I have only learnt one thing this week and, as previously, it is a lesson that in my heart of hearts I already knew.
I do not like ironing.
Even five weeks stuck inside the house is not enough to make me crumble and do any ironing. The iron has been out once in that time, and it was to fuse some Hama beads together. The pile of clothes waiting to be ironed still squats, sullen, on a shelf in the bedroom. It grows a little every week, but only a little, as few of my clothes need ironing, especially the ones I wear around the house. Nobody irons their pyjamas anyway do they*?
I have even started disassembling the dining chairs one by one to re-glue the joints and clamp them back together. I would rather learn furniture repairing than iron my own clothes.
I do not think this lesson casts me in the best of lights, but it is what it is.
* This is a joke. I am actually rigorous about getting dressed every morning as though I were going to work. If I didn't I might never actually do any work.
Friday, 24 April 2020
Thursday, 16 April 2020
Week Four lessons learnt
So apparently I didn't learn anything during week three of lockdown. But on the other hand, we're all alive and fed, so lessons or not, I consider it a success.
Week four on the other hand, despite it only being Thursday is perhaps the pinnacle of my adult life.
A friend posted an amusing meme about the idea of learning things during this peculiar time. I was amused by it, but thought little more of it. Here it is...
Four, yes four, separate friends then commented on this, genuinely wondering if Teapot Lady was me. A fifth friend, entirely independently, messaged me with a copy of this meme to ask if it was me. Closer inspection did reveal a passing resemblance. But, more importantly, it looked quite fun. And I'm nothing if not willing to entertain my friends by making a complete arse out of myself.
(No, I didn't use a bone china teacup. I didn't have faith in not accidentally knocking it over in my exuberance. I may be prepared to make an arse out of myself, but I'm not prepared to break a teacup for you lot.)
Week four on the other hand, despite it only being Thursday is perhaps the pinnacle of my adult life.
A friend posted an amusing meme about the idea of learning things during this peculiar time. I was amused by it, but thought little more of it. Here it is...
Four, yes four, separate friends then commented on this, genuinely wondering if Teapot Lady was me. A fifth friend, entirely independently, messaged me with a copy of this meme to ask if it was me. Closer inspection did reveal a passing resemblance. But, more importantly, it looked quite fun. And I'm nothing if not willing to entertain my friends by making a complete arse out of myself.
(No, I didn't use a bone china teacup. I didn't have faith in not accidentally knocking it over in my exuberance. I may be prepared to make an arse out of myself, but I'm not prepared to break a teacup for you lot.)
Tuesday, 7 April 2020
Week Two lessons learnt
I'm a bit late in getting round to summarising last week, because it turns out that this working from home, running a household, keeping a child entertained lark takes up about as much energy as I have available every day, and by the time I've crawled through the day to LittleBear's bedtime, I tend to sink, slack-jawed and blank-eyed, onto the sofa, fit for little more than posting pictures of my cat to Facebook.
Fortunately, lesson one this week has been to discover how enduringly popular pictures of cats are on the internet. IdiotCat is developing his own fan club now that I have adopted a habit of posting pictures of Therapeutic Cat Of The Day to my own Facebook feed. I feel as though he and I are adding our tiny droplet to the sum of human happiness. I may not be able to do much, but at least my cat can cheer people up.
Lesson two has been that I have never been particularly disciplined about completing a weekly grocery shop in the past. I have always bought approximately the right stuff, and winged it, safe in the knowledge that I can always pop to the shop in my lunch hour to collect this'n'that, or cycle down to the shop in the evening for extra something or other. Now that I am attempting to minimise trips to the shops, I am having to expend considerably more brainpower on actual planning than I am accustomed to. This will probably be good for me.
Lesson three is the discovery that received wisdom about exercise is correct - it may hurt for the first few days, but if you keep going it gets easier. Who'd have thought the entire world was right on that one? Now that we're on to the start of our third week of Joe Wicks, I'm no longer suffering crippling quadricep pain and am able to walk up and down stairs without wincing. This will probably be good for me.
Lesson four is a lesson of two parts. Firstly, it turns out that ten minutes kneading bread dough is a pretty hefty workout for the arms, especially when one hasn't yet overcome the initial pain of Joe Wicks. Secondly, there is a huge satisfaction in making bread by hand, made even greater by a small boy who declares that he prefers it to supermarket bread. This may be a double-edged sword as, though making and enjoying home made bread is probably good for me, having extra jobs may not be. Next step - teach LittleBear to make bread on his own.
