Isolation Journal 91

I woke up after a reasonable night of sleep, but still felt really quite poorly with my stomach.  I got logged on an Alan kindly made me a coffee.  I tried out a belvita as they were good for a poorly stomach in the past, but it was best before 2017 and really soggy.  I later on tried some Skyr and granola. 

I started with a call to catch up with everyone, but then it was a morning of mostly sorting out issues and niggly things.  I was distracted and not very focused.  

I did pilates at 12pm and I definitely needed the streching and workout.  Alan went out for a run and put on some sausages and potato waffles on and I cooked some chard with garlic and we ate lunch.  

I then had a team meeting for work, but someone forgot to turn up, so we then rearranged for tomorrow and then I had a meeting with a client that 100% could have been an email.

I worked away until around 6.45pm and still didn't really get as much done as I'd wanted. It was a sunny day so I was really keen to run, although I'm still not feeling 100%, but I managed to do a Lumby loop of about 4 miles and then I finished off dinner which was saffron paella and monk fish and serrano ham from Hello Fresh and it was delicious, we had some fizz from Naked wines and it was sweet and delicious.  We watched a bit of Storage Hunters.

I then had another go and cutting Alan's hair and it didn't go well - I followed the same video as last night, but his hair was way longer and my shoulder was hurting so much to try and do some of the cutting.  Alan was upset and cross and we almost looked like it was going to need to be shaved off, but fortunately we managed to rescue it.

We realised Qubit had itchy ears and found some lice/fleas/bugs in there, so groomed them out and then we put some spot on drops on both him and Maya.

I hung out a load of washing and cleaned the kitchen while Alan had a bath.

Isolation Journal 71

Alan went to bed much earlier last night and I decided to go to bed before midnight for a change and read a good bit of "Little Fires Everywhere" before falling asleep and I woke up extremely early before my alarm at around 6.30am and so messed around on my phone, read some more and got up not actually feeling that groggy for a change, but feeling full of anxiety.  I made breakfast (yoghurt, lemon curd, granola, granny smith) and coffee.

I was anxious about the pressure to go back into the office as well as a slight mistake I'd made with a candidate - our company requires a level of PI insurance for contractors, they didn't have the amount we'd required and they were unhappy yesterday, but they emailed at 10am to say that they'd been able to increase the level at no extra charge so that went away.  The second one I spoke to my boss about and explained I was concerned about my asthma so was going to wait until September.  She seemed "ok" about it, but I've still had to ask my team to go in a bit in August, although I don't think it's necessarily needed at this point.

At lunch me and Alan went for a quick walk into the village to stretch our legs and then I had a slice of bread, ham and lettuce for lunch with some orange juice.  Today was a 3 coffee day.

I didn't have a hugely productive day, in this way being in the office I love as if I'm a bit anxiety ridden the presence of others brings me away from the relentless cycle of thoughts.  I love being around people, I even went in a week after breaking my shoulder when I couldn't even wear a coat in April and had to walk 20 minutes each way to the train station wearing a bumbag as I couldn't carry my handbag on my shoulder.  I don't have time off sick and I'm really dedicated, so why do I feel so bloody guilty?!

I signed off at around 6.40pm having done a few more calls and get some things sorted.

I cooked dinner and listened to so more "I heart Vegas" and I made pork and feta naan bread pizzas with little gem lettuce salad and we watched a couple of episodes of Peep Show and then had some Haagen Daaz pralines and cream with cream and then after it had gone down...a bit I went for some hill running up and down the drive way after dropping off some fabric to a neighbour who is making masks.

I ran around 4 miles and did one rep up and down hard and one (or more) easier.  My garmin is now telling me that I'm no longer "productive" but I'm "overreaching".  

I forgot mention that I booked onto another Arvon course which looks good on Thursday A SHORT GUIDE TO WRITING EVERYTHING

Isolation Journal 70

10 whole weeks of writing in a journal every day today, that's a long time for me!  I used to write pretty much every day in a teeny tiny section of a 5 year diary.  At first I would try and write in a different coloured pen each year, but I soon gave up on that.  Nearly every day was noted from 1994 through until the end of 1999 - an interesting period of going from child/teenager to pretty much adult.

Today was a frustrating day at work.  I woke up extremely tired and with an anxiety dream about selling the house which I think I'd "caught" off my friend Hayley who is in the process of selling her house in Leeds and moving to the seaside.

The initial meeting went well with people back from holiday and I handed back over to Rachel and forecasted for the month which is looking ok, especially considering it's August.  I ate cornflakes and semi skimmed milk.

