Isolation Journal 12

Alan and I were up late until around 3.30am last night, I was writing and working on a piece of flash fiction.   It was of course really late when we woke up, probably about 11am and so we got up and had breakfast.  I'd put a loaf on overnight in the breadmaker and we had scrambled eggs, avocado with sriracha sauce.  

We put Space Force on the TV and I ended up napping on the sofa for a bit which it occurred to me hasn't really happened in lockdown as I'm generally getting a lot more sleep.  

We'd debated going to the usual parkrun location at later than 9am as one of my friends had invited me, but we got up too late.  We even got up too late for virtual parkrun coffeeshop.  Lauren had also invited me to a creative writing group at 1pm, but I was a bit too exhausted although I'm really keen to join it next month.

I hoovered the house and tidied the kitchen and set off the dishwasher and tidied up the lounge - more to be done tomorrow.  I listended to the High Low Podcast as I was doing it.

Alan did more coding and then went to get the shopping via click and collect and I joined the dance class by our friends 6 year old daughter again.  She did a good job and I dropped off my £1 payment on my run along with returning the Singapore guide book that they had leant us and 7 egg boxes that I'd saved up.  They have chickens and right at the start of lockdown were very kind at giving us some eggs on a few occasions.  I debating running with the 6 eggs they gave us, but in the end I picked them up on the way home it seemed like a wiser move!  I ran a bit more steadily as my hips have been sore and so I managed about 3.5 miles in 32 minutes.  

Maya managed to catch and kill and bird and as usually insisted on bringing it all the way upstairs, I love birds and it really breaks my heart when the cats catch and kill them.

Alan cooked a very delicious Carribean lamb curry and made rhubarb and apple crumble for dinner.  

We then watched more Picard and finished the series and then I put on Catfish that I've not watched for ages.  

I considered thoughts around the Black Lives Matters protests, What was really interesting was that Alan mentioned he'd seen 2 people doing a little protest at the supermarket, I wonder if a really organised and very socially distanced protest could reach lots of different locations?  I also read this article which really did make me pause for thought on this.  

Isolation Journal 11

Supergroggy again this morning, went straight to "work" rather than having breakfast and ate cornflakes and had black coffee around 10am.  Work has been ridiculously busy this week and we've had more jobs come in this week that we would tend to expect in a "pre covid" week.  

I worked solidly on a few tasks and didn't end up having lunch until around 2pm.  I had a jacket potato with marmite and a salad with avocado, tomato, lettuce and carrot sticks. 

I carried on working away and spoke to lots of people and drowned in more emails.  I've really got to get on top of my emails as it makes me feel perpetually anxious when I know that I have too many - today there are over 700 that I need to get sorted.

I've also got lots of prep work that I need to do for the new system that we go onto in July - I've been with the company for over 12 years, so I have a lot of data to get validated and right.  I've also had a work dilemna that I need to sort out and will play on my mind unti l've resolved it, I've not done anything wrong, but someone misunderstood something and I need to explain it in a way that means they aren't unhappy.

I listened to the Daily Briefing which was pretty uneventful other than the fact that more people need to wear masks in more situations (I ordered a couple of masks from amazon this morning) and the R rate is likely to be more than 1 in both the South West and North West.

I finished work just after 6pm and got into my running gear as I wanted to get a run in before I listened another Arvon Reading.  I ran for half and hour and did just over 6K as I still need to get my vitality points.  I managed to have a quick shower and put my clothes on and get ready for the reading.  

This time it was Jo Brand and it was warm and engaging and funny.  I cooked tea as I watched on my laptop and made haloumi with roasted peppers, aubergine, corgette and red onion along with some left over bulgar wheat and brown rice cooked with vegetable stock. I then opened the mint chocolate box that I'd been given for my birthday. 

Qubit has spent the day in the same amazon box and Maya has been in and out all day, she came running in when it randomly started haling.

We watched some Picard and drank some Jim Beam and ginger beer and then moved onto the final series of Friends as my brain needed something easy.  Weirdly my left leg has started to be numb this evening, I hope it's just a weird anomalie, it feels different to when the nerve was really sore.

Isolation Journal 10

Alan slept in the other room last night because he had a cough, although then didn't cough at all in the night and seems to be fine now thankfully.

I got up and made breakfast and had coffee again - we're a bit short on milk so I went for yoghurt, granny smith apple and granola and it was really nice.  

We had our morning kick off meeting and then I prepped for my meeting with a client at 10am with one of my colleagues and it went well.  We've certainly been a lot busier this week which has been positive.

I then did pilates online with my physio with some really tough core exercises.  I had to move Qubit in the Amazon box out of the way.  

