How much of an impact is the COVID-19 outbreak having on your daily life?

Meat is more expensive. Even chicken. Everything else is ok. I wanted to be a happy shut-in anyway.

GQ, @Mama_Cakes. It’s hard to say. Normally I am kind of hermitty, and I’m retired, so in the most superficial of ways, the impact is not that big. I miss doing some stuff, but it’s not a hardship.
In every other way,the intangible ways, it is pretty awful. I have people I care about in other states and other countries, and I worry about them. Watching the numbers needlessly multiply hurts my heart.
I feel that I am allotted ten coupons a day for normal functioning and stuff, and six of them are already spent when I wake up, just because it’s all so awful.

The impact has been very minimal in my daily life, hubs and sonny working from home. Many events I would go to are cancelled. I wanted something from the craft store, but have delayed going. I buy online more often now.

It has eliminated the usual deluge of social interactions that previously defined our social lives. I’m of mixed opinions on the results. For instance, it is truly revealing the astonishing reduction in housework engendered through eliminating the traffic through our house. By the same token, I was totally unaware of the percentage of our budget it turns out was required to provision all of that traffic. Nowadays, the pressure is building to ramp that traffic up. And while I am still discouraging visitors, they are starting to appear here, though not in mass. The wife in particular apparently can’t help herself, and will have a buddy over to play music with her or work the jigsaw puzzle. Yesterday, we were confronted with conflicting invitations to 2 small parties. I turned down both. Both invitations were issued on Friday & the wife committed to the first one on the spot, though I believe her more conscientious than myself. It’s when I reflect on it that I appreciate this is not the case. She takes a walk almost daily with a different girlfriend. They are always dutifully masked, but the risks of involvement with so many individuals even one at a time must add up. As for myself, I’m rather shocked at how readily I have adapted to a life of willful isolation, and my greatest surprise is that people who know me react as though I am concealing my impending death from them. I mean how is it that I’m some sort of freewheeling good time libertine? It fascinates me that my wife of all people along with my kids and daughter in law have the neighbors spying on me as though I actively court
death, while I vegetate happily cloistered in this house with the perfect excuse for ethical indolence. I mean how lucky can you get?

Quite a bit, but not insurmountable.

My wife lost her job. She was furloughed at first, but they just made it permanent — so that’s bad, particularly with the additional unemployment just ending. She’s job hunting though, do something will come along sooner or later – hopefully before we eat through our savings.

Day to day is very manageable for me as I’m a homebody anyway. Teaching online is not foreign to me as I’ve been doing it for three years at one of my part time gigs. I do miss my students though. Zoom is not the same.

On a very minor note, I have a nice office at the university that just sits empty now. Full of Muppets and action figures with a good view of a lake and no one to enjoy it.

I’m good with staying in now, as I dislike Summer anyway, but Autumn is my absolute favorite. If I can’t go apple picking or pick out pumpkins, I’ll be very sad.

I think the emotional impact is worse really, with all the craziness in the world. I’ve started avoiding the news and talking to certain people as I just can’t handle negativity and anxiety right now.

I was “working from home” from mid-March until around mid-June. Then I started working one day a week, 9 to 1. Now I’m working 2 days a week, 9 to 1. That’s a big reduction from my regular 9 to 5×5 plus commuting during rush hour, etc. and having to do all errands on Saturdays. Work is a lot easier, with no site visits, no large meetings in person, no social events like parties, no committee meetings.

Now I can go to the doctor, go shopping, get an oil change, get hair done, all on weekdays. I try not to run into stores so much. I think twice and I try not to run in for one or two things – I try to wait and get a bunch of things at once. I used to shop for leisure sometimes, but not now, especially having to wear the mask.

Every other summer was hectic with getting my daughter to camp, too, and then in the evenings it was the stress of getting her clothes into the wash, having her take a shower (which she is not always willing to do without an argument) and all that. This summer there’s no camp, and so we do fun stuff during the week, too, like swim in the lake or at friends’ pool.

I didn’t mine the lockdown so much. I like less socializing and I like that there are not a lot of requests from daughter’s friends for us to go shopping and crap like that. I have started socializing on a limited basis now that NY is reopening, so I have been to restaurants, mostly eating outside, and friends’ houses for dinner, and my daughter was just invited to friends’ new house in the Poconos for the weekend.

If I go to work or out in public, shopping or dinner or whatever, I take a shower when I get home. It may not be necessary, but I feel ok doing it and when I discussed it with the doctor, he said he does the same thing, except he washes his hair every time and I don’t.

It will be interesting to see how things go with school starting in the fall. Some parents are very anxious but I feel like it’s all subject to change, anyway, with the governor’s mandates and the rates of infection going down or up.

My husband has been working from home, which is great. His job is out of state, so I would be traveling back and forth if he wasn’t home in Florida, and away from him a lot.

I’m not going to zumba, lectures, dancing in the squares, which sucks. I miss all those activities and I miss seeing my friends at the activities. Some of it I do on zoom, so I’m happy about that.

My closest friends where I live, before covid we were together constantly, in each other’s houses, eating out together, it’s like a college campus where I live. None of that is happening no. I’m not eating in restaurants, none of my closest friends are allowing people into their houses. We do get together on driveways and patios, distanced, sometimes even with masks or shields on, depends how close we are.

I’ve been in touch with some out of state friends more. Talking on the phone, FaceTime, and zoom. I like that.

Every few days I hear about someone who has covid.

My Facebook has an argument about masks in the feed almost daily. It’s ridiculous.

Not much has changed for me. I mostly stay home unless I am going to get groceries.

I did make a trip to Lowes today to get a new lock for the front door.

Turns out my sisters 18 year old twins just left for Vegas on Friday for a vacation. So my sister woke me up this morning asking if I would head there to get a new deadbolt for the front door and install it. The twins come over a few times a week to raid the pantry and do laundry. Now their keys no longer work. They are banned from the house for the next month.

Cancel Cultured their selfish asses. AKA actions have consequences.

I’ve been working from home since mid March. In July, I started going into the office one day a week.

I’m dating a man, but that’s been bizarre. We went on 3 dates in February and March, and we’ve done some socially distanced dates on the lanai about once a month since then. We text daily and talk on the phone about once a week. It’s very bizarre, but it is dating. Very weird dating.