Wednesday 15 April – Day 21
Up at 5 am this morning to take over from Phil who has been watching Mitchell on the night shift. Thankfully, he is sleeping and apart from a few crackles on his chest this morning and a vomit, there have been no new signs of illness. All we can do right now is stay as enclosed in our little bubble to stay safe.
Feeling a bit better today, and made myself do Day 8 of 30 days of Yoga again, how quickly that got dropped while I was feeling low. I did not get out for a walk as the weather has turned to shit (no nice way to put it). We have rain, a wee break, rain, rain and rain now. We have been lucky up to now to have a beautiful fine and sunny autumn, so I can’t really complain.
Thursday 16 April – Day 22
Today our PM Jacinda Ardern addressed the nation at 1 pm about how we could move ahead through the Alert Level systems should our numbers stabilise. Today we had 15 new cases, bringing our total to 1,401 and we have had 9 deaths. I would not want to be a leader right now, making such critical decisions that can affect both lives and livelihoods. Next Monday as we near the end of the 4 week lockdown, she will announce whether we stay at Level 4 or move into Level 3, or whether parts of the country could be either Level 3 or 4. For me, the biggest and most controversial suggestion is that at Level 3, it would be voluntary for students in years 1 to 10 of school to return to school. It would not surprise me if there is enough backlash from this suggestion that this is rethought – but then again, I am no political forecaster, so best to leave that to the experts. Personally, the changes would not affect our home situation too much, one way or the other as at Level 3 I still would not be able to work as I am in a face to face position, and I am still fearful for our family, so I am not sure whether we could introduce more caregivers back into our bubble, so we may be carrying on as we are for now.
The numbers in the USA have grown exponentially and they have over 650,000 identified cases and with 33,903 deaths, they are on a terrible upward trajectory. There is a lot of conversation around the Trump leadership and how this is affecting their ability to work together as a nation to overcome this. World politics is not my bag, so I am not going to say anymore here, except that right now I am pleased to be living in a small island country in the Pacific Ocean.
Friday 17 April 2020 – Day 23
Carried on with our pattern of Phil doing the first half of the night and then me getting up early. Today that was 4 am, so that Phil could get a bit more sleep before starting work at 10.30 am. It’s an odd pattern, but it seems to be working for this week, and we just have to manage as best we can to keep us all well, while we have limited care options.
Did get a chance to do a little scrapbooking today and did this page using a photo from back in 2015. The paper is one from a NZ company called Three Quarter Designs.
Saturday 18 April 2020 – Day 24
Up at 3.30 am this morning to take over from Phil, only to find that Mitchell had only gone to sleep at 3.10 am. The instant thoughts running through my head were, please, please do not let this be a start of the patterns of last year, when we he could stay awake 48 hours at a time. Unfortunately, for Phil he had 3 bed changes in that time, and not much ‘peace’. Lucky for me, he stayed asleep until Georgia arrived at 7 am and I asked her to wake him at 10 am, otherwise he will start back in a pattern of sleeping late and waking late.
Had a little sleep again from 7 am to 10 am and then took Mitchell and Georgia for the ‘almost’ daily ride to the Chemist. It was closed (usually open Saturday morning), so I picked up some panadol from the dairy. Both Holly and I seem to be getting regular headaches at the moment.
I think my headaches are from erratic sleep, or possibly due to that an unexpected and unwanted ‘friend’ that turned up last Friday night and stayed for a week after leaving me alone for 15 months. I don’t like to swear on here, but the phrase WTF, does come to mind. That so called friend, has been an overstayer, as far as I am concerned. She visited way, way too frequently over the last few years, before giving me a 6 month break and then a whole 15 month break. So, after thinking that I was going to finally reach the ‘official’ through menopause definition by getting more than a year without a period under my belt, my body has determined that it is still not quite done with me yet. I just hope that this is not an indicator that there is more to come.
Today, Holly and I did an online painting tutorial with Bob Ross. So, in about an hour we both created a babbling brook landscape – she used oils and I used acrylics. It was fun and while they may not go into an art gallery it was a nice activity to do together. I had a few difficulties with definition, proportion, depth, highlights – well lots of things, but I have since added some doodling and collaged a couple of fairies into it and turned it into something happy for my journal. Sometimes, it is hard to know when to stop and I added black gesso for a quote, which I then ‘misquoted’ . The quote was meant to be “And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul” by John Muir, but I replaced lose with calm. I don’t really want to literally ‘lose’ my mind, so this sits better with me anyway. Plus, even though it’s not perfect, its about ‘the process’ of creating, so I’m happy.
Speak soon.
Cherie
Yellow Azalea 