It is Easter Sunday and we are making soup for the week. It is filled with beans, cabbage, carrots and meat, lots of different types of meats like sausage, chourico and pork.

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We are awaiting for our grocery delivery that is to show between 1 and 3. And it actually came! I was so exited! We have been waiting for groceries for weeks. Thankfully Amazon pulled through. It was expensive but we got it. Although we didn’t receive the milk that we needed we received the fruits and vegetables.

The Easter bunny came but he was a little bit unprepared this year. No basket and no egg painting kit. However, we got some chocolates from Ferrero Rocher. My girl loves them and that is what we, I mean the Easter Bunny brought for her. She also got a Littles Pet Shop toy. That she knew it had come from mommy. We picked it out the other day from amazon. When I told her it was from the Easter Bunny, she laughed and said “mommy! the LPS was from amazon!” You are right baby girl, you are right!

In the afternoon we drove out to Mattituck, Long Island to the church of our Lady of Good Council. It is a very beautiful church with a pretty saint in the back. As well as a nice gazebo with benches. We told ourselves that when this pandemic is over, we will attend mass at this church.

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Of course it wouldn’t be Easter without eggs. So we compromised and had Easter egg playdough . These were from last year that we never opened and played with that for a while. Along with her Littlest Pet Shop toys that she loves so much.

And that was our quarantine Easter. Hopefully next year we will be surrounded with family and friends.
Stay Safe!

On this Saturday I am being lazy and feel a little depressed. The family decided to get out a little bit and go for a drive around town but I decided to opt out. I have already taken a shower and put on fresh linens on the bed and then watched the news. There continues to be people dying and we still can’t get out. According to the Governor of NY the apex has already happened and we are seeing less and less deaths due to this terrible virus. Death does continue. It is very sad and it’s making me sad.
I have noticed that I must have lost a few pounds as I need to keep pulling up my jeans. We have been rationing our food as we don’t know how long this quarantine is going to last. I am used to the rationing as when I was growing up, we didn’t have a lot and needed to do the same for many years. So I am used to this. We used to eat soup all of the time as it was the best nutrition we could have with what we had. We didn’t have a lot of money for meat and fish. My father worked out of the country so he could send us money to live and my mother did what she could with what she had. With two teenage boys and a little girl, she had to do what she had to do. And that was cabbage soup. Yes, we were all on the cabbage soup diet and yes, we were all skinny lol
Meanwhile, as I am writing this blog, I am shopping online for food to be delivered. I can get some of the essentials like coffee and beans and other canned goods. But am having trouble with the dairy, fruits and vegetables. I have tried working with online companies but they are also having trouble getting groceries out to everybody. This is all that has been on my mind. To get fresh fruits, vegetables and dairy for my family. We are all afraid of going out to the store so we are relying on the good old internet and people braver than us to do the shopping for us. I have gone from Shipt to Amazon Fresh by way of Whole Foods and am supposed to receive the order tomorrow. As of this point I have no faith that the groceries will arrive tomorrow. I have been jaded by Shiped as we were to receive our order on a Tuesday and did not receive it at all.

To get my mind out of things, I am playing #pokemonGo on my phone from home. Thanks to the company for expanding their site and allowing for the “incense” to bring pokemon to me so I can catch them in the comfort my very own computer chair. Which is very uncomfortable, by the way. It is a really nice and old Victorian chair and it is very beautiful. I really love it, but it is not very good for working online. This is also the chair I’ve been using while I work from home and I am missing my office chair now more than ever. It has lumbar support for someone who is working at the office for a full 8 hour day. As for my chair, it is pretty, that is all.
Although uncomfortable, I love this chair. It was given to me by my husband many years ago and it has decorated out bedroom for that long. He knows I love antique furniture and he passed by an antique store, found this lovely chair and bought it for me. We were to get it reupholstered but haven’t gotten to it yet. We have many other bills to pay before this chair will see its full potential.

Its the end of the day and I am exhausted. Not because I have been doing much but because of this crazy virus and my mind working in its anxiety. I am not able to sleep so I watch youtube to get my mind out of things. Hopefully tomorrow is a better day.

