Three Years, Thoughts

Not going to go too into anything because reminiscing tends to make me going into a spiral of everything I did wrong and what I should have done instead... but it has been three loooong years since a certain germ landed in my state and everything stopped.  I know some places it was business as usual, here they did such things as closed all the rest stops, and crime scene taped off all the playgrounds... not business as usual because it was closed.

Anyway, I have kind of been wondering lately what non-pandemic me's alternate timeline would look like... 

Husband not working from home, would equal a house that isn't perpetually one room short.  Funny thing is he wanted to work from home (part-time) for years and was always told no way.  I kind of miss having my dining room only be a dining room... but he enjoys not spending ten hours a week stuck in traffic.  If we could only have predicted the future when we bought this house...

I think alternate reality me would like people a lot more... Not that I liked them much in the first place, but the pandemic really exposed that a lot of people really don't give a crap about other people.  There's nothing like being told, while you are sick with Covid, that it's fake and insert a bunch of wacko political rambling here.  

I'd still have lost three youngish family members (due to various not Covid reasons), but they could have at least had funerals. 

I'd probably have a job right now... or not.  The whole worldwide germ-fest thing kind of threw off my plans, but while my stay-at-home-momness has become invalidated due to husband-work-from-homeness, he can't do any of the stuff I usually do because... he's working.  The dude barely takes a lunch break, stop working to spend 5-10 minutes driving the kid to school everyday?  Are you kidding?  He did it all when I had jury duty for four days in 2021, and the world almost stopped spinning. 

Jury duty while wearing a mask was a once in a lifetime (I hope) event...

Glad we aren't doing virtual school anymore...  Don't miss it, don't really even want to discuss my feelings on the experience.  Alternate timeline me thoroughly enjoyed sending her kids away for 6-7 hours a day and her reluctant kindergartener not being ripped out of school just when he started to like it.

Alternate me would probably have less books.  Covid made me do a little too much mail-order retail therapy.  The library being closed to browsing for over a year (and quarantining the books) didn't help...  

Would we have adopted guinea pigs?  I had been thinking about it before Covid, but it was  being stuck at home that made me give in.  The girls are neurotic, and it's super annoying to find someone to watch them when we go on vacation, but they are entertaining.

Long story short-- physically, we still live in the same house, have the same jobs, have the same kids, and drive the same (old cars), so that would probably be the same in either reality.  Mentally though... 

Yes, yes it was.  

Very glad it's [mostly] over.  

 Also, I would like to say due to my Covid-is-coming hoarding we never ever got close to running out of toilet paper, or art supplies.  I did buy a planner in 2020 (for the first and last time) so there is that...