Lockdown - Week 11

So, we're now in Week 11 of Lockdown and in some ways it's hard to believe that we've been locked down for nearly three months now. The time has gone very quickly, but I'm finding it harder the longer it goes on.

 

Earlier in the week I fell into a bit of a lull again, between projects and needed to give myself a good old kick up the proverbial. Neither OH nor myself felt particularly motivated to paint the living room, so no progress was made.  OH had painted the walls, but we still need to paint the woodwork and are finding it hard to just get on and do it.

 

I was intending to do it on Monday, but instead decided to go off and do the two weekly food shop, as there was very little left to make a meal in the evening. It was good to get it out of the way at the beginning of the week really, but I made the mistake of setting off too late at 12.30 ish, so when I got there, there was a huge queue snaking around the Tesco Extra store. I just drove straight out again, as there was no way I was going to wait in it. 

 

Luckily, a short distance down the road is another retail park with a huge Sainsbury's store, so I decided to shop there instead.  There was no queue whatsoever. In fact, it was actually a better experience than the previous shops I'd done at Tesco, and I enjoyed the different choices they had, not that I bought much that was different to what we normally get.

 

On Tuesday, I didn't have a super productive day, but I'm back sticking to my floor exercise routine after a week of doing none. It's amazing what a difference it makes mentally to do something, as opposed to nothing. I also made a point of putting on a dress again on Tuesday.  In fact, on Monday night before getting into bed I went through my wardrobe and pulled out and tried on every potential summer dress I could find in there, to give me more options of things to wear. It made me feel a lot better and gave me some good ideas of outfits I can wear when the weather is hot.

 

As Tuesday was the last sunny day forecast for a while, I decided to sit out in the garden for a little while and read my current book. It's the first time I've done that all Lockdown and I actually quite enjoyed it, so if the weather gets warm again, I'm going to do it more often and make the most of being able to spend time outside. I think I've been trying too hard to be productive and have not allowed myself to enjoy the time off work. I think this needs to change going forward. It's probably a guilt thing about being off work and being paid to do nothing. I need to get over it.

 

On Wednesday, there was forecast a change in the weather, so I was back to dressing in track pants and t-shirt, as I intended to do some ironing, cleaning and painting in the living room. Things I can't really do in a nice dress, without potentially damaging it with bleach or paint.

 

I eventually decided to focus on giving the kitchen a very good clean as I hadn't done it for a few weeks. It took all of the afternoon to get most of the way round, cleaning the inside and outside of the cupboards and the windowsills and windows. I didn't have time to hoover and mop the floor though, so had to leave that until the next day.

 

Thursday, I continued with the cleaning.  Finished off the kitchen floor and then moved up and through the hallways and current living room vacuuming and mopping as I went. It felt good to get the downstairs of the house under some sort of control, save for the front living room which is still being painted.  In the afternoon, I spent 3 hours ironing whilst watching TV, so that was another job completed.

 

Friday, was a slightly less productive day.  I think due to all the cleaning I decided to give myself a break and take it easy.  In the afternoon, I ventured out to B&Q and Poundland to try to buy a whole list of items that we needed. B&Q had no queue, which lured me in, but once inside I realised why, because there were too many people inside, who seemed to have no idea how to social distance and the queue to the till was so long, but did move quite quickly.  In the end I couldn't get most of what I was looking for anyway.

 

Poundland, was an even worse scenario.  There was  queue and I did break my vow not to queue to get into a shop, but there was a manager on the door controlling entry. When I did get in, social distancing was barely happening in there either, but I did manage to buy a few of the things on my list which was the only bonus.  Not an experience I would like to repeat for a good long time. Several of the things I was looking for were not in stock and they'd changed the whole layout of the store so I had no idea where to find what I was looking for anyway.  I was so pleased to get home and had to take a while to calm myself down from the near hysteria I felt inside.

 

I got an email from work today and it seems things are moving on the shop re-opening front, at quite some speed. We will find out early next week if our shop is one that is earmarked to reopen soon. It will be interesting to see how that one pans out.

 

Today, I am going to try to do some painting in the living room. I haven't got anything else planned for the day, so hopefully we'll manage to move things on a little. I'll keep you posted with progress.