• Feeling:  Tired but OK
• Listening to: Happy music
• Watching: Vagrant Queen (until I fell asleep)

This is (I think) the 90th day I’ve written a post since I started writing about our experience of quarantine (initially) and then lockdown.

I was up early (6:30) to get some work done before a meeting at 10. No school for F today because they close the school to deep-clean on a Friday. She had her Friday morning session with Liz which seemed to go well as always (although I didn’t hear it as I was in my meeting at the same time).

Once I’d done with my meeting I found it more difficult to settle to work for the rest of the morning (which caused a bit of friction with D as I was looking for distractions while she was trying to work).

At lunchtime I got some bread going ready for a planned picnic with my Mum tomorrow. We’ll still be socially distancing (Mum is part of a bubble with E and family as they live 5 minutes walk away from each other), but it will be lovely to see her and for the kids and D to see her – and hopefully have a nice walk in the countryside and a picnic.

B had been planning to make a lemon meringue tart all week, and so with his schoolwork all done by lunchtime he decided he should make it this afternoon – his first attempt (as far as I know) at pastry. He had a Mary Berry recipe (I have to admit I’m not that keen on her recipes – they always seem a little off to me) and started well getting the pastry together – getting the flour and butter to breadcrumbs in the food processor without any help. But after adding the sugar and eggs it all went a bit wrong (I think it was probably a mistake to carry on with the food processor when adding the liquid to be honest – mixing by hand would have been the safer bet) – and ended up with a past instead of the promised (by the recipe) ball of dough.

I wish I was better at helping B at these moments rather than just taking over – but whatever my failings at teaching I did manage to rescue the pastry and we got a reasonable ball of dough to chill for a bit. It was still incredibly delicate when it came to roll it out – and again I had to help and we ended up doing a bit of patching once it was in the tart case – but it went better than I expected to be honest.

The rest of the recipe B got on with pretty well – although he needed reassurance from me several times he was able to make the lemon filling and the meringue pretty much by himself (he was remarkably patient while zesting 6 lemons which seemed to take hours!), and the result was pretty damn good.

B isn’t the tidiest of cooks, and I felt like I spent the whole afternoon tidying up after him – but he did show willing and he’s getting better at doing these things for himself, or at least realising that he does need to wash things up or put them in the dishwasher!

I was trying to work alongside all the cooking, but my back was aching and I decided to stop a bit early and rest it a bit. We ate late (because of the ongoing lemon meringue tart baking) and after the kids were in bed I pretty quickly nodded off on the sofa and didn’t wake until after 10pm.

Need to be up reasonably early tomorrow to pick up some bakery treats before we head over to Mum’s, so time to sleep (again) now.

Stay safe, stay strong

• Feeling:  OK
• Listening to: Nothing today
• Watching: Giri / Haji

Been tired today and although I think I worked hard, I don’t feel I got a huge amount done 🙁

F was in school again, and D was at work for a couple of hours. B had a piano lesson in the morning but despite that managed to finish all his school work by lunchtime.

B has started working on some Project Euler problems (basically a list of mathematical problems you solve by writing computer programmes) and has been enjoying the challenge.

Water butt update – pretty much both water butts are now full – that’s 400 litres of water collected since the weekend! I’m starting to feel I should have gone for a bigger butt (!). But actually tempted to order more to collect water off the front of the house – seems terrible to me now that we’ve just been letting all this water go to waste!

We had pre-prepared pizza & garlic bread for tea – nowhere close to a homemade one in terms of taste but sometimes it feels like a treat to have a “lazy tea”.

I should sleep now, otherwise I’m going to feel tired again tomorrow.

Stay safe, stay strong.

• Feeling:  happy
• Listening to: Nothing today
• Watching: Staged

Big day today for F as she went into school for the first time since 16th March. The children and staff are divided into “bubbles” which have up to 15 children in them (so half the usual class size for F) and are with one member of staff the whole time (F is with her usual class teacher who she loves which is really nice).

I dropped F at school – they have separate entrances per ‘bubble’, and was able to chat (at a reasonable distance) with a few of the staff – it was lovely to see them as the staff across the whole school are really nice and friendly, and most know B as well as F and were asking after him as well.

After dropping her off it was then through the one-way system (which goes round the outside of the school buildings) to get back to the entrance/exit to the school. It was pretty well organised and not too busy (they’ve staggered start times for some children I think) and they close on Friday for a deep clean.

