Hi there! Yeah…as you can tell by the title, I have some unpacking to do. My name is Ashley. I’m married to my butthead, James, and we have three kids, Sarah, Sean, and Dylan. We’re 30-something. He’s in business and I’m a stay at home mom.

I’m going CRAZY.

Seriously. I thought I was okay before. We only have Sean some of the time (he’s my bonus), and Sarah goes to her bio dad’s every weekend/spring break/etc. Then we had the baby. Dylan is almost a year now and he’s starting to stand on everything.

But I could manage. I HAD THIS. (I’m putting in my mental war paint right now. Cue random grunts and stuff).

Then Corona happened. We’ve pretty much been trapped in the house since March because James has asthma. So we hardly ever go out. The kids aren’t in regular school. We’ve enrolled them in virtual school, but since they go to two different schools, that’s means different things for them both. Sarah is in a video conference with her teacher daily, while Sean is not. I’m getting eaten out of house and home and I am hiding the good snacks!

Sometimes I really want to go outside and smoke a big fat bowl. Or scream. Or both. But I do neither because smoking isn’t legal yet (plus I’m breastfeeding), and screaming outside will have the neighbor cop on your lawn faster than you can say “mommy is having a meltdown,” and honestly, in today’s climate, I don’t think my Black husband would appreciate that.

But hey, it’s the world we chose. We had a choice and we chose to keep them home. It sucks because they are losing that social time, but hopefully there’s a vaccine soon (not that we’ll be taking it right away*), and some of this can die down.

So yeah, that’s our life right now. I’d love to go into more detail, but I’m pretty sure someone just broke something glass in the other room. Save me.

*On that note ^ about the vaccine. I am very PRO vaccination. All of my kids are vaccinated on schedule and will continue to be so. The only one we ever skip is the flu vaccine. The reason I say we won’t be taking a COVID-19 vaccine any time soon is that vaccines take years to develop, and rushing one out is dangerous. I’d like to see some science on the matter before I inject it into the bodies of myself and my family.