Monday 23rd March – Week 2, Lockdown in Spain- Trying to Juggle
It has been a busy day today. The reality of trying to work from home, run a household of 5 – (of the five of us, Tara is under strict isolation in her room and Tália, (our youngest) has a rare disease, Mitochondrial Disease, and is completely dependent on me), can be challenging. The good thing is that, as soon as my head hits the pillow at night, I fall asleep.
I have set myself up a schedule and find that this is one of the things that helps me to both organise my time and also reduce stress. I have also taken to listening to the news only a couple of times a day. At the beginning of the lockdown it was constantly in the background and no matter how hard you try – it can be hard to shut out the outside news. I would hear numbers of cases increasing and like it or not, it is distressing.
Tália is doing online schooling for a few hours a day – I am so surprised that she is able to do this and participate online. Before lockdown, Tália was scared of WhatsApp and Skype video calls .. so who would have ever thought that online learning would even be an option? This is brilliant news and has bought us a little more time to focus on work and the house.
Just heard that the UK is going into Lockdown – I think it is the only way to keep the virus from multiplying at such a pace – when we went into lockdown, we only had around 5000 cases – the way that has gone up is crazy. I think that we are at 30,000 cases.
With Tara in isolation, I have this whole hygiene technique going. I have to wear gloves to collect her tray of empty plates from her room and then get the dishes in the dishwasher. I then need to safely remove the gloves and throw them into a bag, careful not to contaminate anything. Following this I wash my hands as if my life depended on it – no pun intended! I have never sung Happy Birthday so many times. Andrew and Natasha watch me and think I have gone mad .. but I cannot take any risks .. we need to be careful. On a positive note, Tália loves the Happy Birthday song and makes me sing it to every member of our family every time we wash our hands. I can safely say, our handwashing technique takes longer than the recommended 20 seconds.
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This time in lockdown is a great time to get creative though. Just as I was caught up and thinking of this whole situation, my cousin posted this video (see above) and oh my gosh, it was like a breath of fresh air. There is nothing like humour!
I took a leaf out of my cousin’s book – poured myself a glass of white wine ( we have no red left) and treated myself to watching Masterchef with Andrew! It was a lovely relaxing evening. Watching Masterchef made it feel like a regular weeknight. When everything is topsy turvy, a bit of normality can go a long way.
8 more days till I can cuddle Tara! I am so looking forward to that!