I had a frustrating morning and indeed day of trying to sort out issues and I didn't really resolve a great deal.  Much less productive than a usual Monday.  We had a meeting with a client that we're having to change a method of supply to which was slightly awkward.  I don't feel that the changes will necessarily give the client better value for money or indeed quality of service and will infact make both of these worse.  During the meeting some of my colleagues were in the office and I could see in the background that at least a few people weren't socially distancing.

At 12pm I did pilates online which was a welcome relief and after I'd finished I had a toasted bread roll that I thought was spare from Hello Fresh and some iceberg and prosciuttio ham and leftover salad from yesterday.  I emptied the dishwasher and re-loaded it.

Today was a 3 coffee day and I had a final coffee for lunch.  

I had a difficult call with my boss as I'd been planning on going back into the office that re-opened last week in September, but there is pressure for me to go back in and encourage the rest of the team to go back in.  It states on the HR policy that if you have mild to moderate asthma you are considered vulnerable and then goes on to say that vulnerable people shouldn't go back into the office at this point.  I feel like I'm being judged by trying to protect my health and for the first time that i've been there I feel that I might have to speak to HR to get some support.  The call was broken off before we had a chance to speak fully, so I'm sure I'll have that conversation tomorrow and so tonight I just felt tense about it.

I finished work by writing an advert and signed off at 6.45pm.  

I went out for a run to try and shift my tension headache and it worked, I tried a few intervals of running hard uphill and got a few new "records" including a PB on a strava segment, for the first time since I bought my watch it told me that my training was now "productive" and my VO2 Max went up to 51 from 50.  I range just over 4 miles in about 34 minutes.

I then had a quick shower with a very leaky showerhead and got dressed and had the tea that Alan had cooked, we established that the recipe card was wrong, but the ingredients were right, but we'd eaten the burger buns.  He did stock rotation of the chicken and we had chorizo chicken rice and I made some Gentleman Jack and Ginger and then later we had leftover apple crumble and cream for dessert.

We watched Peep Show and then Alan went up for a bath and I went to look for the cats unsuccessfully.  I watered the plants, came back in and cleaned the kitchen and then the bathroom as I noticed it was a bit smelly.  I listened to more of "I heart Vegas" by Lindsey Kelk as I cleaned. Maya came in eventually shortly followed by Qubit and I fed them both and Alan noticed that Maya had a load of blood on her white neck, but we established it was unlikely to be hers.

Isolation Journal 49

I got into bed at a reasonablish time, but wasted at least 30 minutes watching TikTok on my phone and then read a big chunk more of Where the Crawdads sing and texted Alan to suggest it would be good for him to come to bed, but even so I think we only got about 6 hours of sleep. 

After hitting my heaviest weight in over 5 years yesterday at 76.8kg I made the decision to take action and address this, which is hard as whilst I can exercise more with a bit of extra time that I don't spend commuting and a bit of extra time off, if I don't do exercise then I only cover about 3000 steps when I work from home.  

I weighed out my cornflakes and milk and had 2 coffees.   I fed the cats after Qubit appeared with a dying mammal and ate half of it.

We kicked off with a morning call at 9am and then I had a few quick calls to make before I had Rach's appraisal at 10am which went well and then I had a few more calls to make before Pilates at 12pm for an hour.  Of course Hello Fresh arrived as it started, but I managed to grab it and return to the class without too much interruption.  

For lunch I defrosted some leek and potato soup and finished up the salad that I'd made yesterday.  

We had a team meeting for the public sector team at 2pm and then I had a meeting with a client at 3.30pm which went well.

I then had a productive day until finishing work around 6.20pm when I went and started cooking dinner as we had In Conversation with Louis Theroux with Guardian Live booked to watch at 7pm.  I made a vegetable curry with naan bread and Alan went on his bike to drop off the tetra packs that have been living in my car at the recycling centre.  

It was fun watching Louis, he spends so much time interviewing and meeting other people so it was interesting to see him being interviewed and talking about his book, we'd posted a question, but it didn't get asked.  Alan had used his Ipad to log on and casted it to the tv.  We heated up some rhubarb crumble from yesterday and had some cream with it and watched an episode of Scrubs.  I added up all calories I'd consumed on myfitnesspal and realised I was over by about 568 and so decided to go out for a run.  Alan was doing some filming and I went upstairs to read some more "Where the Crawdads Sing" and realised it was getting quite dark so I went out and ran up and down the drive about 24 times and burned up over 600 calories in 45 minutes and covered about 7.5K and as Alan had been recording he wanted me to go out the back and as I was heading back I found a very noisy Qubit having a heated debate with one of the neighbourhood cats and so I brought him back in after I managed to entice him back through the gates to the cottage.  He struggled, but I managed to get him back in the house.

I had a very quick shower in the bath and got into my pjs and went downstairs and watched a bit more scrubs with Alan.

I had a shower