Alan cooked some more of our home grown artichokes for lunch with garlic and I had a carrot chopped into batons and then 2 crisp breads with goats cheese and chutney.  

Back to work and a launch call for a BD competition next week and then more calling and then a team quiz which was good fun even if I was completely rubbish.

Alan kindly cooked dinner - pil pil prawn stir fry with rice and brought it up to me and so I came downstairs to eat it, but remembered that my friend Lauren was having a short story read out on the radio and so tuned in just in time - it was really good!

I then had guides online at 7pm and one of our young leaders lead the session by doing an online dance session - it was tough, but really fun and she was so good!  We had some guides join in that had been reluctant to, it's hard to get them all to be comfortable with seeing themselves online, I wish I could help them feel more comfortable.

I read an interesting post from one of my friends about #blacklivesmatter in how she thought her white friends could help support the movement.  One thing she mentioned was how people should unfriend her if they were bigots and my view is slightly different, I won't allow people who are already in a negative echo chamber to increase their own noise, I think it's important to challenge negative views and also see how they are forming the opinions that I may strongly disagree with.

It rained a lot today, but fortunately by around 8pm it had stopped so I went out for about 30 minutes and did 6K.  I didn't mean to go particularly fast, but it was still less than 8.30 minute miles.

I was a bit covered in mud by the time I came back as I splashed in puddles so I had a bath with a lavender lush bubble bar.

I then logged on to do my isolation blog and my computer did some updates and got stuck, fortunately it saved everything!

Isolation Journal 9

Today I was supposed to be on a day off at work, but I had to do a few bits and pieces and this evening managed to book a very important meeting and so have been prepping for that meeting that will be at 10am tomorrow morning.

I had coffee and cornflakes for breakfast again and I faffed around a bit on the internet doing a few bits for work, watched some Frasier with Alan and listened to the Archers on the BBC Sounds app whilst and then got into my run kit to persuade myself to go running.  It was much rainier today so actually it was much cooler to go running.  I am still tracking ok for my 1000 mile yearly target, but the walk on Monday meant I had a bit of catching up to do so I needed to run 8km.  I then got distracted watching PMQs and I had to get back before 2pm to give me time for a shower and food before going to meet my friend Tana for a socially distanced walk.  I managed to do a more or less out and back route through Lumby and kept a decent pace and picked up 3 Strava trophies and average pace of 8.16 per mile.

I had a shower and then had a granny smith, a yoghurt and some goats cheese and chutney on crispbreads for lunch.  

I was meeting Tana and her very cute 2.5 month old baby girl for the first time at Walton Colliery Park for a walk which was lovely and we saw some goslings and swans.  We walked for an hour and got a bit lost, but found our way back to the carpark.  It was so nice to catch up and I really feel for anyone who has had a baby around this time, hopefully we'll be in a better situation soon and at least she got to meet her grandparents just before lockdown.

Driving was weird as I was on the motorway and it was as busy as usual and more busy than I would have expected at 3pm and I drove back around the start of "rush hour" too.  

I watched the daily briefing which was fragmented and confusing and I'm still baffled why the MPs have voted to not use online voting.  I drank a bottle of kombucha and remembered I should buy more.

Alan went out for a run and I listened to some more Archers and cooked Hello Fresh for tea Hake with tomato, caper and olive sauce and tagliattelli.  I had to make my decision on work so I've opted for 80% for July to review as needed as this week we have had far more new roles come in.

I'd been debating whether to do Zumba at 7pm or attend an online talk by Tania Hershman and I decided on the talk.  She talked about her work which includes what she calls "hybrid" work and I loved this concept.  I had hoped to do a bit more writing today, but I felt quite cross and out of sorts and I'm not sure why (other than all the obvious horrific things going on)

I then subscribed to Hay Player  as I wanted to watch a few things including a few James O'brien talks. 

The news that Alok Sharma has contracted Coronavirus and is having to self isolate I found interesting and I wonder if that will make MPs rethink this cancelling of online voting as by voting for it in this way is like saying they want to conduct a survey of physically disabled people, but going to the top a 25 storey building with no lifts to do it.  I don't get the logic of voting against not only the interests of your constituents, but in this situation putting yourself at risk.

Isolation Journal 8

Today was a pretty exhausting day, another day of work starting with a 9am kick off meeting.  Again I had a couple of black coffees and some cornflakes for breakfast and during the 9am meeting I learned that having worked at 80% hours for the past 2 months we are going to have this reviewed and I could potentially go back to 100% or stay at 80%.  I have found having more free time has been good over the past 2 months, it's allowed me to do more focussed work for Guides and runclub as well as tidy the house, train and do blogging and the creative writing last week.  In the last couple of days at work though it's been signficantly more busy so I'm thinking that I could easily fill 5 days of work, there's is plenty to do.  I'm not sure what I'll decide or exactly when I need to have decided by, but the whole lockdown situation has made me value having more time at home and less time commuting.  