I took a nice long shower today than I had to blow dried my hair and noticed my hair is as long as it has ever been. It is getting a little too long and for my age. Normally I would get it cut shoulder length as it looks better on me that way. However, I am growing out it out so I can donate it to Wigs for Kids.
They are a fantastic organization who provides wigs for kids whose mission is to “Helping Children Look Themselves & Live Their Lives.” Their website states that “Wigs for Kids never charges the families that are receiving these custom Hair Replacement Systems.” This is why I love them. If this will bring a smile to a kid. That makes me happy.

This isn’t the first time I’ve grown out my hair for donating. In the past I have grown in out and did a lot of research for the organization who I would be donating to. There are some lovely organizations out there, but a lot of them charge patients for their wigs. I wanted to donate to those who provide it for free to the recipient. For now, Wigs for Kids is my go to organization. I am also friends with wigs for kids facebook and I put a like on every post that I see.

For treating my hair, I use a volumizing shapoo and conditioner from JOICO. It is called body luxe and it leaves my hair volumous and shiny. I tend to blow dry my hair a lot as it is very long and it takes forever to dry. After a morning workout I also blow dry my hair as I have to get to work right away. Since working from home I have let my hair air dry as much as possible, but when I am at the office I need to use my heating tools.

In order to keep my hair from splitting, I use an argan oil product. I use one ‘n only Argan Oil Styling Cream. It is an ultra-light styling cream that eliminates frizz while it conditions and hydrates. It claims to add definition and shine.

I think it is a great product and I use it after every time I wash my hair. On day two my hair looks a little greasy, argan is an oil after all, but I can not wash my hair every day as it will dry it out. And since my hair texture has changed from curly to straight. I now have to make sure that I only wash it every other day.

Since I can not get to a salon due to this corona virus covid-19 business. I will continue to grow out my hair until it is ready to be cut and donated. As much as I love my long locks, I am looking forward to cutting it. This time I will be going supper short. I have looked at pinterest and found a nice short haircut. It is shaved in the back and a little longer in the front.

I love the color too but it may be too much for my place of work. As I work in a very conservative office. I may just do some highlights. Only time will tell what I will do color wise.

Nothing much to report for Monday. I got “dressed” for work, sweater and jeans, as I had video conference calls in the morning and the afternoon. I had to look somewhat professional and not in my PJ’s. At the end of the day we went out for a drive. But before our drive, I noticed beautiful little purple flowers growing in my very own back yard. During our drive I saw a beautiful old house that has turned into a church. Below are some pictures of my day.

On Tuesday, I woke up early and did yoga right before work. I didn’t realize how stiff I am after only a few weeks without yoga in my life. I did yoga at work during my lunch hour three times per week and was getting seriously flexible. After three weeks of staying at home and not doing as much exercise as I used to during work, I feel stiff as a board.
At 8AM, I logged in to work and there is a lot of items to post on my website. So, I put my head together and got right to it. We also have a new hire that we are training over the internet. We are on conference calls twice a day and are teaching her all about our website and how we conduct business. I thought it was going to be a pain teaching all of this over conference calls, but it turns out that it’s been quite easy to do these live calls and train at the same time. My boss says she is happy with the results, and that is all that matters to me at this point.

We placed another order with Shipt for it to be shipped on Tuesday, since our first experience wasn’t too bad, we decided to go with them again. It’s now the end of the day and need to get in touch with my friends at Shipt as my order did not arrive. However, my order from trusty BJ’s came in. We now have chocolate to celebrate Easter on Saturday. I can’t believe its already Easter. Check out what I gave up for lent on another one of my blogs.
I wish BJ’s would also deliver groceries over by me, this way I wouldn’t have to rely on Shipt, Peapod or Amazon as they are all saturated with orders. Hopefully soon!

During my drive, to get out of the house this afternoon, I noticed the pink moon. I took a couple of pictures with my phone but it does not do it justice. I wish I had my Canon. It would have taken some really nice pictures. Not sure if I need to do this but legally I have to post that I work for Canon, USA on all of my posts. So just to be safe…I work for Canon, USA and I have a Canon camera. And Printer and, paper and, a jacket and a bottle opener, etc. My daughter is always asking why I have so many things from Canon. I tell her that over the years you just start collecting things from work. Whenever they have a conference or earth day convention, or a contest, or giveaway, you start to collect. And then you have a ton of things with the logo from the office.
But back to the moon, it was so pretty to see the pink moon over rolling green hills. Here are the somewhat blurry phone pictures that I took while driving 50MPH. Not too bad for a phone picture.

