Less Hustle More Coffee

Walmart had many bare shelves. There was still plenty of food but maybe not everyone’s favorite. Toilet paper, cleaning supplies, bread, many canned goods were not there. And there was no meat other than frozen meals and sandwich meat and a few canned meats. There were a few things of water, very few cold tablets should anyone need any, and plenty of beer and wine. lol

We had to go get a new carpet cleaner b/c the old one pooped out on us. Otherwise we’d have gone to Publix or Kroger. I really don’t plan on being at Walmart unless there is something we just have to have from there. Believe it or not, it was pretty crowded. But about like normal. No lines. Check out had normal wait times.

Work had a meeting on the COVID-19 yesterday. I was very proud of our managers for meeting it head on and addressing the elephants in the complex. Me having traveled, felt like an outcast. Not that anyone made me feel that way, but I know my peeps. Everyone was nice and asked about the trip. It makes you feel guilty for traveling. But God reminded me that when we discussed the trip last week and whether to take it, the CDC and government officials were saying – go ahead and domestically travel. So we took their advice in making our decisions. Our trip was just on the cusp of this thing blowing up. None of our restaurant plans or outings were interrupted. We did make the decision not to go to the Casino in Tulsa. I think that was wise. We were around crowds in line to board, at the Italian restaurant, and at Pioneer Woman’s restaurant.

There is no pay to self quarantine after PTO taken. Some can work from home with a doc note if they are high risk. No one knows how long this is to last. Trump said July or August before it’s “washed out”. So unless we show signs of illness, work it is. Our office is not encouraging work from home, except for like sales staff where their home is their office. No travel for anyone though until further notice. There is no way companies can pay indefinitely to help people out. But the government may come out with a package for those impacted. Many are already impacted. I’ll be going in and doing payroll. I will be social distancing as they call it as much as possible. If I get sick or spouse gets sick we are required to be home. Anyone sick in the house, don’t go to work. That is the honor system. So far neither of us are. If someone is coughing or appears to be sick and remaining at work, they will be sent for testing. So I think our company has approached it well to keep us from being sick and getting each other sick. No visitors on site either. It is a fair policy. They said they worried about the 20% of folks that would come to work sick. The problem with this virus though is that you are spreading it before you know you are sick which is why some companies have closed for two weeks now to get rid of the incubation period in which people don’t know.

Katy’s school is ON with exceptions. She was not happy about it and trying to decide to self quarantine since we’ve traveled as it’s hard to social distance from 1st graders. She is not sure there will be pay either. We gave her advice to work while she can b/c no one knows about our future and even paychecks and work is uncertain after this economy folds up. Income may not be plentiful at some point. We have always had the opinion of work while you can. We don’t call in sick. We show up. But I do understand this virus is different. But I also don’t want to miss work and not have PTO if I should really need it later. Or lose a job to economy and wish I’d worked while we were able to do so. So I made the best decision I could for our family, not knowing the future, and with things being uncertain. And that decision is within our company policy guidelines on this thing. Katy has to decide what she will do. I get it. It’s tough decisions.

Bed last night was wonderful. Sleep and getting away from the COVID-19 nightmare in our world and in our nation for a few hours is heavenly. When I awake each morning I remember “oh yeah, our nation is in a crisis” and it makes me sad. It is at least nice to get away from it for a few hours in sleep. It’s wonderful that God invented our bodies to sleep. My spirit is renewed every morning but with each days news, it plummets. So all we can do is hope, pray, and try to love everyone around us as we each take our walk through this thing, the best way we can.

Ya’ll have a good day. I’m going to go conquer payroll. And it is raining cats and doggies. Will the sun ever shine again? Will our nation ever recover? I think it will bounce back late in the year. But like 9-11 I think we are changed forever. I think we will be social distancing and considering germs and stock piling for emergencies for the rest of our lives. And hoping the stocks return in value. They are expected to rebound. We got a message from our financial advisor.

Ok, off to work and try to catch up. Just missing two days of work really put me behind. I was able to get caught up for this payroll run but didn’t get to work on much of what I would have done last week as far as taxes. So this week I have to do two weeks at once. Today is solely concentrating on payroll as it takes all day to do it. And half of tomorrow with its aftermath. Ya’ll take care. I’ll have to share more vacay pics as time goes. The Love pic above was in an antique shop we went to.

I look forward to sharing random snaps and more pics of the Pioneer Woman shop in the coming days! It really helps my psyche to blog each day during all the crisis of the current state of our world.