How Did We Ever Do This? (Or A Pandemic Made Us Soft)

 Every afternoon when I arrive home from work, I just want to crawl into bed and take a nap.  I am so so so tired every day.  I don't have the luxury of taking said nap, because of the eight other people living in my house who need my attention and home-cooking, but boy do I wish I could!

Before the pandemic hit, I would leave work, pick up kids from schhol/daycare, go to the gym, cook dinner, and take kids to and from sports practices and games.  I'm talking multiple events every week for multiple kids.  Now, all I have to do is come home and stay home.  I workout mostly at home now, with the kids playing all around me.  My kids don't have any weekday events yet, aside from my teens who work but can pretty much get there on their own.  Our schedule is not busy at all, and yet it's still so tiring.  When I have two or more chores on the same day, I dread it, like I have to go to the post office AND grocery shopping?  On the same day?  Who do you think I am?

I've grown soft.

How did we use to do it?  

I feel like the pandemic hit a rest button and now I have to retrain my mind, body, and soul to get back to being able to handle more things on my plate.  I recently signed up four kids for soccer, one for flag football, and another to start piano lessons again.  Besides the high school soccer player, who has practice/games 6 days a week, all of these other activities fall on Saturday mornings.  Phil and I have been trying to figure out the logistics of driving to four towns with six kids activities between the hours of 8 and noon.  It's gonna be crazy!

And yet, this was life as we knew it.  

As much as I hate the phrase "new normal" describing our pandemic time, I have to admit that we did grow accustomed to a less hectic lifestyle, and I want to protect that in some semblance moving forward.  I don't want to go back to the old crazy routines pre-pandemic, and yet I want things to go back to normal...just an easier normal?  I'm not sure if that's possible, but either way, I need to improve my stamina, both mentally and physically, in order to start taking the steps to get there.  

I think we had all grown so used to life getting slowly busier and busier, as kids added up and activities piled on.  We were like frogs happily swimming around in the hot water.  But the pandemic took the water away for awhile, and now as everything is getting restored, we are the frogs who know better than to jump in again.

For right now, we are easing in to things.  That looks like scheduling all.the.things on one weekend morning a week but leaving our weekdays pretty open.  We'll see how it goes, but if you see me looking like this, just know it's not you, it's me: