April 2020 – Running Forward…My Way

Quarantine Ponderings: Overloaded

Published on April 27, 2020April 27, 2020 by kerrymckim2 Comments

I am one of those people whose mind is always going.

I can’t just sit still and do nothing. I hardly watch TV. My DVR is overrun with episodes of Blue Bloods, This is Us and Better Call Saul though I pretty much only have the brain capacity to binge watch old favorites.

I have lots of thoughts. I haven’t been writing about it. I have spent most of 2019 away from my blog because I needed space at that time.

I brought back my weekly gratitude posts for awhile. I need to bring those back. Gratitude is a good habit to have.

Then 2020 happened.

I think we have all had time to sit in our thoughts. I don’t think that is a bad thing. I think more people need to spend time thinking. I have had many people in my life that tell me that I need to stop thinking so much and that I need to get out of my thoughts.

I disagree.

Perhaps people need to think more.

So here, in 2020, during a time of Quarantine, we are experiencing something new. Some thing no one alive has ever experienced. Well unless you are over 100 years old and even if you were alive during the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic, you probably don’t remember it.

With this new experience, we have probably been thinking about things we may have never thought about before. And we are surrounded by other people who may be thinking about things they have never thought about before.

And then people may post on social media and the collective energy may feel like the outlet that Clark Griswold plugged his Christmas lights into.

You may be feeling overloaded.

Clark Griswold’s electrical outlet is your brain on quarantine.

I am probably dating myself majorly here but I was an 80’s child and my overstimulated brain thought of this 80’s commercial.

This is your brain. This is your brain during the 2020 Pandemic. Any questions?

Anyone else shocked that a commercial towards kids lasted a whole 30 seconds in the 1980s? 15 second Insta-stories are the new 30 second commercial.

I am also amazed that the guy cracked the egg with one hand. Of course, the video quality if poor and for all we know, there could be egg shells in that fried egg. *insert shrug emoji*

Maybe the egg is another analogy of how our quarantine brain feels…with or without drugs. (Not judging nor condoning. Use responsibly. And kids….your brains are still forming. It’s your best asset. Don’t eff it up.)

So I have these thoughts but I don’t take the time to write out blog posts about them. My style of writing is usually spending 2-4 days drafting a post, usually handwritten in my blogging journal first. Then I spent a couple hours transcribing it into blog form.

Yeah…between homeschooling my kid and working 40 hours a week, I don’t have time to write in my normal style.

But it became clear to me that I must write because I need to get these thoughts out and to clear my head.

So I am changing how I draft blog posts. I am doing something new and out of my comfort zone. You are going to get my ponderings in a more raw form. And I am going to blog about that I need to say and maybe it will reasonate with you. Feel free to share with me what you are thinking, even if it has nothing to do with what I wrote about. I love hearing from people.

I hope you have a great week.

How quickly things can change

Published on April 23, 2020April 23, 2020 by kerrymckim3 Comments

March 12.

That was a Thursday. At that point there were no cases of COVID-19 in Maine. We were the last state in New England standing. If I remember correctly, there were cases in 30 states. I was excited for Saturday as my town was having a Bean and Potluck Supper to celebrate Maine’s 200th birthday. I had volunteered to make a cake and I was going to decorate with a blueberry theme as I had Maine blueberries in my freezer. My daughter’s class was going to helping out at the supper.

I had been following the virus for the previous 6 weeks. What can I say? I’m a nerd who loves maps and I work in healthcare.

I had been slowly stocking up on food over the past couple weeks. No panic buying. Just picking up a little extra on things my 5 year old would be pissed if we ran out of, so things like Dino-Nuggests and Cheez-Its with the Frozen characters on them. The important things. No TP Hoarding here.

I had an almost empty chest freezer that I was slowly filling.

I also did my Easter Bunny shopping early. I figured there would be two outcomes. If Easter products were hard to find, then the Easter Bunny would still come through. If there was no shortage of Easter Products, I would still be happy to have that shopping done. The latter was the outcome.

A little voice told me that morning to go to Wal-Mart and do another grocery trip. Just one last trip. So I went. Got on extra box of Frozen Cheez Its and Two extra bags of Dino Nuggets. And my intuition told me to buy an extra bag of flour. I had no idea flour would become hard to find in the coming weeks.

I came home and put the Dino-Nuggets in the freezer. Then I went to work. (I work from home.)

That afternoon it was announced that Maine had it’s first case.

It was only a matter of time.

As expected, the first case was in Southern Maine which might as well still be in another state when you are from my part of Maine. (I kid. Well, I kid but there is some truth to that.)

Then a bunch of activities and events planned were postponed and cancelled, including the bean supper.

I picked my daughter up from school because there were T-ball sign ups. Of course that season has been postponed.

I took my daughter to the beach that evening while everyone went to the supermarkets and bought all the hamburger and toilet paper.