Whatever the rights or wrongs of the children being back at school, she was obviously delighted and came home full of excitement and chatter.

Meanwhile B was still at home – but that was fine. I think it was nice for him to have more of our attention (although I think D spent quite a bit of the day worrying about F). B made borage tea and waffles for us as part of his “FT” (food technology) work. The borage has been growing in the garden (D planted it as its meant to be good for bees) and it has pretty blue flowers you can use to make a (mildly laxitive B informs me!) tea. I guess overall the waffles were the better of the two cooking experiments today 🙂

Once F was back home after school (3pm) B was less settled – I suspect because it was then that F had all the news and excitement whereas B had just spent another day at home with us. F said she had done “tests” and it was “great”.

In the evening D and the kids had a quiz with cousins, aunts & uncles while I had choir – which was fun. Chatting to others in the choir someone (Seb?) recommended Staged which is on iPlayer and features Michael Sheen and David Tennant as themselves trying to rehearse a play during lockdown (via Zoom) – we watched the first episode tonight and really enjoyed it – definitely recommend (episodes are about 15 minutes each).

Overall a pretty good day, and was really lovely to see F so happy.

Stay safe, stay strong.

• Feeling:  tired but ok
• Listening to: Nothing today
• Watching: Stumptown

I had good intentions of getting up early this morning and doing some work before everyone else was awake. Unfortunately I woke about 4am and at the same time F woke up and got into our bed. It was quite stuffy and I think that’s why I woke so I opened the window, but then the sound of water dripping on a roof kept me awake, plus having an extra body in the bed made it a bit crowded – so I ended up sleeping on the sofa instead. Unsuprisingly I wasn’t interested in getting up when my alarm went off, and I didn’t get up until D made tea.

I spent the rest of the day feeling pretty sleepy and F also seemed quite tired – we’re hoping that she manages to sleep well tonight in advance of her first day back at school tomorrow.

D went into work this morning – first time since March 16th! Of course it was nothing like going into work normally since it was really just her and a skeleton staff on the site. She was just there for a couple of hours and home again for lunch.

We had several powercuts today caused by our breaker tripping – but we aren’t quite sure of the cause. The trips didn’t seem to be linked to anything we were doing in the house (no particular surges in power use as far as we know) and I’m hoping it was just some external power surges and we just have a particularly sensitive breaker switch. I guess if this carries on we’ll need to get an electrician out.

The powercuts were quite frustrating as each time the power went down we lost wifi of course, and because I’m working on a desktop at the moment my computer rebooted each time – it made it difficult to get on with stuff and interrupted calls during the day.

Spoke to Mum this evening and made tentative plans to visit her at the weekend – as long as the weather is good so we can have a nice socially distanced visit – planning a walk and a picnic.

Tomorrow we’ll have all the excitement of F going to school – so I’d better get some sleep!

Stay safe, stay strong

• Feeling: a little frustrated but OK
• Listening to: Nothing today
• Watching: Parks and Rec

Monday again – felt quite tired today and apart from various work calls (which, to be fair, did eat up most of the day) I don’t feel I was very productive – which is a bit frustrating.

Adding to the frustration I spent the majority of the evening working out what materials I need for the decking project, created the order on a builders merchant only to have the transaction declined as possible fraud (my bank obviously sceptical I’d suddenly spend money on DIY materials!) and lost the whole order. Eventually I got everything ordered again and now its all on order and hopefully I’ll be taking delivery in a couple of weeks.

I did two bakes today – some sourdough in the morning (which we ate for lunch) and then some baguettes this evening.

After lunch F and B had their online Art. F struggles so much with this – she reminds me so much of myself when it comes to drawing – she gets so upset when she can’t draw what she sees in front of her. I was really proud of her this afternoon because she kept going (with a little persuasion and support from me and D), even though she was finding it really difficult.

Since Friday when F’s school let us know they were opening to year 4 this week, D and I have been talking about her going back to school – thinking about the pros and cons and trying to decide if we feel it makes sense for her to go into school. Although we have some concerns and aren’t completely sure its the right thing, while new cases and deaths are still going down, and without any cases at the school, it seems like the right thing for her to go back for now – and we can always decide to change our minds if the situation changes.

