So I’m honestly having a love/hate relationship with this stay at home situation. I miss going out, like a lot...like A LOT! At the same time though, I’m finding myself doing different things that I used to enjoy doing, but stopped doing a long time ago. Why? I don’t know, I guess new hobbies take most of my free time now. For example, I started doing long distance runs again, which I haven’t done since the last race I was in 3-4 years ago. I also have a hefty collection of steel-book movies, so I’ve been re-watching some of my favorite movies. For example, I’ve re-watched 13 Hours: The Secret soldiers of Benghazi, Logan, Super Bad, The Pianist, Up, Interstellar, and a few others. It has become my thing to do during lunch or dinner, especially in the last few weekends that has been raining.

On the interactive side, I’m not a big fan of regular phone-calls or Facetiming, so I've taken a different approach. I own a XBOX One, but it has been gathering dust for a while now since I rarely use it anymore. Because we can’t really go out, my cousin, my brother, and some of my other friends decided to pick it back up. Saturday nights has become game night. Game night usually starts with someone sending a “CoD?” (Call of Duty) text in the group chat, and within 45 minutes a bunch of us are laughing our behinds off. The funny part is that since we are all new, we are usually laughing at each other because we all suck.  You are rolling the dice when you are in our team, because there is a 50/50 chance you will die of accidental friendly fire. I guess it makes it more exciting as you don’t where the shots are coming from. The only video game skill that hasn't declined through out the years is our trash talk game. That, we have plenty of.

Playing with them has brought back some good old memories from when I was a kid. We are still all immature when we are together, the only difference is that now we are all playing from our own place, and are no longer crowded in one single room. Now that I’m thinking about it, it's kind of priceless.

I've been working from home for years now, so I've pretty much mastered the ability to keep sane while stuck at home... Or maybe I've completely lost it and just haven't realized yet! 

One of my favorite things to do is to create lists. I even have lists on my Google Home device to make things even easier! I create a schedule and plan things out for the week. Monday I'll clean the house and do laundry, Tuesday is date night, Wednesday is dinner with the parents, and so forth. Being lazy is way too easy for me to slip into, so lists keep me motivated to get my butt off the couch and get things done. Plus, I always seem to find some extra time to add video games to my to-do lists. :) 

A busy brain is a happy brain!

What am I doing to stay sane? Well for me, staying home and being quiet isn’t straining, because it’s not very different from my preferred routine. But something that keeps me oriented is maintaining my usual schedules. I still wake up at least an hour and a half before work to drink my coffee, eat breakfast, do my hair/makeup, etc. I still workout after work. I still meal prep on Sundays. Dinner is still at 7p. I still dabble in crafts after dinner (like embroidery recently) if I’m not watching a show, and I’m still in bed at 10p sharp. 

But for my husband, who is home from work and probably the most extroverted person I’ve ever met, things have been more difficult. So we have found a few new things to do together in lieu of going out. We like to take walks together around our neighborhood, workout together in the nearby park, and have been having virtual happy hours with our far away friends. I even made a pretty sweet charcuterie board for our last one. We’ve also been having “themed” dinners. I’ll make a dish I haven’t made before, and we’ll pick out some beer or wine to go with it. So far I’ve experimented with chilaquiles, miso ramen, and schnitzel. So yeah, the workouts in the park are definitely essential.

Overall I'm enjoying the extra quality time with him since his busy schedule before didn't allow for much of it🙂