Folks,

I'm hitting a wall, and I'm hitting it fast.

It's a pandemic-plagued life wall, and I am crashing into it HARD.
I can't really pinpoint a single thing that's driving me crazy. I just know that, lately, everything and everyone, and ironically, the lack of everything and everyone, is making me nuts.

I'm even pissing myself off, and that, my friends, is a new skill I've acquired over the past 12 months.

Twelve months at home.

Insane.

That almost a year ago, my three kids, under the age of nine, came home from school for Spring Break AND NEVER WENT BACK.

And that my husband never returned to his office or me to the gym and that these days, I can barely find time to catch a solo breath, let alone time to write.
That for the past year, each of us has found it quite challenging to stay entirely fond of each other when we literally never get a break from one another.

I love my family.

That bears repeating...I LOVE MY FAMILY.

And they love me (I think. I hope. If I'm honest, it's probably a toss-up at this point.)

But being together all day, every day, schooling, working, playing, bathing, cooking, eating, cleaning, and repeating that sh*t, day after day, after monotonous day, it's both very over and underwhelming.

And not just for me, their mama, but for the rest of the crew, too; my male counterpart whose home office feels like a jail cell and especially those youngsters, who on a random day in 2020, stopped participating in in-person schooling, group sports, birthday parties, regular playdates and the like.

And so here we are, heading into spring with anything but a spring in our step.

We're fighting a lot.

There's plenty of tears.

BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY, we're all fully aware of the blessing it is to have each other, our health, and the ability to be our less than perfect selves and still be respected, supported, and ridiculously loved by one another.

Parenting has always been hard, but parenting and relationshiping in the age of corona is its own unique beast.

And, all I've got to say is this --
that even if every day is quite the shiitake show,

that even if you're a total mess, and so is your house,

that even if you and yours are at each other 24 hrs a day,

that even if mistake and after mistake is being made,

y'all are still amazing and awesome and almost unfathomably resilient.

It is so easy to break when you hit a wall, but when you have the love of undeniably good people around you, you won't, and my goodness, isn't that the most incredible thing in the world.