It’s now Wednesday and I had to call my friends at Shipt in order to place my grocery order, again, as they cancelled it yesterday. They, right away, rescheduled the order for today. And, again, the order has been pushed back hour by hour. And then…at the end of the day it was cancelled yet again. They stated in a text that the store has closed and they can not deliver. What the hell people! I don’t want my order cancelled! Dear Shipt, please make some updates to your business and move the unprocessed orders to the next day. After all, we are all staying put at home! Am I right?!

It’s now Thursday and yet again…Hi Shipt! Can you reinstate my order? They did. However, it’s now 4PM and we are again playing the game of “your order will come an hour later.” And, its 8PM…and no groceries. I contacted them again and asked to not cancel my order at the end of the day and to push it to the next day. We will see how that goes. Oh well! Maybe tomorrow.
But, good news! We did receive another shipment from BJ’s. These guys are on it!
We ordered some detergent and other cleaning supplies. The boxes were so heavy that we now feel bad of the UPS guy. We will be leaving him a nice tip during our next shipment from BJ’s. Because, it will be heavy!

On Thursday afternoon I had to venture out into the outside world to pick up my medicine. I had my mask and gloves ready. Picture below for effect.
That mask is very uncomfortable and it fogs up my glasses. I posted this picture to the facebook and twitter world and everyone had advise on how to wear the mask and tips on not getting my glasses flogged up. Apparently, cleaning the lenses with shaving cream will help with the glasses getting foggy. Who knew?
Now looking at the picture, the mask is all crocked and it probably won’t be very effective. I’ll need to be extra careful next time to make it nice and tight around my nose and mouth so nothing can penetrate through.

During my drive and I saw a very pretty memorial filled with beautiful daffodil flowers. I pulled over and took a photo of these Spring beauties.

Friday! Here we go again with Shipt! They reinstated the grocery shipment for today. I received the text messages that the shipment has been pushed back hour by hour. By the end of the day, we again did not receive our groceries. I think may be done with them at this time. Not happy right now with how they are doing business. I understand they may be very, very busy. But, it has been since Tuesday and nothing has been delivered and I continue to have to contact them every single day in the morning before starting work. With that, I have turned to trusty old Amazon and am trying to go with a Whole Foods order. We have been avoiding going through Whole Foods because they can get unreasonably expensive with all of their organic fruits and vegetables. At this point , all I want are my fruits and vegetables. Not caring if they are organic or not. However, desperate times ask for desperate measures. I have been given a tip, and told to try and place the order at midnight as they too are filled with orders from customers. So, here I am at 11:30PM writing this blog and listening to the Elvis Duran replay channel on i heart radio and refreshing the Amazon Whole Foods order. Meanwhile, everyone in the house is asleep and I am so jealous, I wanna be sleeping too! But, I took this grocery shopping thing on and I am sticking to it! It feel more like a #grocerychallenge to me. Where your challenge is to actually get groceries to your home without depleting your fridge for dairy, fresh fruits and vegetables.
Now it is 12:02AM, and, hooray! I was able to place my order for Sunday between 1 and 3PM. I really hope this works this time.

Meanwhile, next week I need to get my daughter on the laptop in order to speak to her teacher. We need to figure out how this whole virtual classroom is going to work. She has never worked on a laptop, only on her tablet. She thinks the screen is a touch screen and can not figure out why there is a touchpad on the laptop.
She is in kindergarten and she is already learning how to do math and read. She is way more advanced than I ever was in kindergarten. Grandma has been a big help by working with her on doing her math and reading while mommy is working from the bedroom and daddy is an essential worker doing road construction. She is no longer learning common core math but good old, old school, math. I wonder how the teachers are going to backtrack what the kids have learned from home. I also wonder when they will go back to school. Or, even if they will go back to school at all this school year. Will they do Summer classes to make it up? Either way, this pandemic has turned our lives upside down.

Today we made pizza from scratch. My husband has had a craving for pizza since about day one of our quarantine. On Sunday, he decided that he was going to make one at home. Since we have flour, yeast and a bread maker, Sunday was a good a day as any to make a home made pizza. The little one helped of course. She rolled that dough and helped to place the cheese and toppings on the pizza.

She rolled it so hard that we had to start the process all over again and roll it again. The little one’s practicing to roll with playdough as practice has its perks. As toppings, we added left over chicken, sliced ham and a small can of mushrooms.