After the 9am meeting, we then had a temp update meeting and I helped one of my team in preparing a proposal for a client which I found out later this afternoon was accepted which is a big relief.  

I knew I had a busy evening this evening so I went out to post a letter to a friend and go for my run at lunchtime.  I had shared a tweet over the weekend from Postsecret about someone's biggest fear being able to not be with their pet if they had to be put to sleep because of the Covid situation, it is a huge fear for me and I hadn't realised that one of my very few twitter followers who I'm friends with in real life had been through this.  I felt bad, although I don't think she thought I'd done it intentionally so I sent her a card with some seeds to plant to remember her kitty and also a dribble that I'd written about cats.  I hope she likes it and it doesn't upset her more.  I also remembered that I'd planned on sending a tangle to one of my colleagues who mentioned she'd been really picking at her hands with all the anxiety.

My run was fast today, I managed to get a PB on a segment near me and was onlyl 8 seconds off being the fastest woman to have run it, I did just over 5K in just around 26 minutes.  I grabbed an orangle lolly out of the freezer and a pint of orange squash with ice and a bit of salt thrown in to cool down.  I was then straight back onto another teams call to launch an BD session for the afternoon and then a meeting about the housing sector and another about government and then a wrap up call - it was exhausting!  I managed to pick up 2 leads for colleagues in the North West that will hopefully turn into jobs and so it wasn't completely meeting focussed thankfully.  I realised that after signing in for the call straight after my run that an hour passed before I realised I'd not eaten so I quickly prepped a carrot and cucumber into sticks as well as cheese (coverdale and goats) chutney and a couple of slices of serrano ham.  

I then had 15 mins away from the laptop before running my virtual #runandtalk meeting for the run club, we had 6 people sign in and a nice chat about how we were finding things.  I was hungry so I'd grabbed a granny smith apple and cut it into chunks and a babybel light. I then had a call with my friends Hayley and Sam for a catch up for about an hour and a half.  and Alan very kindly made Beef Ragu for tea from Hello Fresh.  We talked about how we are all still very nervous of being out and about, even if we are allowed more freedom at the moment.  Hayley also told us about a commission she's working on.  I tidied the kitchen, grabbed another glass of white wine and a gu pudding and had a sneaky couple of slices of serrano ham.

I read a lot more about the unrest going on in America today, I blacked out my facebook and Instagram for #blackouttuesday and I'm still trying to read and learn more about how I can support black people better.  I feel ignorant, I feel ashamed, I feel guilty and I'm confused as to what I can do, so I'm going to do my best to learn more and try and support more.

Isolation Journal 7

First day back at work after a week off today.  I woke up before my alarm and felt groggy as it took me a while to fall asleep and it was pretty late by the time we'd got to bed.  I had 2 coffees and a bowl of cornflakes for breakfast.  I got the milk in from outside, we get 1 pint of whole milk, 2 pints of semi skimmed and one of orange juice and tend to get through it very easily.  I start the day with a MS Teams call so I dialled in at 9am and caught up with the team.  Usually after a week off there is an avalanche of emails and work to get through, but it was half term which usually means it is quieter for me.  I don't usually take half term off, but given we can't go anywhere it was a sensible time to take off and the weather was great.  

The first part of the day was spent catching up on emails and returning calls and then I'd booked a virtual meeting with a new contact and one of my colleagues in the afternoon which went well.  I then as usual fell into a more productive mindset and got far more done in the last couple of hours and in total it was a pretty productive day.  

I read Why We Sleep - by Matthew Walker, well when I said read, I listened to it on the commute to work, well most of it... and one of the takeaways I found was that there are two types of people morning and night people as developed in times when we lived in tribes and had to sleep 8 hours (the ideal amount) and the morning people would go to bed earlier by 4 hours and get up 4 hours earlier.  If you are an "evening" person (definitely me) you are likely to naturally choose a later bedtime so a 9 - 5 world unfairly disadvantages you if you have to get up before you 8 hours of sleep is completed.  Before we were in lockdown I was averaging around 6-7 hours of sleep a night, I'm now closer to between 8 - 9 and generally feeling good for it.  The important thing the book points out if you are an evening person and you get up early is that you if you have 6 out of 8 hours you don't just lose 25% of sleep, you actually lose 85% of the REM sleep as much of this happens in the last 2 hours of your 8 hour cycle.  I'm worried about what will happen when we go back to having to commute how I'll cope on 6 - 7 hours again.

