I was just reflecting with my wife three plans we made at the beginning of the year and how they haven’t exactly gone they way we’d hoped.
We noticed the dog was kind of clingy and starting to develop separation anxiety. My wife works from home, so we decided that come spring when the weather got nicer, we’d consciously spend more time apart from the dog. Now, after 8 months of lock down, he gets anxious when one of us goes to the bathroom.
At the beginning of the year, I bought a bunch of new office clothes, yesterday I noticed they all still have their tags on them and probably wouldn’t fit.
I’ve always wanted to go see a close up magic show, the kind where you sit at a cafe table and the magician comes up and does sleigh of hand tricks right in front of you, now I watch Penn and Teller on youtube.
I was going to go lots of places and do lots of things with my granddaughter, since I just retired in December. We started out going to story time at the library and made multiple visits to the local marine museum. Her mom was going to sign her up for toddler gymnastics, then it all stopped.
I’ve been able to take her to a few playgrounds without worries and we went to the marine museum recently - you have to book your time of admission and they limit the number admitted. And she will wear a mask for a short time, so I was able to make a quick grocery run once. But mostly we play inside or on her swingset in the back yard.
She’s 2 1/2 - she needs to start socializing with other kids and less with just her parents and grandparents.
Yeah, it is frustrating. This year is our 20th anniversary and we had a big trip planned to Canada and then not.
It’s darkly funny to look back on pre-COVID planning, vs the reality. We should really start training the dog to be alone more, or spend every minute of every day with him, whichever.
Let’s see… my sons’ cub scout troop had a campout planned for the end of March, and we were well in the planning phases of that when the lockdown happened. That was probably the only event of ours that was explicitly called off when the lockdown happened here.
In the longer term, we had some vague ideas (wouldn’t even call them embryonic plans) for another summer road trip vacation planned, but that never got beyond that stage.
In the not well formed, but good intention sort of plans, we had a lot of stuff outside in the backyard- clean/stain the deck, plant a garden, etc… All of which went from vague ideas of stuff we might like to do someday, into things we actually had the time to do. Another was to refurbish a second-hand kids mountain bike we got a while back. I finally have the time to sit down and do that now. Same with going on bike rides with the kids; prior to COVID, that was something that was generally a weekend afternoon activity, but now that I have no commute (working from home), we can bail right at 5 most evenings, go ride around for an hour or so, and come back in time for dinner.
I was planning on finally having my spinal surgery. Then, after my recovery, we were planning on taking our long-awaited trip to Northern France. But now I’m not going anywhere near a healthcare facility, especially to have semi-elective surgery. And air travel is out of the question. France will have to wait.
No easy-going trip to visit darling son in Ann Arbor and enjoy his sweetie and him showing me the glories of Michigan, mixed in with glorious witty repartee and hugs, good home cooking (his sous vide and creme brûlée-to die for), micro brewed ciders and wise ass humor.
No being able to Mom help my other sweet son (for the record I don’t have any more sons, sweet, darling or otherwise) pack up and move his house and also his sweet and darling rescue dog Mia to San Antonio and then help drive the van down and set up his place down there.
Neither of these things are easy on this Mama Bear. It’s what I do, it’s what I live for.
By now I’ve missed two trips (~300 miles due east, easy interstate miles) to my Iowa hometown to hang with my very recently reunited with biological sister. We missed out on 50+ years because of malignant childhoods and now here is cruel fate again. We would have sat around in her oasis of a cosy home, often in our bathrobes, reading, drinking coffee, chatting, bumping sister butts in her kitchen cooking and baking. Mending my soul and filling my bucket. Didn’t happen, can’t happen. My soul is still rent, bucket well nigh empty.
I did find the Dope though and that is no small thing. So y’all consider yourself hugged and smart assed twinkly-eyed smiled at repeatedly. So there.
Think about how much harder this would all be without the technology to stay in touch.
It used to be that your family members got in a wagon, or set off in a ship and you said to yourselves. “Let’s all just assume they made it and had nice lives.”
