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Stay Home, But Also Go Outside

Wisconsin's "Safer at Home" order went into effect today. The gist of it is that we should stay home unless it's absolutely necessary to travel, such as for groceries. Fortunately, "essential travel" includes to care for minors (under definition 15b) and "essential activities" includes taking care of others (under definition 11e) so for now my partner and I are still driving our toddler to and from her grandparents' house for childcare in the mornings.

It's a decision that my partner and I talk over at least once every single day and will no doubt continue to reassess each day of the forseeable future. Here are the points that it always comes down to:

Reasons against:
  • Nobody wants anyone to get sick.
  • Symptoms take two weeks to show and some people are completely asymptomatic but still infectious.
  • What if we're being stupid?

Reasons for:
  • All of us are taking every possible precaution with cleanliness and health.
  • None of us are not in physical contact with anyone else during this time (our officials have said to limit contact to 5 people total, which we are).
  • Everyone's mental health is improved by this. Us parents get to focus on our work, the grandparents get to continue the routine of seeing their grandchild who makes them smile constantly, and our toddler gets to continue her routine as if nothing has changed which includes getting their full and undivided attention rather than us splitting it between her and our workload.
It's a heavy decision we make every single day. Right now it's working for us.

This all said, even though everyone is being encouraged to stay home, it's still very important to get outside (and maintain a 6ft distance with everyone else, of course). Yesterday afternoon we decided to go for a family walk around the neighborhood while the temperature was about 45F outside. To cap it off, once we returned home our toddler walked on the grass by herself for the very first time, which was very exciting to watch!

As for today, I'm looking forward to going on my first outdoor run of the year during my lunch break, since the temperature is finally going to break 50F. I'm going to run on the nearby trail—which I've never done before—to make the occasion extra special. I really can't stress enough how much I'm looking forward to this, which is weird since only two years ago I would dread the very idea of running for exercise.

What difficult decisions are you faced with these days? What are you doing to get outdoors? Comment below!

Stay healthy and sane!
-Ryan

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