And in the oven it goes. I was so surprised that it only took about 15 minutes for the pizza to be done and ready to eat. The dough was fully cooked as was the cheese and toppings. It smelled and looked so delicious that we just dug right in. I didn’t even think to take an after picture of the finished product. Us hungry beast, we ate the entire thing.

I took a course that I was to take it in Nassau Community College and we eventually had to take the course online. The course started out in the campus right after work. On Mondays nights right after work, I wouldn’t even go home, I would go directly from work to the campus. I would be listening to Amy Winehouse album Frank and was on my merry way.

But then this Corona virus took over and we missed two of our live classes. That is when I reached out to the professor and asked if he could do the course over the internet. The professor agreed as did the entire rest of the class. And that is when I took my first online class.

The class was done over youtube. It was interesting to have the professor teach from home and the rest of us also there but at home. I gotta say, I am starting to love technology more and more. Not only because I can work from home, thank goodness!, but also because we can do so much while we are at home in quarantine.

I have another course during this summer and it doesn’t look like this virus is going to go away anytime soon. So I am thinking that we may need to actually have a complete online course.

On Monday I was able to place an order via Shipt. I’ve had items in the cart for over a week in here and in Peapod as well as BJ’s. Shipt and Peapod had a crazy waiting list and I found out that Peapod puts up their new schedule at 5AM. I was lucky enough to be able to refresh the Shipt page and there was an available time slot. Now on to how much should I tip this person for going out and getting all of my groceries during the pandemic? $10, $15. I don’t know so I am asking Facebook and Twitter. The facebook an twitterverse said at least 15%. I felt bad so we gave him more and left our delivery person, Cori a $20 tip.

Tuesday I listened to the Elvis Duran show on the replay channel in i Heart Radio. I heard the “Sound Report” that I usually hear during my morning commute. It was already noon and I thought it was still 9AM. Time flies when you’re having fun. Later that day, I made a home made bread. I had to improvise the recipe a little bit as it needed a little bit more whole wheat flour and I was missing half a cup, so I added more white flour. Hey, it will be a little lighter right…no big deal. Turns out, the lightness was fine, it was the salt that killed it. I added just a little too much salt and it became extra salty. But it’s ok, we added some extra sweet jam to it and ate it anyway. We are in a crisis situation and can’t waste any precious food. With that, we will improvise and eat it anyway. As we are not above that at this point in time.

Oh but the day is not over! At night we find out there is a flood in the basement. The hot water heater was leaking. I was up until 1AM cleaning up. Thank goodness we have a shop vac that can vacuum up all of that water. And a dehumidifier that can suck up all of that water. Long day, I had!

Its Wednesday and I am craving tacos. That is all.

Its Thursday and I thought it was Tuesday. I’m glad the week is going by fast. I then saw a video of bread being made on facebook that one of my dear friends posted. I immediately had a craving for it. It was a recipe for “papo seco”; a Portuguese bread that if fluffy and oh so delicious. Here is a picture for reference.

Early last week, I placed in an order through Shipt which was to arrive on Thursday between 1PM and 2PM and throughout the day the company kept on sending me messages that the delivery would be later and later in the day. It turns out, it never came.

Right after work, on Friday, we had a virtual happy hour with my coworkers. It was really cool to see everyone. I had send this idea to our Sr. Director to have the team meet during the day so we could catch up but it was denied. We instead meet after work at 5:15PM as he had a conference call and it again had to be pushed back a bit. We said hi to our new coworker and got to say congratulations to another who got a promotion. Go Team! It was really cool to have this virtual happy hour as we got to see everyone’s little ones over the net. As for mine; she passed on the fun. She heard too many voices, got shy and ran away lol.

My Shipt order finally came in on Saturday. We wiped everything down, including the bananas; one by one. A lot of work and a lot of bleach. Since it took so long for us to get this shipment, we immediately decided to place another one online so we could get it at least the week after. We also place an order over Amazon and BJ’s. Of course my credit card was declined for these as they thought it was fraud. Good for me and the credit card company doing their do diligence, but this happened during me trying to place an order via Shipt. Placing a grocery order has become like placing a bit on ebay. Remember that back in the day? You needed to keep on refreshing the page to make sure you got the item and not be outbid? lol Yes, it’s that much fun and exiting.

Check out my other blogs work from home week #1 and Work from home week #2.