Lesson five is that LittleBear finds large tasks very daunting, but with the right gentle encouragement and support he can achieve sizeable pieces of work and enjoy them. The need to complete my own work has meant that I wasn't realistically able to accept "I can't" as an answer to the suggestion he start a writing task set by his school. Instead I put aside some time each day to chat about it, and help write a plan until he felt able to put pen to paper. Had I not had to work, I might have taken the easier path of saying it didn't matter, and that staying happy and healthy mattered more than doing a particular piece of work. Instead he, and I, discovered together that he can do more than he believes, and he finished the week proud of what he achieved. This will probably be good for both of us.
Lesson six is that technology is what will keep me sane. On Tuesday I had my first "Zoom" Pilates lesson. I've been going to the same Pilates class since 1998, when internet connections were still dial-up and the Nokia 6110 was the height of mobile telephone sophistication. The ability to have the same lesson, with the instructor and friends who have been with me through marriage, divorce, re-marriage, motherhood, depression and more, but in the comfort of my own home, was a chink of normality in an otherwise upside-down world. This will probably be good for me.
It would be an exaggeration to say that lockdown is fun, but in the circumstances, it's currently going better than I imagined it would. And while my exhaustion levels are ensuring that there is as much chance of me doing something "improving" like learning a language or mastering macramé as there is of me becoming an astronaut, I am learning something. I am learning things about myself, and my LittleBear, that should stand me in good stead as we travel through lockdown, and emerge one day on the other side. I am finding that I can live in the moment, particularly when there is little choice. I am not exactly feeling Pollyanna-ish about all of this, but I am feeling better able to cope than I was a week ago. And I've learnt the importance of cute cat pictures.
Fortunately, lesson one this week has been to discover how enduringly popular pictures of cats are on the internet. IdiotCat is developing his own fan club now that I have adopted a habit of posting pictures of Therapeutic Cat Of The Day to my own Facebook feed. I feel as though he and I are adding our tiny droplet to the sum of human happiness. I may not be able to do much, but at least my cat can cheer people up.
Lesson two has been that I have never been particularly disciplined about completing a weekly grocery shop in the past. I have always bought approximately the right stuff, and winged it, safe in the knowledge that I can always pop to the shop in my lunch hour to collect this'n'that, or cycle down to the shop in the evening for extra something or other. Now that I am attempting to minimise trips to the shops, I am having to expend considerably more brainpower on actual planning than I am accustomed to. This will probably be good for me.
Lesson three is the discovery that received wisdom about exercise is correct - it may hurt for the first few days, but if you keep going it gets easier. Who'd have thought the entire world was right on that one? Now that we're on to the start of our third week of Joe Wicks, I'm no longer suffering crippling quadricep pain and am able to walk up and down stairs without wincing. This will probably be good for me.
Lesson four is a lesson of two parts. Firstly, it turns out that ten minutes kneading bread dough is a pretty hefty workout for the arms, especially when one hasn't yet overcome the initial pain of Joe Wicks. Secondly, there is a huge satisfaction in making bread by hand, made even greater by a small boy who declares that he prefers it to supermarket bread. This may be a double-edged sword as, though making and enjoying home made bread is probably good for me, having extra jobs may not be. Next step - teach LittleBear to make bread on his own.
Lesson five is that LittleBear finds large tasks very daunting, but with the right gentle encouragement and support he can achieve sizeable pieces of work and enjoy them. The need to complete my own work has meant that I wasn't realistically able to accept "I can't" as an answer to the suggestion he start a writing task set by his school. Instead I put aside some time each day to chat about it, and help write a plan until he felt able to put pen to paper. Had I not had to work, I might have taken the easier path of saying it didn't matter, and that staying happy and healthy mattered more than doing a particular piece of work. Instead he, and I, discovered together that he can do more than he believes, and he finished the week proud of what he achieved. This will probably be good for both of us.
Lesson six is that technology is what will keep me sane. On Tuesday I had my first "Zoom" Pilates lesson. I've been going to the same Pilates class since 1998, when internet connections were still dial-up and the Nokia 6110 was the height of mobile telephone sophistication. The ability to have the same lesson, with the instructor and friends who have been with me through marriage, divorce, re-marriage, motherhood, depression and more, but in the comfort of my own home, was a chink of normality in an otherwise upside-down world. This will probably be good for me.
It would be an exaggeration to say that lockdown is fun, but in the circumstances, it's currently going better than I imagined it would. And while my exhaustion levels are ensuring that there is as much chance of me doing something "improving" like learning a language or mastering macramé as there is of me becoming an astronaut, I am learning something. I am learning things about myself, and my LittleBear, that should stand me in good stead as we travel through lockdown, and emerge one day on the other side. I am finding that I can live in the moment, particularly when there is little choice. I am not exactly feeling Pollyanna-ish about all of this, but I am feeling better able to cope than I was a week ago. And I've learnt the importance of cute cat pictures.
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