Back into Lockdown

Hi everybody! I hope you are all doing well and had a great week. As many of you are experiencing in the US, COVID cases are rising each day. In my state of Pennsylvania, things are slowly closing back down due to a surge in cases. Schools in our district are slowly closing and so are winter sports.

Today we found out that Cate's day program has been shut down until further notice, and this was extremely frustrating to me and my family. As I have explained and talked about before, Cate is extremely hard to have at home all the time for extended periods of time. She is loud, full time care, and pretty much needs attention on her at all waking periods.

Cate being in her day program allows me to do school work from home in peace and silence, and both of my parents to have time to focus on what they need to do for work. Having her home brings back the whole set of challenges we had back in quarantine. My mom can not work, I can not focus for school, and my dad has to run up and down between calls to help with Cate. We do not have any in home help right now as well, and we also are not comfortable bringing anyone in because of COVID, so all of Cate's care is just on my parents.

These times are very hard for a lot of people in different ways, and these are our challenges. Times are very tough right now and entering back into the dark phase of COVID again after a tiny tiny bit of normal. I am in online school right now after going back in person for 4 days. I can not see all my friends. My parents are both working from home.

During these tough times, it can be hard to find the positive, but I have been trying to look for them. In the initial quarantine, I reconnected and found my best friends, and I am the happiest I have been in a long time because of them. I created this blog, and I cherish writing each post and interacting with all of you. I also have spent a ton of time with my family, which will probably be the most amount of time I will have with them in one sitting for the rest of my life. These times are hard, but there is the light at the end of the tunnel. A vaccine is coming and things will get better.

Thank you for reading. I hope you all have a great weekend and week ahead.

-Alex