Week #2 has been a little more trying. My wardrobe is becoming more casual and my workout routine has gone from three times per week, to about once per week. My motivation has gone down some.

We have placed an food order online and are receiving it nice and slowly. We received baby wipes and vitamins on the first day and you can believe it that I used gloves and cleaned all of the little baggies of wipes threw out the box right away. It didn’t even come into the house. Also, there goes my clothes to the hamper to get washed. Rather be safe than sorry.

We took a drive out on the island and saw a beautiful church in Laurel, I think. It looks to me like one of the structures in Europe. The back of the church has a little gazebo that we parked at and watched the sunset. It was really nice to see after being copped up in the house. I really enjoy sunsets and this one was especially beautiful.

But on Friday, Friday was a bad day! I woke up filled with anxiety. I did not do my regular routine of getting in a workout and shower. I instead stayed in bed until I had to log on at 8AM. I did not change my clothes from my pajamas and then did something even worse. I turned on the television and watched the news during my lunch hour still in my pajamas. My anxiety went from bad to worse.

And then the internet was down. I went from anxiety to panic mode. How in the world am I supposed to finish my work from home without the internet. All of my work is done online via vpn. Not a good day at all.

This first week of #WFH while in quarantine was good! I made sure to continue with my routine: workout every other day. Change from my pajamas to jeans and a sweater. Take a shower. Moisturize. My “office” isn’t so fantastic. Its in a little section of the bedroom. I have an beautiful Victorian chair, that is not at all comfortable, to work at my small desk. On day two, my back was hurting so much that I was working standing up the entire time. But I have my coffee and the internet to keep me entertained.

Although this week was good as I was able to roll out of bed and log in and do my work from home. It was a little lonely. I am used to the liveliness of being at the office. By the way, I do not miss the commute, but I do miss my chair and the camaraderie. Don’t get me wrong, being near my family and my little one is fantastic, but there is always something to be said about being in an office setting.

The way that we do not get cabin fever is to out for a car ride. We get out of the house for an hour or so and we take a look at the very empty streets. Its very strange to see a downtown village that is always so busy, be so empty. Another thing we do, is cook and bake. My husband baked home made bread with our breadmaker that one of my cousins gave me for my bridal shower, so many years ago. Thank you cousins!

We also cook a lot of soups. I’m not the biggest fan of soups, never have, but they are good for you. Right? Filled with vitamins and nutritious. We stocked up the freezer and the pantry, at least for two weeks, and should be ok for a while.
We make sure that we eat what we have and not make a fuss over anything. For example, we defrosted some pizza. Pizza was in the oven for too long. Pizza was a little more like a dorito! Normally, we would defrost another one and eat the better one. At this point we can’t afford do that, so the pizza we eat.

While I am in quarantine and working from home I need to have some rules in place.

1. Get dressed. If I stay in my PJs I know I will not take my job seriously. I know, I have done this before and it did not go so well. I will get dressed, not business casual as I normally get for the office, but take off my wrinkled PJs, fold them and put them away as per my usual everyday routine. And, put on some clothes, maybe jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt.
2. Wash my face. Clean off the gunk from and the pillow wrinkles from the night before.
3. Moisturize. Moisturizing is not pandemic free. This will all blow over soon enough and my skin still needs moisturizing. Not only my face but full body moisturizing.
4. Hygiene. Just because I am home does not mean I can skip brushing teeth and showering. I will take the time to do all of the same things that I would do on a daily basis to go into the office. Not only because this is healthy but because I do live with other people after all.
5. Exercise. My routine is to go to the gym every other day in the morning. I will continue to do exercising at home. I am lucky that I have a treadmill in the basement. I will continue to go on the treadmill every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I also do Yoga during my lunch hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays. There are plenty of videos online that I can follow along so that I will not loose my routine. Exercising is a great way to get out of your own head and not think about this virus. Even if for a little while.
6. Eat Right. I will continue to have a healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner. Not snacking. This isn’t so easy for me as I love to snack on things like bananas, cheese and chips. I will continue to only have my Jirushi bottle of coffee and no more. Not only do I need to ration the coffee but I will not, I will NOT have more coffee than I need to.

This has become more of a manifesto than rules. I will continue to follow my routine. My only difference is sleep. Since I don’t have an hour commute I can sleep a little more but hear me now blog…I will continue to wake up early and continue to follow my rules.

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