The Plot May Be Ebbing: Lockdown Week Seven

Slower pace but still in the race, more vomit, lots of mosaic work and a few celebrations, dreams of leaving suburbia for a bigger garden!

Gosh it took me a while to remember what week are actually on. I have survived in effect a full Summer holidays at home with the family only having their daily walk for outings. 😱

It has not been the most interesting of weeks on a personal level and I fear the Lockdown Effect is setting in. I did an online quiz about Corona World with my Eldest last night, one of the questions was how long has lockdown been, he replied “3000 days”. It is starting to feel like that!

I’m not sure how Lockdown is going for most people, but it has felt a bit like wave after wave has rolled in since it began. After finalising my Musings last Sunday, and thinking I had just managed to process the week; my Other Half came upstairs to say his father had been given just days to live. Fortunately, if Papa’s Corona Tale had a theme tune, it would mostly likely be “Die Another Day”. A friend of a friend happens to be the Ward Manager of the Ward he is on. She has been amazing in helping the family Video Chat with Papa. It is actually looking that he may have turned a corner and has been off oxygen for a full 24 hours. We wait tentatively, as things have a habit of going down hill just as fast as they can go up.

The Littlest is now back to full on Toddlerdom. It took a while for her to get over the viral fatigue, but her tonsils no longer resemble the Memwith Hill orbs - huzzah 😃. The unfortunately thing was that just as she was getting better, I then got sick. Our energy levels last week seemed to be mutually exclusive, hers increasing whilst mine decreased.

I spent around 3 hours in the early morning of Wednesday hugging my toilet 🤢. When I couldn’t run quick enough, I admit I resorted to using the potty, since I didn’t have the energy to get a bowl from downstairs! Fluids wouldn’t keep in, even the sips and it was it was seemingly endless, until my throat burnt and there was apparently no bile left in my stomach. I feared some part of the Toddler Lurgy had set in, though I hoped I would escape it; since I actually only have a tiny baby tonsil (it grew back after they were removed them in my childhood). I guess it’s a hazard of being a Mama and being vomited on. Though I have improved over the years. For some unknown reason whenever my Eldest used to vomit, on the slight hope I might save the furniture or bedding, my instinctive reaction was to make a bowl with my hands! I have really no idea why I ever though this was a brilliant plan 🤨.

Despite my exhaustion from my gastric expulsions, it was somewhat beautiful if slightly ironic, to be woken later by the Littlest sitting on the loo singing “Let it go, let it goooooo” in ever increasing pitch! It has been so nice to hear her start singing again and getting back to play.

It has taken a while for my energy levels to recover and I still find I get tired and need to rest. The essentials of homeschooling have rolled on, though I didn’t have the energy to cajole the kids into colouring VE Day bunting. I have in the past, made an effort to celebrate things like the Queens Jubilee, though no one around me seemed that bothered; we did live somewhere else at the time. But I suspect also, the Lockdown Effect of having more time, may have surfaced, as there was a lot of bunting and celebrations on our street. Thankfully the neighbours lent us some and my Eldest (quite to my amazement), came off his screen and painting his own flag! Voluntarily I may add 😱.

It was really lovely to celebrate as a street. Though I wasn’t entirely sure why we suddenly needed to move our outdoor table and chairs around to the front garden, but everyone else was doing it, so we followed suit. Around 4pm things became a little clearer, as we had the delight of being able to listen to musicians on our street and then a selection of 1940s music continued the festivities. A bubble blowing machine occupied the Childers whilst we had a chance to sit back and relax and just enjoy absorbing the moment. Sometimes it is the simple pleasures, the sunshine, the music and the socially distanced company.

The Eldest was also able to get on his bike and ride with a class mate from up the street. It might have been the Vera Lynn nostalgia but it was so pleasurable to just have him outside playing. It seemed to me a bit more like how the world used to be, when Childers could have bigger boundaries and Parentals had less fear over their child randomly disappearing. He was outside for hours, and it was so good for him. He adores his sister, who has now mastered scooting, but it is also nice to have someone your own age to (socially distance) play with.

