Second week of Lockdown. Keeping up with Lockdown poems a day, although ended up late with a couple. Must remember this is not a TASK but something enjoyable! Been lovely actually discovering poems I had forgotten about and remembering why various poems have meaning for me. Quite a trip into my memories and that in itself is interesting about how poems have played such a role in my life, not that I had particularly noticed until now.
This week felt a bit same-old-same-old. Although the details are different, the structure is the same and I need to accept that that is how it will be, for a while at least. By Wednesday I was trying to think of things to look forward to or have a hook to make days a bit different. To that end we did a bit of family TV on Wednesday night watching Bake Off. And we had “date night/kids movie night” on Friday where Mike and I actually managed to nearly get through two episodes of a mini-series- Roadkill on BBC and the kids watched a film in bed. Will think of things for this week too. Isaac and I have started baking together on a Tuesday night after school. I’ve still got A LOT of pumpkin to use up and so we are working our way through the pumpkin recipes. This week it was pumpkin and chocolate loaf, although it was more like a cake as we did not have a loaf tin big enough. Turns out Isaac is pretty good at making icing, so all good. And upon returning from the school run on Thursday we found out there had been a chicken-fox drama. Fox had grabbed one chicken by the neck, tried to squeeze behind the shed, chicken was too big so fox had had to drop it. Chicken ran off, Mike arrived to try to intercept it and then our cat jumped in to scare off the fox. Madness! Chicken was fine. Fox was fed up. Came back and sat in the raised bed by the chicken coop staring at the chickens and back to the house, seemingly asking what had happened to its dinner! Writing this actually makes me realise that perhaps week’s are not really “same-old-same-ole” at all!
Work was full on this week with government announcements about students returning home for Christmas and organising testing, moving all teaching online after 9th December and how we would accommodate all of this. Also I chaired 3.5 hours of team meetings non stop on Wednesday which has made me think about manging online meetings and there is probably a post on this! Am moving forward on both the Lego video and podcasting projects, exciting. Hoping to progress these this month as well as organising some online Lego Serious Play sessions. My desk is covered in Lego again which is good, I’m excited about using Lego online, will be good to see how it goes. Just need to sort dates. This also got me thinking about facilitating away days online too, which is probably the subject of a further post, so definitely blogging coming along 🙂 although I’m not sure anyone reads it but hey….I like doing it and have shared the wellbeing post with a few people, so hopefully it will be useful.
Weekend was pretty lockdown normal. Bit of online exercise, LOTS of independent Lego play by the kids – complex houses being built for dogs – and audiobooks. Kids wrote Christmas lists where Mariela announced she “needs” nothing! The lists are organised into wear/read/want/need. Mummy time with Isaac which was focused on writing a Christmas and birthday list, as well as showing me Sim City. His city is quite impressive and he has an entrepreneurial streak, backed up by him telling me the other day he wants to own his own shop, not pay rent to anyone and not answer to anyone either, he truly wants to be his own boss.
Managed to get a lovely socially distanced walk in with a friend, just after the rain and under a gorgeous rainbow. Dog was super reluctant to go though! And helped Sylvia repot many many cacti and well as learning that it is hard to get coffee at 4.30 on a Saturday for a homeless person that sleeps out locally.
We also had a family Zoom on Sunday which we had not done for ages and was great to see so many of my family. But, wow, I do really miss them, particularly my USA family who I have not seen most of this year, when we usually do. And wondering when will see my UK family too.
Oh! And major achievement was that the fabric arrived for The Chair project so I actually cut it out. Antonia was great a helping pin the templates to the material. So that is another stage completed. Now to order foam and an electric staple gun and I might be ready to actually cover The Chair next weekend.