3/14/2020 10:02 pm

Dave and I are in preparation mode over here: turning the bedroom into a home office/sleep room, researching homeschool ideas, plotting a schedule for structuring our lockdown  days. A friend texted: “After all this is over, a lot of marriages are either going to be much stronger, or a lot of folks will be filing for divorce.”

Y’all, we need some chill. One place that’s still safe: nature! If you have a car, I urge you to go to the beach or the woods. My family hit up the W 29th St side of Coney Island this afternoon, and it was glorious. Only a handful of other people were there, scattered around at a very respectable social distance. Some flew kites from the shore. Others walked or biked along the boardwalk. A couple of dogs bounded about. The waves rolled. The sun poured. Within minutes of arriving, L and I tore our shoes off and ran barefoot across the sand. We even splashed in the icy water a few times; what a delightful jolt that was! Afterwards, we searched for dinosaur bones and pieced together a “a whole complete skeleton” made of broken seashell bits. It was exactly the escape I needed.

For those of you who can’t make it to the beach but feel calmed by it, I shared a few more photos below, along with some memes and messages that made me feel better today. Hop over to my Instagram (@beckyfinefiresheets) for a little video of the ocean water if you want more.

And don’t forget to breathe. In fact, take a big one now, in and out, nice and deep. It feels good, I swear. It also feels good to make yourself smile even if it’s not a natural one. Try it! See?

Oh hey also — we got this.