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We found a piece of sea glass. This has become a new hobby. Maybe I will write a post about our sea glass adventures. (And it’s okay if you look at this piece of sea glass and think it looks like…something. Or maybe I just have a dirty mind.)

You can also follow our adventures on Instagram at @kerryannmckim #shamelessplug

The next morning I dropped my daughter off at school and things were different. Instead of all the kids congregated together, the children went straight to their classrooms. No panic. It was sold to the kids “we’re doing something different today.”

It was announced that the teachers would be coming up with plans should school be cancelled.

Saturday morning my daughter sold cookies with her Girl Scout Troop. People needed to get cookies before quarantine.

That weekend I went out for one of my best friends birthdays. We were still cautious. We had hand sanitizer. Plus, alcohol kills germs…right?

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Not going to lie. Even with modern technology, I miss my friends. I did drop off ice cream to them the following week but I miss seeing them. One of my friends has a birthday in May and we were joking that we wouldn’t get to see each other until her birthday.

Now I don’t think that is going to happen.

That night we got notified that there would be no school for two weeks. Which would later turn into 6 weeks and then turn into the rest of the school year.

Sunday morning was my daughters dance class and then we stopped in at her troops last cookie booth so we could pick up and deliver some cookies we sold last minute.

And that was the last of life before the quarantine.

I’m trying not to complain. While homeschooling my kid and denying my social nature is not easy…this still doesn’t compare to those 5 months that Bryon was hooked up to a ventilator. But uncertainty is still never easy. The only difference is that when Bryon was sick, it was only our world that was unstable….everything was going on as scheduled around us. Right now, it is uncertain for everyone around us.

So while I can draw a lot of parallels between that crisis and this crisis, there are very big differences.

But remember….nothing ever lasts forever.

And everybody wants to rule the world. But that is another whole issue.

Those Scranton Memories

Published on April 2, 2020April 2, 2020 by kerrymckim4 Comments

While everyone is entertaining themselves by watching The Tiger King, I felt called to watch The Office on Netflix.

I admit, I was also inspired by my friend Liz as she is awesome and she is an office fan.

And I have zero interest in Tiger King. Or whatever it is called. I don’t care how many people on my Facebook Newsfeed watch it.

Speaking of newsfeeds -not going to lie- people have been annoying me.

Quarantine has been getting to me.

A month ago, most people couldn’t care less about the coronavirus and now they are epidemiological experts and they are mad at government for not taking it serious enough and not doing “stay at home” measures sooner.

As if they would have listened if those measures had been enacted sooner.

I have made good use of my “snooze for 30 days function” because I realize that I am probably just irritable.

We are all irritable. Don’t let it ruin your otherwise good friendships unless you barely tolerated that person anyway.

Then go ahead and delete and block.

And if someone deletes and /or blocks you, be happy they did. They did you a favor.

Keep space for those who want to be in your life.

So anyway, I wanted to watch something light-hearted on Netflix. In the recent months I have watched Cheers and Parks and Rec. I can’t watch Friends or How I Met Your Mother because they are not on Netflix anymore.

Witty conversations with my friend Liz inspired me to watch The Office.

As I began watching (I am currently on Season 5) it dawned on me that I hadn’t watch it since Bryon died.

It made sense why I hadn’t watched it. I tend to avoid the shows we watched together.

When I went to begin watching the series, I realized that it was in Season 8. I rarely watched Netflix when Bryon was alive unless I watched it with him and even then, we usually watched certain Netflix series like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black.

It was a spooky feeling to see where Bryon last watched the office over four years ago.

(Fun fact: Our Netflix account is older than our marriage. My brother pointed that out to me over Thanksgiving when I logged into Netflix with an older email that consisted of my maiden name.)

I’ve been enjoying watching The Office again. It is bringing back a lot of memories. It was Bryon who had gotten me into the show.

It all reminded me of a road trip we took to Scranton in 2012.

Not to be confused with the time we drove to Scranton in 2015 when he decided to buy a nativity scene for our lawn for our Fun and Old Fashioned McKim Family Christmas.

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Our first trip to Scranton was in June of 2012. According to Facebook, it was 98 days before we got married.

We were dealing with the stress of wedding planning.

Somehow we got talking about Waffle House. Bryon was a waffle house enthusiast and I had never been. Through the power of the internet, he learned that the closest waffle house was ten minutes north of Scranton.

We decided to take a break from the stress of wedding planning and take an adventure.

So down I-88 we went, past Binghamton and into Pennsylvania.

(Fun Fact- Bryon despised I-88 and told me how much he hated I-88 every time we were on it)

I do not have any photographic evidence from that trip to Waffle House but Bryon said it was the cleanest Waffle House he had even been to. We returned that same Waffle House in 2015. The only other comparison I have is the Waffle House we went to in Louisiana, which I don’t remember being dirty but it wasn’t as clean as the Scranton Waffle House.

Going to Waffle House was the beginning of our journey.

We went to the Steamtown Historic Site.