We talked to the school today which we found reassuring, and we talked to F and she is really pleased to be going back and can’t wait to see her teacher. With F going to school on Wednesday and D going into work tomorrow (just for a few hours and it won’t be at all like her usual work) there’s a lot of change this week.

Feel like I’ve not really spent much time with B today. He was struggling with his Spanish this morning and was a bit frustrated. I think F going back to school is likely to make him feel a bit down as well (although he may enjoy a bit of time with me to himself when F is in school and D at work on Thursday morning).

It’s been raining this evening and our new water butts have been doing their job – the first butt is already a quarter full and its still raining!

Stay safe, stay strong.

• Feeling: unsettled
• Listening to: Nothing really
• Watching: QI

Its been a hard week. Work has been constant for me, I’ve been tired and not really found the time for D, F and B like I should. F has found the last few days difficult and was worrying about me today.

Today we got notification that Fs school will be opening to her year group next week. This was rather unexpected and has left me a bit unsettled – I still feel rather wary about the rate at which various lockdown measures are being eased, and very unsure that having kids back into school is a good idea. On the other hand it might be good for F – and of course the kids have to go back to school at some point – maybe its better for that to happen for a short period now rather than wait until September. I really don’t know.

We haven’t talked to F about this yet but will need to before Monday – and I think she’ll be very eager to go back – although the reality of it might be a shock I guess.

I’m trying to look forward to the weekend and hope to do some work clearing the area where I’m planning to put the decking and actually ordering the materials to start work. We are also all looking forward to watching the new Artemis Fowl movie on Disney+ over the weekend (although the reviews aren’t great!)

I should say F had a really nice session with Liz this morning and she was laughing and chatting away – I love seeing her like that.

B cooked pizza for tea – perhaps not quite as successful as his last attempt (he tried, at my suggestion, a sourdough pizza recipe and I don’t think it was as successful).

Anyway, for tonight I’ve eaten too much chocolate and now I’ve poured myself a glass of brandy. Hopefully I’ll sleep well and tomorrow will be able to approach things with a clearer and less stressed mindset.

Stay safe, stay strong everyone x

• Feeling: tired out by work
• Listening to: Can’t even remember
• Watching: Bake off: The professionals

Woke up feeling tired and spent the day feeling tired – as yesterday I spent all day gearing up for the software release and doing testing – but by the end of the day – success! All the modules I work on have been successfully released \o/ (this is a huge team effort, not just me by any means).

Meanwhile the kids were a bit stir crazy today, especially F. We went out for a walk this afternoon which I think did us all good. Both kids had their music lessons (keyboard for B, drums for F) today and we got notification that the place where F usually has lessons (and I have singing lessons) will be reopening their physical premises from 1st July.

C dropped round a “SceneIt” Harry Potter game for the kids and we gavean escape room game we’d played in return. The SceneIt game comes with a DVD and you get puzzles on the screen as well as questions on cards. The Kids played that in the afternoon and enjoyed it (although they seemed to enjoy just solving the puzzles on screen rather than bothering with the rest of the game tbh).

Tomorrow looks like being another full day for work, so sleep now. Really looking forward to the weekend.

Stay safe, stay strong.

• Feeling: all worked out
• Listening to: The Magnetic Fields
• Watching: The Great British Sewing Bee

Woke around 7am and dozed dreaming that D was making me a cup of tea. Actually woke up properly about 8am to find that she had, and it had gone cold while I slept!

We had a Sainsbury delivery this morning (we’ve been able to get delivery slots regularly over the last few weeks) and a very cheery and chatty delivery man.

I’ve had my head down in work for most of the day – we’ve got a software release due at the end of this week, so things are a bit busy as I do testing and document any issues.

Ds work has been all about the electronic resources for the past few weeks, and continues to be of course, but they are currently working to make it possible for people to return books to the library from next week. Next week D will be going into work a couple of times to sort out any returns – which will be a bit different for us and her. I guess all signs that we are no longer in full lockdown, but at the same time things are not close to normal.

Both F and B got baking today. B made sourdough pizza dough which is now maturing in the fridge while F baked some ginger biscuits with help from D.

F also worked on building a photo album of “happy things” which she can look at when she gets sad or angry (entirely her own idea, but its really good to see her trying to solve problems in this way).

I had choir this evening but continued to be distracted by work, so although it was good to see and chat to people, my mind was really elsewhere. Just been work and work and work today.

Stay safe, stay strong