With the pace being slower for me last week, I have been able to do some more mosaic work. The handprint tiles are now in-situ and I am now excited to start to mosaic a bird for my new shelves, almost expertly put up by my Other Half 😁. I have acquired some more grout and bathroom paint so I can keep calm and keep creating.

I’ve also picked up my second book of Lockdown and I cannot put it down. The accolades on the covers don’t disappoint. It was a book passed on to me by my neighbour a while back (thank you so much J.S) - Lost Connections by Johann Hari. Not only is is from a writing perspective, personal and beautiful, it is not too heavy read. I feel like I am in my own little Minecraft World and I have just discovered diamonds; I am finding it hard to put down my pick axe! I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone who has depression and is at a point where they can read or absorb a book by listening. Wow. Mind blown as the Eldest would say!

Having been required to sit still more, I have indulged in television. Normally my one hour a week of a Race Across the World was ample. (Yes I know, my husband thinks my T.V habits are weird too!) And then I discovered Twice the Life for Half the Price! This is where I fear Lockdown Mania might be more set in than I first thought. A friend over the Puddle, had put on my social media feed that Tuesday was in fact Cinco De Mayo. It is something we have toasted with a margarita or two, since we first discovered this celebration when out in Florida. I realised with sadness that alas, with no tequila in the house, I had no drinko de mayo to celebrate Cinco de Mayo.

And let’s face it, I cannot be the only one who has started wondering if I should commemorate a random festival of some sort at least once a week, if not ever other day. I am sure there are probably a fair few Mamas who might, by now, be daily toasting the survival of another day of homeschooling. As a byline, I was quite confounded as to how the mother on the T.V. programme managed to maintain sanity and homeschool nine children! A toddler and a nine year old seems an epic feat, so nine children - my mind boggled. Anyhow, my neighbour kindly picked up my contraband supplies and I was able to raise a glass to Cinco De Mayo. For those wondering, that was indeed the night before my gastronomic gymnastics, however, the link is tentative, since I am lucky enough to not get hangovers or feel any nauseating effects of alcohol. Still I might leave my idea to toast radomness a little while longer until fully recovered.

If my Cinco Celebration was stage one of losing the plot, the second was to roam Rightmove because I was so inspired to now own a small holding and raise chickens, maybe sheep and the odd piggy. I think I would also end up vegetarian, but hey ho! Perhaps being shut off from the world so long, there no longer seems much difference between living in suburbia or more in the middle of nowhere. At least you wouldn’t need to social distance from a pig or two. And I could even possibly roam a bit more or at least have more garden to ramble in. This is where I have concluded the desperation to escape is now rising 🤪. I have beautiful countryside right on my door step, but am not supposed to be stepping into it. However, after doing some serious searching and actually engaging my brain fully (thanks to my Therapist’s wise thought prompts also!). I think I might need to lower my current aspirations and see how my small vegetable patch and venturing into growing all things green actually works out; before dreaming more of gardens, and greenhouse and an expansion of the Good Life. I was also hit by the knowledge that whilst “normal” is currently different, I do hope the Eldest will return to school. Oh please let that be possible at some point this year, please, please (nice manners 😇). So the idea of collecting eggs fresh for breakfast and having time to prepare them is at best probably a long shot and quite a long one. Getting the Eldest out the door requires enough effort, he terms it “School Rush” not “School Run”, though that invariably has more to do with him than other household members. 🙄Conversely it requires about the same amount of effort most days to keep my Littlest in the house! Childers 🤯

And that really wraps up my week. We shall see what Week Eight brings. As always, take care, stay safe (or should I replace that will alert now, because this virus is darn sneaky!) and stay sane. I just realised my three slogans could possibly one day pave my way to Premiership one day! There is a job I could never love, and for all the views, I would hate to be Mr Johnson. I know the talk was slightly weird on a Sunday and I have no idea why it was at 7pm not 7am (I suspect he is not a morning person); but I think it perhaps was partly designed to help give some light at the end of the Lockdown Tunnel rather than bricking it up, like poor old Henry in Thomas the Tank Engine. We all need a light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how faint and flickering.