I retired in January and was so looking forward to starting my new life. The only thing I was actively planning was a visit to Cosmic Campgrounds in New Mexico this fall. It’s an international dark sky sanctuary where you can get a 360 degree view of the night sky. I haven’t seen the “real” sky since I was in my 20s and it’s the one thing I most want to do.
I also wanted to volunteer at the zoo, have many lunches with my friends, visit some museums I never got around to seeing. But now I stay at home pretty much all the time because I want to live to do all those things and see the night sky someday. I’m hopeful it won’t take more than another year or so.
Not sure how minor these are, but the owner of the house I rent was going to sell it at the end of this year, so we all expected come July-ish we’d start to look around for somewhere new, ready to move in before 2021. But we’ve heard nothing more, so like many people, I guess 2020 has put it on-hold until next year.
I also was hoping to plan ahead more regular visits back to New Zealand, after having neglected my family for so long and only returning after a 13 year break, for a funeral. Now nobody can leave anywhere, let alone visit anywhere for a short trip (at least not without a month or more of strict quarantine extending a stay in a stupid way) so I can’t even plan for next year, everything is an unknown still.
My son and his wife (in Florida) had a baby girl just prior to COVID hitting. Initially my gf wanted to fly down, but I wanted to wait until the baby was more human, you know what I mean? So we waited and are waiting still. My daughter has flown down, I’ve seen lots of pictures, but I’ve never seen my granddaughter
That’s a drag. But you’ll see your grand daughter when she’s able to form memories of you.
My wife has been consulting but has started to look for full time work, it’s really hard right now to find it in her field; everyone is kind of on hold until we see what comes next.
My Wife and I had a trip planned to Key West for May. Ummmm. That didn’t happen, though the airlines said our tickets, while not refunded, are still good. We will see if that happens next May. Or if it even makes sense to go. This would have been our third trip to a small hotel, that we absolutely adore.
We were lucky. My wife and I usually go to Vegas for 3-4 nights every spring. We decided not to do it this last year and use the money on a small camper trailer. I didn’t book flights and a hotel in January, and I bought a camper in February.
That decision saved our spring/summer. I don’t know how I could have made it 4 months with two young kids without biweekly camping trips.
We’re going fly fishing in Tennessee in a couple of weeks. It’s our first trip since this started, we’re being very careful, but TN is one of the states that DC requires you to quarantine for 14 days after visiting, so this will be our big trip of the year.
I had planned on attending 2 game conventions and a model convention over the summer and fall, and was thinking about also hitting the big AMPS annual model convention in the US, as it would be reasonably close this year. All cancelled, as were the monthly meetings of my modelling club and the twice-weekly meetings of my games club, although both have had a limited amount of online activity. The games club especially hurts, as it is the only time in 45 years that we have missed more than a couple of meetings over the Christmas holidays.
I just remember another, not so minor, one. My sister died unexpectedly last year and left me a little money. On what would have been her birthday this year, I planned on using some of it to pay for all the pet adoption fees at a shelter in her name (she was always looking out for strays), but everything just went haywire. I guess next year.
We were going to fly to Washington in May and spend a week there, and take the train to Connecticut to visit our daughter and grandson. We got refunds on the airfare and moved the train tickets to November, when I was supposed to go to a conference in DC. That’s virtual now. I doubt we’ll use the train tickets, but they weren’t expensive. No Christmas at our other daughter’s this year also.
Yup. Dad died last September, and I’d planned to sell this house/buy a new house this spring. Which didn’t happen due to inventory cratering and prices rising insanely (I’ve seen admitted tear-downs for 285k and 300k!). The Halloween party I imagined having this weekend in the new house isn’t happening either, due to not moving and parties not being safe now. sigh.
The other vague plan I had involved Thanksgiving. Neither my brother nor I particularly like the holiday - we didn’t celebrate at all last year - but I do like turkey and pie and don’t mind cooking them (last year I made myself a turkey breast etc.). Back in December I learned that the university I went to and now work for looks for people to host Thanksgiving dinner for college students who can’t go home. I hadn’t made solid plans to offer myself up as host for a handful of holiday orphans, but it was definitely something I was considering until the pandemic hit
