Isolation Journal 94

I woke up a bit earlier than my alarm and I was desperate to finish off "The Midnight Library" and I did, I loved it and wanted to read it again, but I'd promised to lend it to my neighbour Kirsty.

I logged onto my teams kick off call at 9am and updated Katie who was back from Greece and seemed happy with how I'd looked after things for her whilst I was off.  I had yoghurt, apple and granola for breakfast and then another team meeting with the wider team.

I got through a decent amount of work this morning, but it's still very busy and I have plenty to do, but I did manage to do Pilates at 12pm and it was just 3 of us in the class.  We then heated the leftover pasta bake from the day before for lunch and then cracked on with the afternoon activities including writing an advert for the job I'd managed to retain which I'm really excited to be working on and also picked up another job to work on which is the first job I've had for me in a very long time.

I finished work around 6.35pm and we were due to be doing our guide planning meeting at 6.30pm in Gem's garden, but it was really rainy so we moved it to Zoom.  I ended up having my laptop crash so I then had to download Zoom onto the Mac and then it started working again so I logged back on again.

We borrowed lots of ideas and planned the whole term that will be done via Zoom as we're not sure when we'll be allowed to do things again face to face.  It took a while, but I've made a whole document of what parents need to prep ready to participate, we've got different people leading things and some fun party, cooking and crafts.  They'll also be getting through some of their skills builders which is good.

Alan made Hello Fresh Thai Prawn Curry for tea and I ate whilst finishing the meeting and then I came down and tidied the kitchen, the dining room, took out my dead flowers and arranged 2 vases of gladioli from Arena Flowers, put a load of washing on, put away the washing from the drying rack, hung out the washing and loaded and set off the dishwasher.

I had a fruit corner dessert and then a glass of wine after I'd done all the chores listening to more Wind Up Bird Chronicles and we watched some Mock the Week and Taskmaster.

Isolation Journal 28

Yesterday I was feeling really motivated and productive at work and weirdly I had more sleep than the night before, but today felt much less productive.

I had another breakfast of granola, homegrown raspberries, sliced granny smith and yoghurt.  And today was a 3 coffee day.

I'd teed up a tweet on behalf of my friend to Leeds City Council, the CEO of Leeds City Council, Richard Burgeon (MP) and the Valuation Office Agency.  She's had a ridiculously tough 18 months being diagnosed with heart failure last year aged 40, having a house fire at the end of November and spending the last 7 months including lockdown in a small flat with her husband and 2 boys whilst the repairs to her very fire damaged house takes longer because of the Doncaster floods and then Covid.  Her house is not fit for human habitation, but the council have told her that she needs to pay two lots of council tax on her two properties.  Her MP (Richard Burgeon) tried to help, but they pushed it onto the Valuation Office Agency to delist the property, but they said as she was having it repaired it wouldn't be classed as derelict and so not exempt!  It's crazy and her husband found out today as he was with his mum in a hospice with hours/days to live that he's being made redundant so they don't have money to spare.  It takes emotional energy to fight these things and so I wanted to help her, fortunately the CEO got back in touch and asked me to email him, so I did.  Hopefully he'll be able to cancel this demand as it's just not fair.  

At lunch I needed to go to the pharmacy to pick up my Omaprazole prescription so I decided to walk down for some light and fresh air.  It was really warm and I played Pokemon Go for the first time in ages and noticed some new pokestops and a gym had been added in the local area.  I queued up at the pharmacy and picked up my prescription and I also listened to some more of What Alice Forgot Again - it's a captivating audio book!  I felt bad when I'd got back from the pharmacy as I realised that I'd not worn a mask.  I literally stood in a doorway and picked it up from a distance, but I feel that I should have worn a mask.  I'll put one in my bag next time.  By the time I'd walked back Alan had made lunch which was more of what we had for tea last night, I ate outside in the hot weather.  I also had an ice lolly.

The afternoon was more productive and I watched a bit of the daily briefing and I finished at 6.30pm and signed straight onto a guiding webinar which used the most inefficient and complicated method I've seen for online stuff so far!  I didn't really get much from it, apart from a game of counting from 1 - 10 without people interrupting.

I made dinner as I listened and it was a tasty soft taco and minute steak Hello Fresh dish.  We ate outside again and Alan had made me a ginger and Gentleman Jack.  There was lots of farm machinery noise in the field next door.

I then settled down to watch more Big Brother and Catfish, tidied the kitchen, had a couple of glasses of rose and fed Qubit when he came in at 10.30pm.  He was promptly sick and then kept meowing loads.