End of Week One – Stay At Home Save Lives
It’s fair to say that in our house, along with the rest of the world, it’s been a week of mixed emotions, there’s been ups and downs, tears and laughter. There’s a lot to be thankful for alongside the frustrations of self-quarantine/lockdown/isolation whichever word you’re using in your circumstances.
The good:
The sun has been shining – can you imagine trying to live through this with grey skies and rain? Ugh! So thankful that Spring is springing while we slow down.
We’ve taken a walk every day – the boys have cycled or scooted – in said sunshine and it has been lovely despite the aches and pains it brings on.
We’ve done a variety of different activities, some more successfully than others. The one I am most pleased about was a lovely few moments of quiet while the 3 of us sat around the table painting – bliss!
The schools have been sending out encouraging and helpful links and documents with limited expectations on us to do very much.
Last night we had a church quiz night over Zoom for ‘Thursday’s Big Night In’ and had a real giggle!
Technology: how good that we live in an age where we have the technology to see people without being in the same physical space, along with the need to be physically distant whilst shopping for essentials. It’s a marvel!
The less than good:
It turns out I really struggle with not being able to get food as and when we run out, this is both because of our own funds being stretched and because of the strain on the supermarket supplies
Also, human nature being what it is I’ve noticed more than usual that I want what I do not have! I listened to a prayer app yesterday telling me to ‘make the most of this time of enforced solitude’ and was NOT impressed, what solitude is that then? Not much solitude to be had in our house with all 4 of us under the same roof… I got cross and grumpy about the lack of it last night and then realised there are a lot of people who would love to have other people in their homes during this isolation period and I got less cross.
De-motivation – me and the boys in particular seem to be feeling really demotivated, there’s very little school work going on, and whenever I suggest it to the smallest one I get either a very ‘meh’ response or a very stressed response. In fact that seems to be the case for many of the different activities I suggest whether they are school related or not. I need to get my head around the home-schooling approach because I’m pretty sure most home-schooling does not involve sitting down to work through SATs book! I’m also pretty sure (and very relieved) that SATs are not going to happen this year so very tempted to ditch the lot.
Like most of us I get very overwhelmed when I consider just how long we might be in this current stay-at-home mode. It’s difficult to contemplate schools being closed until September, it’s next to impossible to see how things might return to any kind of normal once the kids do go back (how are schools going to cope with kids returning with a wide variety of experiences in their home schooling?? How is my anxious year 6 going to cope with going back to a new school without any of the usual transition processes??). It’s too much and I have to bring my focus back to today: just deal with today, we can only live one day, even one moment, at a time. Never has this been more true than it is right now!
The rest:
So, one day at a time, we will get through these challenging and strange times together, apart. Sending you much love and encouragement to keep in touch with each other, a phone call or text might make a person’s day much brighter!