Isolation Journal 51

Alan had a day off today to study and I was also off, but I did have a call at 11am, so we woke up quite late at 9.30am and snoozed for a bit and had around 7 hours of sleep.  I started reading a book at last that my neighbour Kirsty leant me about 4 months ago Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

I got up and let the cats out as I'd messed up the app and then got dressed and Alan brought me a coffee.  After the call I ended up getting into some work and then finishing off a few bits and came down and remembered I wanted to chase my estate agents for my flat, I left a message and by the end of the day I still hadn't heard back.  I think I might have to bite the bullet and actually change agents.  Qubit brought in a tiny shrew that escaped and managed to get under the skirting board in the kitchen and I tried to get it out, first I used a cheese cutter, but it squeaked so I used some straws and I hope it survived when I'd let it go outside.

I made some lunch after another coffee when I realised I'd not had anything for breakfast and I made some noodles cooked in miso soup, some salad with gem lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cucumber and some dry fried courgette as well as some prosciuttio ham to finish it up before it went bad.  I listended to PMQs as I was cooking and heard some ridiculous comments from BoJo comparing Keir Starmer having "more briefs than Calvin Klein".

I then drove over to Hayley's as she'd found some pallet collars that needed a new home and we figured we could use them in the garden to make some raised beds.  She had said she had a window only 2 - 3pm and I arrived about ten past 2pm after driving into Leeds properly for the first time since the 13th March and chatting to my Mum on the way.  

We ended up chatting for about 4 hours remaining distanced at all time and I had a lapsang souchon tea and I had debated going on a recce of the St Aidan's 10K, but I was feeling tired and I'd taken paracetamol for a headache earlier (I think a tiredness headache) and so then I drove home again about 6.30pm and Alan was cooking tea.  He made the Hello Fresh Lamb pilauf which was really nice and then we watched Spooks.  Alan also made a Knob Creek and Ginger.

I ordered a load of food including a 5 litre container of olive oil from Deli Fresh and after much debating, ordered a Garmin 945 as the heart rate monitor strap for mine had broken and would cost around £100 to replace and I'd already replaced it once as well as the strap several times, I will maybe sell or auction and donate to charity for my old one.  

Isolation Journal 50

So 50 days in lockdown and journaling about it.  It's been interesting blogging again after not doing a daily blog since early 2000s.  I managed to read the last bit of Where the Crawdads Sing and it was great, I'm not always satisfied by the endings, but It was really interesting and thought provoking.

I was quite slow starting this morning, I find Tuesdays way harder than Mondays at the moment and am quite often lacking in concentration.  I had greek yoghurt, raspberries from the garden and some granola and 2 coffees for breakfast.  I have had a TikTok song stuck in my head for days - I really shouldn't look at these things at night, I found the "original" song which is crude and rude and to the soundtrack of Doop...you can listen here, but it's rude and crude and I warned you...and it's still stuck in my head!

I managed to upload some CVs and had a few teams calls and ended up being really late for eating any lunch until 2pm and so I had a lettuce and cucumber salad and a jacket potato with butter and marmite.  

I then had a call from my friend Hannah who needed some help, she had to go to a visit to a school with her youngest son, but her husband was away sorting funeral arrangements for his mum and wasn't allowed to take her oldest into the school, so I met them at 4pm and went for a walk whilst they had the meeting.  I took a couple of hours back from work, but I logged on when I got home and managed to get 4 candidates uploaded for a job.  I also had a quick chat to my Mum driving over to my friend and then felt bad as I didn't speak to my Dad on the way back that I'd said I would.

Alan had a migraine all day and so felt poorly and spent a lot of time napping on the sofa and in the bed with Maya who did a better job of looking after him than I did.  I cooked dinner at 6.30pm and made a pork ragu Hello Fresh, but Alan wasn't hungry.  I then ate dinner and signed on for my Zoom #runandtalk and caught up with Paul and Ben for an hour and then I logged off and check in on Alan and made him a cup of tea and went out for a run.  I ran about 5.6K and wasn't fast and encountered the reason that one of the nearby roads is closed.  I had a rocket lolly when I got in and ran and had a bath with a bathbomb from my birthday.  I then had another orange juice lolly and ran a bath for Alan and he watched some aircrash investigation.  I then shopped for some fabric for my neighbour to make some masks for Hannah's children with Harry Potter Fabric, but I accidentally ordered it for delivery to my office, I messaged them and hopefully they'll send it here instead!

I also ordered some interesting cat fabric and watched some more catfish.  My Boots order arrived today and also the coffee I'd ordered from Bottega Millanese.