We also had a discussion about when we might be going back into the office, originally it was set to be September, but it could be July and that makes me nervous.  It seemed to make Alan angry as his company are still completely working from home all around the world and he is saying that if I have to go into the office too soon he'll sleep in a separate bed.  Our CEO has said that we won't need to go back in until we feel safe, and no one will be forced, so I don't think that I'll be forced to make a decision about this hopefully.

At 12pm I had my online pilates class and it was really warm!  We had a bit focus on core, I'm terrible at core exercises.  Alan then made some new dumplings for the stew and so I had stew and dumplings for lunch on a very warm day.  I also booked onto a reading and Q&A session with Jo Brand via Arvon on Friday evening at 7.15pm so something cool to look forward to.

I finished work around 6.45 as I was finishing of writing an advert (not my favourite tasks as there are so many drop down boxes to choose!) and I had over 60 applications to my last advert.  

Alan made smoothies with a pineapple, banana and mango that I'd had delivered from Delifresh about a week and a half ago that were going a bit soft.  We took the smoothies and went on a 4.5k walk around the fields and I found a really cool green stone and the light was beautiful and it was really warm.  

I then made a Hello Fresh dinner of roasted pork with lentils and creme fraiche and Alan served up some rum and raisin ice cream, with cream for dessert and I had a glass of white wine that's been open for a couple of weeks that was actually still really good.  

We watched friends and Qubit meowed loudly until Maya came home at about 11pm.

Isolation Journal 6

Another late rising today, but I did manage to read 1 short story before I got out of bed which was an achievement.  I took Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks with me to Costa Rica in December 2018 and read and loved most of it, but inspired by the Flash Fiction earlier this week I've been inspired to read it again.  

We had a ridiculously childlike breakfast of potato waffles and sausages and some Reggae Reggae Sauce and I had a couple of coffees to wake me up properly.  I watched another Hay Festival online talk from A C Grayling about democracy which wasn't hugely positive about the democratic future for us post Covid, but did make some helpful suggestions about how it could be changed to be basically more democratic.  The one quote I especially enjoyed was "There is no such thing as a majority, only a temporary coalition of minorities across different elements of society" (i'm likely misquoting, but this was the gist)

I refilled the coffee machine with the emergency coffee that I got from Amazon whilst we waited for our deliver to arrive from Modern Standard last week (of course they came on the same day10 and Qubit wanted to smell it - he wasn't keen.

I watched a talk from Hay Festival last year by Michael Rosen, I loved his poems as a kid and I love some of his newer work.  It was lovely to see how much the kids in the audience loved his work as well.  Really inspiring.  I've just googled him to find out how old he was out of curiousity and he is 74, I also spotted that he was really poorly with suspected Covid-19 and I hope that he's doing ok.  

Alan prepared the ingredients for a stew and put it in the slow cooker, and I tidied some of the potatoes up out of the kitchen that had started to sprout and planted them in planters in the garden after I had cleared off the weeds.  

For lunch I made us another salad and the avocado was just about perfectly ripe thankfully!  We ate outside on our very lovely garden chair with a blanket over the top to cover from the ridiculous sunshine.  

I watched the Daily Briefing and it was heartening to see that many homeless people have been helped during this crisis, around 15000 people, but I'm sad that there were that many people who were homeless and needed support.  I'm incredibly confused and concerned that they have all of a sudden decided that even though the death rate is the same as when we went into lockdown, they have deemed it ok for those who have been shielding to go outside again.  The photos of crowded parks and beaches also massively worry me, I am incredibly fortunate to be able to work from home and not have to go into busier situations in the coming weeks unless I choose to, so I'm going to choose to remain not too different from my current situation to hopefully mitigate the easing of lockdown which (in my opinion) is just too early to be safe.

I decided to go for my run and needed to find the last photo for my photo challenge for the theme "chasing rainbows" and I ran into the village and said hello to some of our friends including our 6 year old dance teacher from yesterday.  

I found a couple of rainbows in the village and then ran up to Lumby and found a couple more.  I ran back through Lumby and debated whether to go left and a longer route or right for a shorter one.  I was pleased that I went for the longer route back and enjoyed some beautiful evening light.  I had a nice chat with our neighbours at number 2 on the way back in.

Alan's stew was nearly ready so I had a shower and then ate some tasty dumplings and enjoyed the last of the meat (stewing steak)) from our very delicious order from The Ethical Butcher.  He put on Space Force, but I've been a bit distracted so I'm not sure what I make of it.  

Lauren had finished work at 8 so we had a wrap up video chat on our creative week and we have a few really good ideas for collaboration of work for flash fiction.  She also shared a great drabble with me in relation to our idea for our collaboration.  I've started mine... let's see how it all turns out.