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I can’t believe it’s been almost 20 months since my last Thoughtful Thursday post. I definitely didn’t expect my life, or the world, to change as much as it has in that time.

I mentioned in my Music Monday post this week that there’s a child in my household. This was certainly not true 20 months ago. There’s also his mother, my beautiful, loving partner, and a 9-week-old cocker spaniel puppy (that’s his photo).

Twenty months ago, I had a girlfriend I’d been dating for a little more than a year. Eight months ago, we’d moved in together, and last month we moved into a house we bought together. It took a little while for the child to be okay with me moving in with them, and another little while to get him used to the idea of moving to a new home.

A year ago, my partner (no longer just a girlfriend—we own property together) lost one of her two 16-year-old cats, and a few months later lost the other one. We had discussed new pets a bit after that; the child was unwilling to wait very long before having a new pet (he’s a ‟spirited child”). I like dogs, my partner likes cats. The child seems to prefer dogs, but mostly just seemed to want a pet.

Partner, child, house, pet. What else has changed? Oh, yeah, I work from home, because a global pandemic has made me not want to leave the house, and especially not to spend my days in a poorly-ventilated building full of other people. Even so, when I leave the house, I have a mask with me. When I go into a building with other people, I wear the mask. I spend a little extra time considering whether I need to leave the house, go into a building, see other people, interact with those people, have new, potentially unmasked, people in my house, et cetera. It’s a new world, but it’s not that hard to think a little bit about how our behaviours relate to the rest of the world.

Stay safe, and keep washing your hands.