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Wolfie has gone on holiday to my in-laws, which meant for the first time in however long this has all been going on (four years?) we didn’t have to leave the house at all today. You’d think staying in all day would be the last thing we’d want right now, but you’d be wrong. It was a relief. The dog has been skittish (she attacked the dishwasher yesterday and pulled the bottom tray out and smashed a plate) and it’s a bit more stressful going on walks with the whole family (though we had an idyllic two hour walk through the woods yesterday where we met no people and the kids let off some steam) and so a day on the sofa interspersed with playing in the garden with the sprinkler was all we needed.
I’ve been trying to blow up the big paddling pool for three days now. We don’t have a pump and I am sure we blew it up with our mouths and lungs last year, but I am not making that much of an impact. Leastways the pool is not yet inflated enough to play in. There’s a chance there’s a hole in it and I am just making myself dizzy for no reason. I ordered a pump today but it won’t be here til Thursday. Will I have blown up the pool by then. I will try. I will fail.
The thing I can’t quite get over with the lockdown is how much washing up there is to be done. That’s generally my job (loading and unloading the dishwasher, except when the dog tries to get involved) and I feel like I am doing this job fairly constantly throughout the day. Once one cycle is finished, it’s time to load it up and set it off again. This is my life now. I thought I’d got it easy making bins and dishwasher my thing, but in a pandemic these will keep you occupied 24 hours a day. It’s a living Hell.
But I also found time to do something that I’ve never done before and apparently neither has anyone else the 3 years we’ve owned this house and I used the Dyson to try and get all the cobwebs out of the corners of our rooms. That was quite good fun to be honest. I also attempted an online tutorial in connecting hozelock items together as we get a bit confused every time we use it. I think we’ve lost a couple of bits and left others outside so they’ve got a bit rusty or stiff. But although the sprinkler no longer moves by itself the kids had fun jumping through it this afternoon.
If they were a bit older and could look after themselves I am sure I would be getting more reading and work done, but I should have realised that it was a choice between kids and a bin and a dishwasher. You can’t have a life if you’ve got all of those things.
Today was easier though as we spent pretty much the whole thing together as a family - the days of solo parenting are tough enough to make it hard to want to do anything but sleep on the days of work. But the days of all being together are largely fun. And with not even any Twitch stuff today I didn’t get exhausted.
And the news that obese men over 50 are in particular danger of dying from Coronavirus has made me think that I have to use this time to get back on the fitness trail. I had been doing so well this year in terms of exercise anyway, but it’s slipped away. I can’t work out if the attempts to blow up the paddling pool are showing that my lungs are strong or weak, but at least they are getting a work out.
So the plan is to pull back on the drinking a bit (it’s been fairly light generally, but it’s becoming a daily thing and it’s creeping upwards) and do some exercise in the house. I think I’ve already made this point, but for men my age, this house arrest is just getting us into the perfect state of beer belly and withered muscles that will kill us if we get the virus in a fortnight.
I had news of the first person I know dying today. Someone a little older than me who had diabetes, but who certainly had many years ahead of him if it hadn’t been for the bad luck of contracting this infernal virus. We’ve all been living in denial to an extent and being flippant and making jokes are to be fair, a great way through something this awful. But whilst I won’t stop joking, I am going to take it more seriously.
I had made a mordant joke about saying maybe this wasn’t just like flu after all, and there are still people out there arguing that there is no evidence that more people are dying than usual. And they’re right. Apart from all the evidence. I have a feeling there won’t be many people sticking to this viewpoint in a fortnight, but I know there will be some. Even though the hospitals are full and bodies are already being buried in mass graves in New York, this will somehow be to them, just the people who would normally have died dying. But there we go. They are wrong. And will be wronger.
