Life in Lockdown. I never thought I would have to write those words. But two weeks ago, like much of the world, we were told we had to STAY HOME. It isn’t optional and we are doing our very best to protect our health care system and stop the spread of a virus that is causing devastation around the world. Trying to balance my anxiety around illness and death whilst also running a home, supporting the husband who is working full time at home, educating one child and supervising the education of the other, whilst also try to work myself is, shall we say challenging. But we have to do this, we don’t have much choice.
This week has been harder than the first week. The first week seemed like a bit of a novelty I think, if you can call it that and we went all Very British and got on with it. The second week was a bit of a shock, and reality kicked in that we are in this for a long haul. The fact that everyone is doing this and it’s not just us, keeps up going. We are doing our best to not spread or get Coronavirus and that’s what has to be done.
Not being able to go anywhere is hard. Yes, we can go for a daily walk, but to be frank, people in our area are still not always taking things that seriously and having to leap into bushes to avoid people and constantly remind the boy that he needs to stay close and can’t run like he normally does is too stressful. So we are making the most of the garden we have, and are very grateful for, and I have Barry the Coronabike to exercise on. The husband is going for cycles and runs very early in the morning when he can avoid people. The children have been able to access their usual ballet and dance classes via online video which has been really helpful for them and we have a trampoline which is a lifesaver.
I am working on meal plans and feeding us carefully so we can avoid the shops as much as possible, and also use up what we have, and reduce waste. It’s been interesting to work out how much food waste we actually produce and also to try and be inventive with leftovers.
We have now ‘broken up’ for the Easter break, so no formal homeschooling for the boy and the teen has signed off with distance learning for two weeks. We have plans to do activities every day, and lots of gardening and things around the house to keep us busy. We had planned to go away for Easter, but that is of course postponed. We are ok with that, life for many is really awful right now, not being able to go away is a minor ‘first world problem’.
It all is rather real, and lockdown life is something we have to get used to and get on with. It is going to feel ok at times, and other times it’s going to feel hard.
I am trying to find the positives in all of this, and there are good things that are coming out of being at home as a family. I am getting stuff done, around the house, and we are eating together as a family, something that is rare in our normally busy crazy weeks.
So whilst this is not what we want to be doing, we are trying to make the best of it. I think that is pretty much all we can do, right?