Had you told me this time last year that someone in China would eat a bat, causing an extremely deadly and worldwide pandemic I'd have laughed in your face. I mean it's not the first time eating animals has caused an outbreak in humans though is it? However, 2020 has proved that anything is possible and in fact we are all currently living in a lockdown (excuse the Facebook ma expression) situation. Since I have been furloughed from work (seriously did any of us really knew what that word meant three weeks ago) and I've got loads of time on my hands I thought I'd start up the CoviDiaries series. I thought it would be good to document it and look back on how I felt and dealt with the whole thing when we're eventually allowed to return to normality.
Covid-19 or Coronavirus has swept the nation and as as per BoJo's instructions we are unable to leave the house unless you're a keyworker, to shop for essential items (always wine) and for one form of exercise per day. We are essentially like prisoners at the moment because we've been told to practice social distancing and none of us have seen our families for two weeks. It's shit. Now I know it's for our safety because contrary to popular belief, I'm not soft, but I miss my family. Loads.
Normally I quite enjoy time to myself, obviously being a working mum I split my time down the middle of doing both so whenever I get chance to, I like taking a day here or there to concentrate on myself - read a book, tidy the house, have a bath, that sort of thing. I've always been one to enjoy my own company, I quite like binge watching a tv show or losing a day lost in a book and now I have all the time in the world to do this but it just feels different. I need something to do to break the time up.
Towards the first week I tried to remain positive because I truly believe you have to make the most of a situtation. We're very lucky in the fact we have access to a lot of things at the touch of a button. Technology means we're able to Facetime our friends and family, there are streaming services a plenty and we can order things we need to entertain ourselves to our front door. The end of that first week I was miserable but I was also missing the boys which didn't help - I'd been showing symptoms of the dreaded C word and it was either self isolate for 7 days by myself or isolate with the boys for 14 days so it seemed the lesser of two evils. The end of that week I think I stayed in bed for two days with the curtains closed. And I told myself it was okay to have a day of doing nothing and feeling like shit.
Festivals and gigs have been cancelled or postponed, weddings are no longer taking place, holidays have been cancelled. We're allowed to feel sad for the things we've lost. Some days are always going to be harder than others for everyone. We're all going to deal with this differently but we can stay connected and I think that's very important.
George was crying last week because he missed his family and that was a tough one to tackle. I got pretty upset too. I told him I missed everybody too, but it's important that we all stay safe and we would just have to do loads of fun things at home to make up for the things we're missing. It's hard for us and it's even harder for them too because they don't really understand, but they won't remember it, they're gonna look back and remember the time they got to spend time at home with their families doing fun things and having movie nights and playing games on Houseparty with their extended family.
Last night I did a big sad, I was so bored and miserable and fed up. I get so restless because I'm a proper fidget and I need something to keep me busy. I had a moan to the girls and a cry then went to sleep. I had a little lie in today which was boss because my body doesn't normally let me sleep past 7am and instead of moping about, I got up, did a fun makeup look which you can see if you follow me on Instagram, read some of a new book in the bath, then went downstairs for lunch. It's all about balance isn't it?
Anyway so that conlcudes the CoviDiaries part one and hopefully next week I'll have some exciting stuff to talk about instead of waffling on about my feelings.
Stay home, stay safe
Rachael xo