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

Isolation Journal 48

I got into bed quite late and then read and got really hooked into Where the Crawdads Sing and read for at least an hour when I started to fall asleep and kept dropping the book on my face.  

Alan wasn't in bed by the time I fell asleep which was around 2am, but he was there when I woke up at 10.30am so I read for another 2 hours until he woke up naturally.  This turned out to the right thing to do as he wasn't in bed until around 5am.

We got up and I made food - I made a mini ploughman type lunch with wensleydale, chutney, serano ham, yellow pepper, a granny smith, a salad and some pasta tossed with olive oil, black pepper and garlic.  I had 3 coffees today and I'm not sure that was necessarily the best idea, I also weighed myself and I'm officially the heaviest I've been in 5 years, so it's definitely time to sort that out now!

Alan watched the cricket and I logged onto work and wrote an appraisal only being interrupted slightly when Qubit came covered in ants and we had a call from our neighbour at exactly the same time to say that we had an ants nest at the back door.  We went out and sorted out the ants and then also Alan picked some rhubarb from the garden to make into a crumble for tea.

I finished the appraisal and went for a run and did 5 miles to catch up on my running target and I did a "mile for Karen" as one of the ladies that I know in the running community I'd discovered yesterday was hit by a car on Friday when she was out for a run which is awful.  It's an area that I know me and Alan will have run at least once when he lived in Middleton.

I listened to How to Stop Time by Matt Haig as I was running and it's an interesting book, I like books about the concept of time whether time travel or deeper and more philosophical things.  I also love Matt Haig!

I got back and had a shower in the bath and spoke to my Mum to let her know that the masks I'd ordered for her were showing as dispatched so should arrive soon.  Alan then served tea which was a pasta dish and he'd made a delicious lynchberg lemondate and we let it go down watching Spooks and then had crumble with cream.  I found loads of my emails had ended up in my "spam" folder which is separate to my "junk" folder and I'd got emails from more distant family members who I'd not replied to for nearly a year!  I'd recollected seeing them, but they vanished from my inbox, I feel bad!

I suggested putting Scrubs on at 11.30pm so we didn't get too involved in another episode of Spooks.

Isolation Journal 47

Alan didn't sleep well, I think I slept ok which was surprising as I felt last night as I was getting into bed that I'd got cystisis, but I did manage to fall asleep and slept through until around 9am, so just around 7 hours, but I didn't feel too tired, but I did still feel in a bit of pain.  I made sure I drank lots of water and also some bicarb of soda - disgusting!

I ordered a Cystitis testing kit from Boots and also booked an appointment with Vitality GP for Tuesday which I can cancel if I need to.

For breakfast we had chorizo and black pudding with maple syrup and scrambled eggs in wraps and I had 2 coffees.  We watched some Scrubs and I felt bad that I again didn't log onto the zoom call for parkrun.  I miss people, but I'm finding zoom intimidating a bit at the moment which is weird as many other circumstances I'm really comfortable with it.

We'd gotten straight into our running gear this morning and I'd managed to spill some oil down my front, but I headed out with Alan and we went for a run to do a (not)parkrun and went down to Newthorpe and then across the railway line and through a field of wheat, we had to go up a muddy lane for 500m to get the right distance and we noticed when we got back the same Flogas truck was parked out the front that was there when we left and when Alan took out some boxes for recycling he chatted to him and realised he'd had a breakdown, Alan made him a coffee.

I busied myself for about 2 hours tidying and cleaning, I vacuumed the whole house and mopped all the floors, I cleaned the kitchen, cleaned and changed the cat litter, changed the sheets on both the beds, took out all the other recyling, cleaned the bathroom and filled up a bath whilst I polished the table and I also did 2 lots of washing.  I listened to the "With me Now" podcast whilst I cleaned and finished off whilst I was in the bath.

I then got stuck in the bath and messed around on my phone and got cleaned up and then Alan made tea and I tried to catch up on my reading for the book club on Where the Crawdads Sing which I'm reallly enjoying, I even read some whilst eating tea and Alan watched the end of the cricket.  

Amazon Prime delivery arrived and I put the shopping away and we had ice lollies and then some salted caramel Ice Cream and cream.  We watched lots of Spooks and I caught up on my step goal as my Vitality points for earlier for our run was 5 out of a possible 8 so I had to get my step count over 12500 to get the maximum points for the day.  

