The weather is bleak and miserable today, and my mood seems to match it. I make it to my prayer meeting, and I am grateful for this encouraging group of strangers-who-are-feeling-like-friends-now.
Rev G is ‘on’ the kids today, although it is clear that his mind is on his work, and not them. Not for the first time, I feel resentful of how the church seems to be getting the best of him during this time, and not us. I am sure I am not the only spouse feeling this way. Right now is one of the busiest times of the year for the church – Easter is not the time to put in the bare minimum of energy if you are a minister.
I’m really tired today, and it takes me ages to summon the energy to have a shower and get dressed. But today is ‘Formal Friday’, so I throw on my best dress, and have fun doing my hair and makeup.
My son walks in from a walk with his father and sister. “Mum, you look really nice,” he says, I think for the first time ever.
The rest of my family dress up for our daily Zoom catchup, and I have a giggle sharing ridiculous Snapchats with my cousin, J. I am so grateful for technology today.
All dressed up with no place to go
My parents, MiL and brother are suitably dressed for our catchup. We share some laughs. Next week’s challenge is making up a crazy hat. My recycling bin was made for a time such as this! Still, everyone is a bit down today, and we are running out of things to say to each other. I resolve to share some jokes or poems etc the next time we meet.
After the call, we catch up with friends from down south, and film a video segment for our church’s Palm Sunday service. I wrote a rather silly, short children’s play for Palm Sunday two years ago, which we’ve decided to recycle. Recording segments and putting the video has provided some fun and something to do for several people in our church, and I can’t wait to see what it looks like.
At home we are all a little snippy and shouty with each other. The children don’t eat their dinner, so they are put to bed early. Rev G and I enjoy the quiet and watch more of “The Man in the High Castle”.
We started to prank our kids for April Fool’s last year, once they were old enough to understand what it was all about. I don’t like pranks that are mean; I prefer silly pranks. This year (all ideas from Pinterest) we had to use what we had in the house.
We put googly eyes on all the cereal containers.
We froze a couple of bowls of milk and cereal for ‘breakfast’.
The kids loved it.
Day 8 was a good day. I felt pretty normal, and my knee is improving again. We did home school in the morning.
The afternoon was spent zooming friends and family, and going for walks. I did some pruning in the garden.
Definitely nothing earth-shattering.
I have seen lots of memes about life in lockdown, and the ones that make me laugh the most are ones like this because it feels accurate:
All my friends and family without small kids in the house are busy decluttering and cleaning and working and taking up hobbies and having the time to be bored. Not so for us. While we’re not quite the chaos above, I can’t imagine how blimmin’ hard it must to be to be in lockdown with toddlers. I’m pretty sure I would have lost my damn mind by now!
But it’s not a competition to see who is doing it tough. I think of families who live in small houses or apartments, and I am grateful that we have a big house. Especially one with a separate studio that Rev G can work out of for now. We can at least, get away from each other. I think of people who don’t live anywhere near green space for walking. I think of people who haven’t gone into lockdown with good mental health and worry about how they are doing. I think of people in bad relationships and worry for them too. I think of those who live alone – for some, lockdown isn’t too bad, but for some it’s excruciatingly hard.
My brother is really angry when we meet online. His bedroom curtains have fallen down, and he is unable to put them back up due to his disability. While his reaction is out of proportion to the incident, his rage does signify the stress we’re all going through. No one is quite themselves right now. Is he going to have to go through lockdown without bedroom curtains? Is curtain rail installation an essential service? Who knows.
I end the day with doing my Lent study with some people from church. It’s great to see everyone. Some are doing just fine, some are incredibly busy with work, some are finding it mentally tough. One lady tells me the prayer technique I introduced her to last week has kept her sane (it’s the Daily Examen, a spiritual discipline from St Ignatius of Loyola). That one comment makes the blood, sweat and tears of putting the study together totally worth it to me.
Day 6 started off well. I got up for my prayer meeting, and I headed out for a walk with the children.
I wish I could personally thank the person who thought of the ‘bear hunt’ that is keeping children all over the world occupied. Like rock hunting, it turns a walk into an adventure.
Miss E counted 39 stuffed animals on this walk, which took us down little side streets we hadn’t walked down before. The people in my suburb have really embraced the bear hunt, as you can see.
I am thrilled to be able to get out of the house again. My knee isn’t 100% but is okay enough to go for a 20 minute walk. I’ve noticed it is going up (particularly stairs) that exacerbates it, so I can keep that to a minimum. I notice so many beautiful things on my walk, and feel refreshed.
However, by lunchtime both Rev G and I are feeling seedy. He goes off for a nap, and I am not far behind. I develop a bad headache, and realise later it’s a migraine. I usually get visual disturbances with migraines, but not this time. I have to spend the rest of the day in bed in my darkened bedroom.
