The ever worsening pandemic that has hit hard throughout the world is a situation that most of us have never faced before. We're seeing more confirmed cases and more deaths from COIVD-19 day after day. It was just announced yesterday that the stay at home order has been extended through April 30th, a month from today. While things have changed for all of us, whether in a major or minor way, I think we all need to take a look at what we can do and what we need to do during this mess.

What we can do during this time is take care of ourselves in order to help take care of others. What we can do is stay home as much as possible, wash our hands when we do have to go out, abide by the rules of social distancing. While it may be difficult to stay home and it may feel like you're going crazy, but in reality, you have to follow these rules to keep yourself and other people around you safe. What we can do is check up on our friends who are not working and have to stay at home and we can check up on our "essential" employee friends and family members who are on the front lines, fighting this virus every day. We can keep ourselves busy by having self care days and watching TV, going for walks whether that be with our pets or by ourselves to clear our heads. We can do our part by calling our friends to check up on their mental health and make sure they're doing alright. We can call our grandparents to brighten their day. I personally know that my grandma is struggling a lot with this considering her retirement home is on lock down - no visitors allowed in, she can't even leave to go to her weekly hair appointment, the least I can do for her is give her a call.

I know that most everyone is full of fear and uncertainty during this time, but what we need to do is listen to the professionals. We have to keep ourselves safe by washing our hands and taking other precautionary measures when we absolutely have to go out. We need to follow the request to stay at home for the time being and in order to keep ourselves sane, we have to take care of ourselves in any way that we can under the circumstances. We can make it through this if we do what we can to do our parts during this pandemic.