I wanted a bit of a curry snack and so I got it out the fridge, realised it had leaked everywhere and needed to clean the shelf, I then broke the corner bit of plastic and so Alan suggested I superglued it back together again.  I got superglue all over my hands and now can't get it off again and I have crispy hands.  I had the cake that Kirstie dropped off earlier in the week and instantly feel regretful as I'm so heavy at the moment.

Isolation Journal 46

I updated the settings so instead of getting woken up by a dying animal being brought in by the cats, Qubit work me up at 8am to ask for food and no dead animals after a day of being out and about we are murder free!

Alan brought the milk in and groggily stumbled about and got logged on and called one of my candidates who had an interview today to prep her.  I grabbed cornflakes and 2 coffees for breakfast.  I also had a proposal to write for a client and a call with my MD at 11am.  It was a busy morning.  The feedback from the interviews this morning were good and I had an offer that was accepted and so it's my first placement for this month.  I then had some more interviews to arrange for one job for me and one for a colleague.  I'm not sure where the rest of the day went, but finally after giving a reference for someone who worked for me years ago who has applied for a job in New York I finished around 6.50pm.

I had about 15 minutes for lunch and reheated the pasta from yesterday.  I ate it outside in the sunshire.

When I finished work Alan got me to grab some bits and pieces to fix the terrestrial TV for the street.  We spent around 2 hours in the garage of number 9 where the aerial lives and I had to pass him things.  My back was hurting from standing up for so long.  I watched a bit of telly and a bit of instagram live whilst I was waiting including Jack Whitehall interviewing Mo Farah.

We ordered a curry from Saffron poppadoms, a peshwari naan, pickle tray, brijal bhindi, saag paneer, mint and coriander lamb and zeera rice.  I am so full!  I am frustrated I didn't get to run as I'll now not get my 40 points for Vitality this week.  Alan made a tasty rum punch and I later made whisky and lemonade with squeezed lemon.

Isolation Journal 45

Today was a day off that I'd taken for holiday, using up one of the two days when we came back early from honeymoon.

I had set an alarm for 9.30am, but of course Qubit woke me up again killing a bird, this time it was definitely dead, but I did put it in a box to be sure, although he also managed to get in the box and get it out!

I got up just before 10am and made some cornflakes and some coffee and logged on to return the call of a client who wanted to catch up with me yesterday and she wants me to help with a senior role, so it was a useful call to return.  I helped Rachel with a spreadsheet query and then I made a quick coffee and dialled into my Arvon Masterclass with Jay Griffiths it was more of a lecture than a participation class like the last one and I am not as familiar with Jay Griffiths, but she's very into nature and is a firm supporter of Extinction Rebellion.  

Her principals of writing were to write and make notes on a small notebook that she takes everywhere, read for feeding the mind, research for a topic you either know lots or nothing about, a blank page to play on and a bin for editing.

We did a couple of exercises that were useful like writing the blurb for a book we are writing to think about what we are aiming for and also writing about something from nature and not mentioning who you are, but how you perceive the world.  Jay also explained about scene and narrative.  I wrote a story about a bumblebee that Alan actually enjoyed - I think it's the first thing I've written that he liked.  I also wrote out a few ideas for a book of flash fiction I'm writing with Lauren and reminded myself of some flash fictions that I want to get written.

I then made orzotto with some vegetable that was on the turn - aubergine, courgette, mushrooms and spring onion with chorizo, garlic and mossarella.  I was going to take Gem's little one for another walk, but it was really wet and she'd not been down for her usual nap.

I then did a bit of work and then went for a run at around 4pm, I'd hoped to do around 10K, but I was feeling really lethargic so I ended up doing 9K and it was muddy and wet so I came in and had a quick shower (even though Alan was going to get me to help him with the aerial).  I listened to the High Low podcast earlier and for my run I listened How to Stop Time I also prepped for the guide meeting and made Hello Fresh for tea - pork with potato and cavola nero mash and apple sauce glaze.  

I brought the laptop into the kitchen for guides and we made mug cakes which was quite quick and successful and delicious even if mine did slightly explode, we played a few games and voted on what Skills Builder they want to do next term.  It was really lovely and the parents posted lots of positive feedback on our online meetings so it's good to know that we are still doing things right for them.  We're doing the escape room next week as their end of term "trip" and hopefully will do a virtual camp as well.

I then watched a load of Spooks with Alan and chatted on whatsapp to my friend Alison who I've not seen since I visited my parents in February.  I really miss the idea that I can see people and not feel nervous - hopefully I'll start to feel more comfortable soon.  I also ordered some flowers for my friend Kate as it's her birthday next week.