I still feel yuck (headachey and nauseous) when I get up the next day, and I do my best to parent from the couch. A few weeks before lockdown, Rev G and I bought some activity books and crafts in case school closed. I bust one each of these out and that keeps them occupied for the morning.
In the afternoon, I send them out to the garden to do a nature scavenger hunt. They love it so much they spend the next four house playing outside! I gradually start feeling better, although I worry I am now running a temperature. Our ear thermometer is wildly inaccurate at the best of times, so I don’t really know if I am.
We worry it might be COVID-19, although given that I haven’t seen anyone but my family for two weeks, it seems unlikely. After dinner I stop feeling hot. Perhaps menopause is starting? Who knows?
I stay up until the wee hours of the morning to secure a grocery delivery slot for my parents. Slots fill up so fast that this is the only way to get one – when a new day rolls over. You cannot get a time slot for at least a week.
I watch Avengers Endgame with bleary eyes, and try not to cry when the supermarket website crashes just after midnight. I don’t give up. I watch a bit more of the movie, and after about half an hour the website is up and running again. Fortunately I am able to retrieve the order, and I discover they have added more time slots that are closer than a week away. I am able to get my parents a delivery for Saturday.
When we get up we discover that our kindness mail is going well. Today’s mission is to do something kind for Daddy. The children set the table for breakfast and get Rev G his breakfast cereal. They have collaborated and given US a kindness mission – we have to sing a song to their Oma. Rev G and I decide to sing ‘You’ll never walk alone”.
I sleep in a bit. My knee has stopped improving, and is usually aching and hard to walk on by the end of the day. Rev G and I decide that resting up must be my focus so that I can eventually go out for walks. My own mental health is starting to suffer a bit – I haven’t left the house since well before the lockdown. I get teary when I think about not being able to go for walks. The tears are simply what lack of sleep does to me, so I also prioritise some early nights.
My knee injury is exacerbated by slopes and stairs. We have about 50 steps just to get into our house from the street, and then about 15 stairs to get to the second storey of the house. So, you can see my problem.
I do my daily Christian devotional and tai chi outside in the sunshine. The weather is not as nice, and rain is forecast for several days. I get outside as much as I can, but it’s not easy because of all the steps on our property.
My lunch view, sitting at my front door. The road is all the way down at the gap in the trees. You can’t see all the steps in this photo, but there are a lot. This is typical for homes in hilly Wellington.
Rev G theoretically has today off, which is why I am able to rest my knee so much. Even so, he has several phone calls with parishioners, providing tech support so they will be able to be part of an online service this weekend. I give thanks that prior to this job, he worked in IT. Helping people participate in shared online worship may be the most important ministry he does throughout lockdown.
The children are pretty good for the morning, and my daughter makes me a fruit salad, unprompted. In the afternoon my son gets really tired and scratchy, but is distracted by making under-the-sea dioramas with his dad.
Fruit salad, courtesy of Miss E
Craft time. I am grateful for our new house which has a conservatory. We use it as a kids craft room, to hang washing, and to grow seedlings. Anyway, I am grateful for this space!
I get really annoyed at all the Facebook vigilantes on my local FB page. “OMG, a jogger just ran past me too closely!!!!”, “I just saw two ladies walking together!”, “There are people shopping at the supermarket! Stay home!”, “Why is no one wearing masks outside?”.
I wish I was exaggerating, but I guess this is just an example of how panic stops our rational brain from working.
You are not going to catch COVID-19 from a jogger whizzing past you, although that jogger should have tried to give you more room. Those two ladies probably live together; not everyone has traditional family units. People are allowed to get groceries. There is no reason to wear a mask unless you have symptoms – and if you do you should be staying at home.
Today all four of us are tired and cranky. We watch another silly movie after dinner. Once the kids are in bed Rev G and I start coming up with plans for fun things to do with the kids (we are going all out for April Fool’s Day, for example) and projects that need to be done (like gardening, rearranging the garage etc).
We come up with a plan for the next day which includes chores, crafts, baking and exercise. I think these daily and weekly plans will help us get through. We don’t have to follow them to the letter, but having ideas at the ready takes the pressure off our mental load.
I started blogging years ago mostly as a way of keeping in touch with my friends and family who – thanks to my somewhat nomadic life – are scattered all over the globe.
I suck at keeping in touch with people. I’m not great at email, I despise talking on the telephone, and I have a select group of people that I do video calls with. And I’m an extrovert!
For the next few weeks, this will be a ‘lock down diary’ – so feel free to ignore my posts until normal transmission resumes some day in the future – after all, most of you will be living your own lock down lives too.
I want to record this event for myself, and particularly for my children. My son is only 5.5 years, and I doubt he will remember any of it when he grows up. What is happening around the world, and to us in New Zealand is of a magnitude I’ve never experience in my life time – and I pray I never do again.
