Have you noticed that clothing retailers have pivoted to fully embrace the stay-at-home mentality? My Instagram feed is now chock full of ads from Old Navy showcasing their flowing, elastic waisted pants; or from Joe Fresh announcing that all jammies are on sale; or for kickstarters for revolutionary bras that involve no underwire. They are Leaning In, is what I’m saying.
Sir Monkeypants and I have a running joke here that, depending on what kind of conference calls we have during the day, we should choose between the “work track pants” or the “casual track pants.” The dividing line is pretty slim, let me tell you. I suspect that once we move out of this crisis, I am going to need all new jeans because nothing with any kind of structure is going to fit me anymore. Perhaps, as we move forward to a new world where no one ever shakes hands and half the population works from home, we will also embrace the wearing of track pants as our standard business attire. A girl can dream!
We are generally trying to work with what we have, clothing-wise, because although I appreciate that these businesses are trying to keep going and keep their employees, it still seems weird to ask someone to leave their home and expose themselves to the world just so I can order new track pants. But we are facing a small issue in that both the Captain and Little Miss Sunshine continue to grow, and both of them are now suffering from what I call Highly Exposed Ankles. So should we order them new pants? Or just have them pull up their socks? For now we are hoping to just shift them into shorts and then we’ll see where we’re at in September. I suppose they could both borrow clothes from me and Sir Monkeypants, although they are both so skinny we could probably make them TWO pairs of pants from every ONE of ours, by cutting them in half and making a single pair out of each leg. SIGH.
And speaking of Working With What We Have, one thing we do NOT have is a lawn mower, and that is becoming a minor concern. We have a service to cut our lawn because both Sir Monkeypants and I are allergic to grass, and I love our service, and I miss our service, which has been classified “non-essential” and as such is on mandatory shut down. We’re still early in the season so no one on our street has noticed yet but I’m guessing that by the time our lawn is a foot high, our neighbours are going to start giving us the side eye as they walk their dogs past the front of our property. Perhaps someone on our street will be inspired to just come and cut it? What are our thoughts on hiring a local teen to come cut it, if we pay him via e-transfer and he works alone? I think that could maybe work.
In the meantime, we will continue to stretch what we have and make do with Whatever Works, which only adds to the whole weird feeling this entire event is giving me. At least I feel like I am learning to focus only on what we really need, versus what we want, and ideally that will carry forward no matter what the future brings. We’re making do, and it’s going just fine.
TurtleHead 
For your lawn, I don’t see the harm in hiring a teen to help out when it will be needed. Common sense applies in many situations, while technically the City of Ottawa won’t apporove this kind of move officially, as long as there’s no contact between your family and the teen…
But then, make sure no one calls the police on you
The single best thing right now is that over the past year my husband – do you watch Seinfeld? “He’s been working out, he’s huge” – has gone from a size medium to a large, and the boys are both on the cusp of men’s small/ men’s medium in shirts/ jackets, so they are wearing all his old, expensive, still-really-good clothes. The exception is jeans. However, since they are crazy weird sizes that we had to order online, we will just do that. (Like, my older son is soon to be 29/36). It’s snowed here every day this week but at some point they will wear shorts so yay. Although I have no idea if their shorts still fit or if they’ll look like 1970s basketball stars.
The whole “ordering non-essential items” is a landmine and I think it’s where the line has to be drawn on judging people for their decisions. My thoughts on that a) many major retailers are saying on their websites – “we are allowed to stay open! Please shop with us!” and they’re employing people. b) my UPS guy was happy to give me my Well.ca package, but then criticized a neighbour down the street who was getting a Gap package. I thought, hmm … wait till you see my Gap package coming later in the week … c) you just don’t know what other people have going on. My son turned 18 over the weekend. Eighteen in quarantine! He didn’t get a party, didn’t get to see any of his friends, didn’t get to go anywhere (definitely not to Hull), so … yeah, we ordered non-essential items to give him as 18th birthday gifts.
I’m totally fine with non-essential items being *way* delayed – but I’m not sure that I think it’s wrong to order them altogether.
Also, it seems like it’s OK (even heroic) to order non-essential items and do curbside pick-up if it’s from a local business … but it’s popular to hate Amazon so it’s not OK to order from Amazon.
I’ve been biting my tongue a LOT lately because of all the Amazon bashing (honestly the Amazon / non-Amazon debate seems more heated than the working / staying-at-home mom debate when my kids were babies). Amazon is a consistent, reliable, on-time pay source for me. I can only make money from my writing because of Amazon. So far this year I’ve advised a teacher at my kids’ high school on structuring his Writer’s Craft course, I’ve gone in to teach one of his classes, and I’ve judged the high school writing competition. Those things are not-so-indirectly financed by Amazon.
So – yes – please don’t gather in big groups and have parties, etc. etc. But when it comes to more “borderline” activities, I think we need to cut each other some slack and consider that, perhaps, there is more grey than black and white out there.
(See – I don’t keep a blog anymore, so I hijacked yours!)
And, btw, I see absolutely nothing wrong or against any rules of paying a teenager to cut your lawn!