The New Norm

I have been very lax in my blogging….. Life interrupted and other things took precedence. Now here we are and Life has interrupted again. Not the most pleasant of times, but a time to think and learn. How to reinvent your self, adapt and continue to see the glass half full. It is time to put things into perspective and reevaluate what is most important in your own life.

I find as I grow older my expectations and desires have changed. I no longer strive to be at the top of the food chain, I want to enjoy the time that I have doing the things I love. Cooking, traveling, blogging, family and friends. These have always been important to me, but as many of us do, we put what we love the most on the back burner to continue living in this rat race we call life. As bad as this situation is I would like to believe that some good is coming out of it as well. And so, the new norm…

As some of you know my mom lives with us now. She is an amazing women, 92 and going strong. But since Covid -19 we have had to make some changes in the house and our lives, to keep her and ourselves safe. Family visits are not allowed, the new norm. My grandson has moved out temporarily to allow him to be with his dad on weekends, but unfortunately this situation doesn’t allow him to come home so we have a new norm. My mom finds it hard not seeing her many grand and great grand kids, so we have taken to doing drive by visits. We jump in the car and bring goodies to their house, text to let them know we have arrived. We place the goodies on the driveway, and then speak with them while sitting in the car, the new norm. We have taken to exchanging our home baked goods with family members by dropping off the baked goods in the mailbox and waving as we pull away, the new norm.

Family time is non existent so we adapt… Face Time or Skype has become our new norm. We met up with family to bake some bread. My nephew and niece gave us a little cooking lesson on how to bake bread from a starter instead of dry yeast. I have attached the link to our pizza recipe if you feel the spirit move you to make some homemade pizza https://gallettasgalley.com/pizza/ the new norm.

Shopping has taken on a whole new meaning. We no longer run to the store to pick up a few things. Now we plan, agonize and organize our shopping needs so that we can hopefully stay out of stores for a few weeks. We then spend hours online finding a delivery service or a curbside pickup service to purchase our groceries. This has been particularly challenging. I have to say Walmart has come to the rescue. Their Website has been the easiest to navigate and I have had success, 2 day wait time for our order, and currently no charge, GPS to tell them when we arrive and a text telling us they were on the way out with our order. https://grocery.walmart.com/, again the new norm. The other surprise was the liquor run. I am sure you all have had the moment of panic when you are down to your last few bottles of Wine or Beer and the prospect of going without is not to pleasant. We were getting to this point and worried that we would not have any options. But as luck would have it, Joe Canals in Lawrenceville, NJ saved the day. They have curbside pickup as well, again a very easy process, your place your order on their website and they email when it is ready to pick up. We waited 2 days, received our email, drove over and texted that we had arrived, they brought out the order put it in the car, and we drove away, a big thank you!! https://lawrenceville.jcanals.com/, the new norm.

The reality of Covid 19 is life is not the same, some of us have or will lose a loved one, family or friend. This is a painful time and what we do going forward will define us as a society, we must learn and grow from this. We need to take the little things in life and celebrate them each and every day. How do we survive this? I for one, will cherish and hold my family and friends a little closer, I will be there for them emotionally, and support them without question. I will be with them remotely and spiritually. I will continue to do the things I love and make sure that I give them the proper priority in my life. We can only live one day at a time so cherish each moment and treat it like it is your last, because tomorrow isn’t promised. This is the new norm and the lesson each one of us will have learned on this journey.

Thanks for indulging me, I feel that I should do more at times and I am never quite sure what that should be. So I just wanted to put down in words what this last month has done for me and to me. I can only hope and pray that the life we had will return, BUT with that said, I hope that each of us have learned a lesson from this moment in time…. Be more patient, be more loving, be more tolerant, be a friend, lend an ear, sometimes people just need you to listen. Just be more human, remember every word you say either uplifts or hurts someone else… Please choose them wisely.

And as I always say please enjoy life and the Journey…