Wednesday 1 April 2020
Today was April Fools Day, but it feels like we are living in a bad dream, as it is so I didn’t even realise until later in the day, what the date was. With not working myself, and our carers being different, I am tending to forget what day of the week it actually is.
Live sport around the world has been pretty much cancelled altogether now, with the Olympics due in Japan this year, now being postponed until 2021. Imagine training for your event and achievement of a lifetime for it to be cancelled. On a somewhat smaller scale, when I trained for my first Rotorua Marathon in 1999, it was cancelled due to a Civil Defence Emergency. The night before the event, Phil and I lay together in our hotel bed listening to the pouring rain, and I remember waking in the night and saying to him “it won’t be cancelled, will it?”, of course, ever the optimist, he say, “No Way”. In the morning, we got up, got dressed and started walking in knee deep water to the start line. On our way there, we noticed many people walking in the wrong direction and then along came our friend, Mike, who let us know it was OFF. We were devastated. I still remember the sense of loss of having trained so hard and let all that training go to waste.
It was a terrible time – no-one knew what they would do. Could they postpone until the next day, next week or do it later. Unfortunately, like the pandemic, it was unprecedented. There was no plan, so it was simply cancelled as it was too difficult to close the roads again and fit into an already busy Rotorua schedule. This year, 2020, the event has been postponed until September due to the Pandemic. Having ‘remotely’ thought about trying to do an event again – I am so pleased I had not picked this year!!
As I am only currently walking around the block and maybe doing 3-5 kms walking, I think a marathon is quite some way out of my reach at the moment. In the 2 days of Level 3, before the Level 4 lockdown I toyed with going and buying a new pair of running shoes. I wish I had, my current ones are no longer kind to my feet, and I really would like to use some of this time to work on a little bit of fitness. I will keep going with the yoga for now – Day 5 of Yoga with Adriene done and dusted.
Thursday 2 April – Day 8
We have made it through a week. Oh boy. Three weeks minimum to go – and the vibe is definitely that the lockdown will go longer than the 4 weeks. New Zealand had 89 new cases today, but about 13 of these are ‘probable’, this brings our count to 797 reported cases. Our curve is still growing, but the predictions are that it should flatten a little as we needed time for those returning from overseas to get out of self isolation and also, there was possibly a rise in infections when everyone rushed out in the Level 3 stages.
Mitchell has mostly been staying well, and as long as we do a mandatory trip to the chemist, we are managing to keep him entertained. There has been a lot of Wallace and Gromit – A matter of Loaf and Death being watched, but it is a bit of whatever keeps him happy at the moment. Unfortunately, one of our new carers, (K), quit today. This is not the right forum to share here, but it was not working out well for us, and obviously, she felt the same way. It does leave us rather exposed with now only, Georgia in the daytime and 2 of our night carers currently covering 5 nights a week. Soon, our longtime carer E, will retire after 8 years with us, and this falls just on Easter.
I have put my name down for a virtual ‘crop’ tomorrow, which goes for the next 3 days. It is being run by Kylie Tout (from Australia) and I am looking forward to some online crafty time and challenges. A big yay to her for setting this up. It is 10 am to 10 pm each day, which will be 12 to 12 for us here in NZ. Looking forward to sharing some projects from this as it is my intention to treat it a little like a weekend retreat. (Except for the fact that I need to stay up either Friday or Saturday night, of course).
Traffic on the road is still minimal, but I do think people are joyriding – who am I to judge. But I really, really hope that people continue to take this seriously, as we carry on through this time. I don’t really want it to be extended.
Did a little bit more on my layered page books, but not enough to share and photograph yet. Trying to get my craft room ready, but Phil will be working in there until 3 pm Friday. This is what I need to clean up.
I have put everything on one side of the room to make room for Phil’s computer, so now I need to shift it all back so that I can sit at my desk. And of course, there is a pile of junk to sort. Creative chaos.
That’s it for today.
Cherie xx
Yellow Azalea 