know that I love to work - I love talking to customers, I love being on the floor, and I absolutely feel like the luckiest person to have been hired at my day job.

My two biggest passions in life have always been photography and travel. So now, with international travel bans and closures of non-essential businesses, I have been staying at home, practicing self-isolation, and going absolutely stir-crazy.

I've started meditating every day, for at least 10 minutes, as a way to ground myself and reflect on the many blessings in my life. My fridge is stocked, I'm not sick, my roommate's dog is adorable and lets me snuggle, my parents and my brother are healthy and are only 45 minutes away, I spent a couple hours the other day on video chat with friends across the country, and Safeways had my favourite kind of coffee beans on sale the other day.

Beaumont is a beautiful town to explore, and I went on a 5km walk the other morning through the ravines and around the dog park just to take in some fresh air. Don't worry - I was practicing social distancing by not talking to anyone.

Emily (my roommate) and I spent an afternoon repotting all our houseplants, as well as having started seedings on our coffee table, and I accidentally knocked over my bucket of water and reconstituting dirt over the edge of our balcony. The downstairs neighbour was not impressed. He yelled out "who threw up over the balcony!?" I avoided his question by quickly picking up my bucket and closing the patio door. Woops. Sorry!

We've been doing a lot of cooking at home as well. Mostly because Beaumont doesn't have Skip the Dishes, but also because I find cooking and baking to be therapeutic. Emily also discovered that we do not own cake pans, just glass baking dishes. My 9x13 pan was still in a box, and she didn't know I had one, so she made two cakes in two different sized dishes. They still turned out great!

I've also been going through backlogs of photos that I've taken. Like from high school. There's a lot of cringeworthy photos in there, but there's also some gems from school trips, band camps, family vacations, and some old photos of our family dogs that have both since passed away. So I've decided to comb through the years (starting in 2007, oh god) to create photo albums for myself. I probably won't be able to get them printed any time soon, but a girl can reminisce.

Hopefully, the world will come to a new normal soon. And, as the great wizard Dumbledore once said:

"Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if only one remembers to turn on the light." –The Prisoner of Azkaban

Don't forget to turn on your light, friends.

Until next time,

Renee