On Friday I hugged my cousin S and my friend J, as they left our wee dinner party, for we didn’t know when we might see each other again. It was a surreal moment.
After a moving church service on Sunday, attended by 13 of us, the consensus was that we would continue to meet until directed otherwise by the government or the church. I was quite surprised by this choice, but every single person there was frazzled. Our brains were overloaded with all things COVID-19, and the situation that was unfolding daily. Many of the people at my church work for the government, several of them heavily involved in the crisis response. One person’s job was to run the numbers on the amount of deaths in her field. Can you imagine?
Monday morning is my usual grocery-shop day. Only I am on week two of mandatory rest to help heal damaged tendons in my knee, so I can’t go. Rev G decides he’ll do the shopping on Tuesday. I think this is fine, because I don’t think we’ll go into Level 3 in New Zealand until later in the week.
We manage to get a phone consult for Miss E with a doctor, as Miss E still has a cough which has gone on for over seven days. We are sure it isn’t the ‘rona, but are concerned she may need medicine to shift the cough. She’s already had a week off school. I’d like to send her if I could, as she is totally fine except for the odd bit of coughing. She’s been totally fine for about five days at this point. The only reason I want to send her is because she is new at the school, and just starting to settle and make friends.
The doctor diagnoses a virus – that is not COVID-19 – and says, “Normally I’d tell you to send her to school, but there’s other people’s anxiety to consider at the moment.”
The Doctor is of course, totally correct. Miss E stays home.
As Miss E is quite perky, I sit her down and tell her I don’t think she’ll be able to return to school before lock down begins. She flips through our craft books and marks which crafts she wants to do.
Deciding to save Rev G yet another trip out, I order over the internet the craft supplies we need, plus some Easter Eggs, that we can stash away. I am predicting a sombre Easter.
I go online to check what fresh horrors await me today, to discover I have just caught the tail end of the government deciding to move us from Level Two to Three, and then Level Four at 11:59 on Wednesday.
I immediately call Rev G because I know he won’t have heard the news, and tell him to quickly check how crazy the supermarket is. We have plenty of emergency food, but not a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables since today was our normal stock-up day. I’m concerned it may take days for panic-buying to calm down, and curse my knee.
The shopocalypse is taking place as he drives by, and we decide we can wait!
I thank God for what we do have.
I talk to my children about what’s happening. Miss E (7) watched the news with me on Saturday, so she understands that Level Four means no school. In the last few days I have needed to watch the news, something I have rarely done for over a decade; it’s always far too depressing.
I think I have explained the ‘stay at home’ situation to them. Five minutes later my son asks Rev G to buy him something from the shops. Yeah, he doesn’t get it.
We watch the news together as a family for the first time ever; I’m hoping that it will help the children understand what it all means. That we can’t pop to the shops. We can’t go to the playground. We can’t see their friends. A snippet on the panic buying helps my son to understand why we don’t want to go to the supermarket right now. Even though they have iceblocks.
I immediately start conserving food despite the fact that I know the supermarkets will be open throughout. Our portions are slightly smaller, and we explain to the children that waste just won’t be tolerated. They take it pretty well, and eat dinner with little complaint for a change. My husband and I think COVID-19 may be a game changer for their picky palettes.
Even though we are normally pretty good at using up our food, I suddenly notice outrageous waste. I quickly throw the dregs of a 2-day old cooked chicken and some starting-to-get-manky veg into a pot to make soup. If getting veggies in the shopocalypse turns out to be difficult, this will provide good nutrients. This is my way of panicking.
I have invited my parents and my brother to a Zoom meeting, although we use most of the time getting it set up properly for my mother. I thank God I have a tech-savvy husband who can do that. We have a lot of fun singing songs and generally being silly, and end with a prayer.
Rev G had the hymn Jerusalem stuck in his head as he prepared his sermon. The line, “I shall not cease from mental fight” stands out to me.
I haven’t yet met anyone who is blase about having to stay put for a month. It’s a huge ask to give up our normal lives, but it is absolutely the right decisions. I tell my kids that they are lifesavers.
I am mostly worried about the mental side of being cooped up this long. I am a sensation-seeking extrovert – a person who loves new, novel things. Where ever I live, I can tell you all the things to do in my area, because you can bet I’ve done most of them. Even though I’m a stay-at-home parent, I’m rarely home for a couple of days at a time, unless I’m unwell. I’m not wired that way.
My children are not wired that way either. My son is like me – he needs to get out. He is very, very social, and quickly gets irritated and naughty towards his sister if cooped up with just her for company. Rev G and I have just come off the back of having the kids for over seven weeks when we were between homes, and it was exhausting. We had friends and places to go then too!
I’m chomping at the bit to go for a walk, to exercise, like all the experts are cautioning us to do. Only I can’t right now because of my injury. Hopefully my knee will continue to improve so I can at least get out into the walking track near my house.
