Day 74

Day 74...

Well after days of battling the new style blogger I have managed to start today's blog with out any problems - get me!

Another very relaxed and slow start to the day was followed by me and Molly heading off to our supermarket of choice to collect our grocery order. Yet again we arrived and saw the same store colleague we see each week and before we had even got out of the car Marky Mark had brought our shopping to us. Quick load up of the car and then home to do the standard unpack, wipe down, wash veggies and fruit and get rid of as much packaging as we possibly could.

Simon's hayfever was playing up quite a lot today so we took a short time out to stay inside in the cool to let his sneezing settle down and watch the last episode of Star Wars:The Clone Wars which was amazing. This has been such a fabulous series and these last few episodes have been fantastic to watch and have linked in with the live action movies so well, filling in some missing gaps along the way. For an animated series it has captured the essence of Star Wars completely and had us both on the edge of our seats and it even brought a tear to my eyes! The creative power of Dave Filoni is astounding, he has so much respect for, and knowledge of, the Star Wars franchise and has done a great job in creating something that feels so right and sits so perfectly within the story line. He should be given the creative reins of this franchise because everything he has created so far has been brilliant...Oh and I've met him and he was a thoroughly nice chap who took the time to chat with a crazy lady who had mouse ears on her Mandalorian cosplay. (I may have mentioned this once or twice before, check out Wow What a Weekend and My Disney Sleeve)

We then took a walk out over the fields walking just over 3 miles in a little over an hour. Another beautiful day and we encountered very few people, and everyone we did kept to the appropriate social distance and was polite and friendly.

Once we were back home we enjoyed a coffee (with Kahlua) sat on the patio before I joined my fellow Disney Dream Girl, Michelle and some of our listeners for a Disney quiz via Zoom. I had the pleasure of setting some of the questions and I think I may have made them a little hard...never realised choosing questions for a quiz could be so tricky! Although me and Molly had great fun setting them and then later tonight we carried on playing our own 'guess the song from the lyrics' game with me as quiz master trying to pick the most obscure songs going!

It has been lovely today to have things to do that have distracted from the news. To see photos of hundreds of people gathering on beaches and at parks and beauty spots is, to me, quite horrifying. There appears to be little regard for social distancing and goodness knows what the impact of that may be in a couple of weeks time. Our country is supposed to be easing things as from tomorrow but from the photos it would appear that it's already started! But when we have scientists struggling to agree on the best strategy and a lot arguing for a much slower and gradual approach we can only wait and see and hope that we somehow avoid a second spike...but I'm not convinced.

Enjoy the sunshine but take care, stay safe.

xx

Day 10

Day 10 and welcome to the weekend!

Yay it's Saturday so what shall we do today?...Oh I don't know shall we just have a day at home and chill? Sorry a little bit of sarcasm to start off my post today.

But yes that's just what me and my family and everyone else will be doing today...staying home and chilling.

Our day had a little rude awakening with the doorbell and a parcel delivery before 8am on a Saturday. Thankfully our postman did as he was supposed to and rang the bell, put the parcel in front of the door and left. Is it just me or is everyone else getting a little paranoid about things coming into the home from outside...when you don't know where something has been, how its been handled or who has handled it and never mind cleaning door handles, doorbells and being weary of refuse bins. I wonder if after all of this we are all going to turn into germaphobes?? So I will confess that the parcel did get wiped down with anti-bacterial wipes before it was opened!

The parcel was actually a bit of a treat I'd sorted for my kids; I know they're not kids but young adults now but hey I'm their mum and I can treat them if I want to. This was a little care package from Hotel Chocolat with some Easter themed treats and I'd also arranged for another package to go to my dad which he'd actually received yesterday.

So once the day was up and going Simon decided to spend a little time sanding the main body of the R2D2 that he is building which then meant it needed washing down afterwards which is easiest to do in our shower and that led to today's phrase of the day 'I'm just going to bathe my droid'!

We then had the joy of clearing out a blocked drain - whoop! Just a big dose of normality that somethings will still need sorting no matter what else is going off in the world.

This afternoon we had our daily walk out only today it was much colder and greyer than the rest of the week so much so my woolly hat was back on and we left armed with an umbrella. Thankfully it didn't rain but we managed 2.5 miles in just under 55 minutes and that included a stop by my dads house. Luckily my dad lives about a mile away so we were able to walk to his house and then be able to chat to him through his living room window. It was just nice to be able to see him and know that he's doing okay.

On our walk back we decided that rather than walk the main road route that we had taken to get to my dads we would walk back the 'scenic' route over the fields. We had met a few people on our walk to my dads but everyone had kept their distance, everyone smiled and acknowledged each other and we had only needed to cross to the other side of the road once when the pathway got too narrow for us to pass safely. In fact I had commented that not only was the main road so quiet that we could cross without any wait but also how other people out and about were acknowledging one another something that wouldn't generally happen as much in more 'normal' times.

So Simon said 'if we go over the field we will see less people'...okay that didn't really work out. Just as we started to head towards the first public pathway we met a gentleman walking his dog, now I don't want to sound mean but I think the term walk is a bit over energetic this very old looking dog was doing more of a waddle! So we gave space and passed each other before seeing a family cross over the road in front of us and head down the same pathway we were heading...so we stopped and gave them a little head start before following along. When we emerged into the field we found that there was another family ahead of us as well with two small children; we then began a very leisurely walk to make sure the gap between all of us was more than sufficient. As we emerged from the field and were about to head along the second footpath we noticed that the family with young children were exactly where we wanted to go and moving at a slow pace (as you would expect with young children) so we decided to follow an alternate pathway which took us back to the main road we had been trying to avoid! It's great to see people out and about getting exercise and fresh air but it does feel like a game of dodgeball at times!!

We decided a few walks back that we would start using the 'Strava' app to record where we walked and how long it took us, we have recorded 5 walks so far, walked a total of 10 miles and had 4 hours of activity - that's not too shabby.

Saturday has been a day of chilling and taking things at a steady pace; I have done a bit more on my current jigsaw, Molly has watched the complete series of High School Musical The Musical The Series and Simon has watched the follow up movie to Pacific Rim and we are now going to have an evening of RuPauls Drag Race and perhaps Frozen 2!

But in amongst all this 'chilling' we still can't escape from what's going on around us, the news and social media is still there and I find myself caught in the middle of wanting to know what's happening and at the same time not wanting to hear about it over and over. I saw a photo of my aunty this evening who works for the NHS in the North East all gowned up in the full protective gear and marvelled at her smiling face and simultaneously felt proud and worried. I then saw a quote a friend had posted on Facebook which resonated 'You're not stuck at home, you're safe at home'...by staying home we make the lives of all those working so hard within the NHS and elsewhere a darn sight easier it's not hard, it's really quite simple and it's our way of helping out in a horrid situation.

I am out of my usual red wine so tonight I have opened a bottle of champagne...or more likely a bubbly wine...so I will raise a glass to all of us that are doing our bit even if that is just staying at home.

xx