Everyone looked forward to this new year with a grain of hope. Hope that things will get better. Well, as luck would have it for us, it has not started off so great for the Ulmer household.

First, the youngest and I ended up with covid. On account of us having very little funds, we travel to such few places. We’ve been to the grocery store and to the Science Museum. Always with masks (even for the toddler) and wash our hands. We still ended up with it. The daycare was forces to close for two weeks and we all quarantined inside together. Only ventured into the backyard for some fresh air. Now, we were lucky. Austin had a slight cough and a really runny nose but other than that, he seemed perfectly fine. It didn’t seem to slow him down at all. I never really had a cough. Had a bad headache for a couple of days but no cough or runny nose. I did feel lethargic though. I tried to keep up with most of my walking routine but only ran a few times. It really took away my energy. But I can’t complain. I know people had it hard than we did and I’m thankful we made it through fairly easily. Mike and the other two boys never had any symptoms. We’re also thankful for that.

Not long after the covid diagnoses, we had a cold snap here in Oklahoma. Texas was badly hit too. It knocked out people’s electricity, water, gas…you name it. We were lucky that we never lost any of that. Our lights stayed on. Our heat stayed on. And we never lost the gas. I couldn’t go on my daily runs/walks but I was able to find other ways to exercise.

Oh, and Devin broke his hand. Playing tag with his brother. You read that right. He was running down the hall and slapped the doorframe in such a way that he broke a bone in his hand. He is not in a cast. They’ll check him again in a week or so and if it hasn’t slipped, he won’t need surgery. There goes his hurdling and soccer for this season.

I noticed in my writing that I say we’re pretty lucky a lot. So maybe this year hasn’t started off so bad. Maybe, we just need to look at things differently. It could be worse. We’ll just take this year like we’ve done all the others. One day, one week, one month at a time.