The reality of this being week two of basically a shutdown is starting to settle in. It's Monday morning, I'm writing at my desk, and Saint Anne the Wife is trying to decipher our first grader's remote learning assignments while also trying to occupy our two-year-old with neon colored pipe cleaners and a stainless steel colander. Did I mention too that we're potty training the younger of our boys at the moment?
We're basically going bonkers being cooped with our two drunk octopi. We're decent-to-good parents, but I for one would rather just tape our children to the floor; I've got plenty of gaffe tape. Thank God they go to bed before we do. That and it's been helpful to have plenty of wine and whisky on hand.
How any parent is expected to be productively working from home and also essentially homeschooling their young children is insane.
So, dear reader, how are you coping? Via Squarespace supposedly there are somewhere between 10 and 90 RSS subscribers. Every now I get a like at the bottom of a post; one time there was even a couple comments. I know you're out there – "Hi mom."
We've been hitting the park just about every day and heading deep into the woods. The mornings are thinner so it's easier to follow through with the social distancing protocol in such a densely populated city.
There's been some solid and very welcomed wins this week. On Wednesday I found out that I had a big stock footage sale that should help cover a good portion of May's rent. Turns out a random video shoot with Olivia Abiassi two summers ago is now being used in a Danish chewing gum ad.
Then there was the good news about our upcoming tax refund that couldn't come at a better time. Speaking of finances, there's some solid help out there considering all that's going on. I reached out to my credit card, bank, landlord, childcare provider, and others to get ahead of this hot financial mess. Most were helpful, and some more than others. Adobe Creative Cloud waived my subscription fee for the next 90 days.
We're still with our bank back in Oklahoma City. When I called my business banker he'd mentioned that they're not feeling the same pinch we are here in New York, but surely they'll start feeling it more soon enough. He made a great point about it being harder to borrow money when you actually need it, so it's best to start those conversations early. I've still got a Small Business Loan on my camera package as well as a Business Line of Credit. With interest rates being so low at the moment, it may be a good time to check into refinancing loans to get that better rate and save on interest payments.