What’s your new ‘normal’?

April 6, 2020
By: Nancy P. Goodman

No one expected this. Stop going out to meet and eat with family and friends. Stop congregating with a crowd, even for church services. No crowd larger than 10 folks anywhere to be found.
What is it?
It’s the Covid19. Corona Virus. And it hit town last month, right after Nashville and Middle Tennessee got hit with a string of tornadoes. The ‘tornadoing’ happened on March 3, 2020. By the next week we were being cautioned to be ‘safer at home’, amidst the rush to the stores to try to find a personal supply of toilet tissue and paper towels, let alone, cans of food to hold us over for a short time, we thought.
Our ‘normal’ was:
1. Eat at one of the fast-food restaurants each day for lunch
2. Fix a sandwich or something simple like scrambled eggs and biscuits for our suppertime meal.
3. Meet family (mine or Billy’s sisters – and sometimes both) a couple times a week and share a lunch with them. (Sundays at Captain D’s. Tuesday at Cracker Barrel or Top Hog restaurant in Gallatin, Tennessee. Thursday or Friday sometimes at Waffle House or Steak and Shake.
4. Drive to Lebanon, Tennessee to share lunchtime with our son there about one time a week.
5. Meet the other son and his family (wife and 2 sons) in Bowling Green, Kentucky or elsewhere between Nashville and Louisville, and share lunchtime with them, maybe every few weeks.
6. Go to the store to pick up what we need every couple of days or so. Including Walmart, Kroger and Aldi’s, most weeks, and Publix.
7. Watch gas prices and get gas in car and truck about once a week or so.
8. Trying to improve health by walking. Go somewhere daily and walk, even if it’s only around the whole store at Kroger’s or Walmart while looking, not shopping.
9. check iPhone Health app to see how far we walked that day.
10. Drink water to keep my kidneys healthy.

Our new ‘Normal’.
1. Go to the store to try to find what we need, and limited to one time per week, maybe.
Spent half a month’s price of groceries on 5 small sacks of goods. No toilet tissue or paper towels are available yet.
2. Fix sandwich for lunch, daily,  and/or soup.
3. Wash lunch dishes or argue with spouse about who has washed the most dishes this time
4. Nap
5. Fix something for supper that we didn’t have at lunch.
6. Wash supper dishes or (see number 3)
7. Try to check in with close family by phone, email or text.
8. Decide to give up on reaching some who won’t respond back
9. Tell ourselves, ‘don’t give up’ and try again to text or email some.
10. Filled up car gas tank last week. Still have plenty because the car has not moved now in a week or so.
11. Drove truck to gas station to take advantage of 7-cent-per-gallon discount which was good Sunday only. Took 5 gallon gas container to fill up for use in mower. Put 1 gallon and a half in truck gas tank, plus 4 or 5 gallons in gas container.
12. Can’t go out to the stores to walk. Mapped out a path through our 1100 square foot house, and count steps while walking inside from room to room and back again several times. My count of 250 steps may roughly translate to 90 steps on the Health app. Or maybe not.
13. Check iPhone Health app a few times daily to see if I need to get up and ‘walk’ a few more feet today.
14. Drink more water  in order to keep my kidney’s healthy.

Please leave a note below to let us know your thoughts on this new ‘normal’ in your own life.

Hit the ‘Follow’ button to keep up with our writings, such as they are.