The Lockdown Diaries

[ad hoc]

These last two weeks have been intense. Been teaching this massive group of department heads in Turkey having to read up on tons of stuff about things I didn't know much about in order to build a coherent course and teach it at the same time. Just had my last "live session" with them. Course finishes tomorrow and in the afternoon I'm presenting in a conference in Syria. (While I'm partially missing my travel, and while I would love to visit Syria, now wouldn't have been a time to go anyway pandemic or not). Next week looks like being significantly calmer.

[Balderdasha]

Balderdasha - Have your kids watched Hilda on Netflix? It is brilliant (if a little scary for those maybe under 5, but you are playing D&D so should be fine)

Yes, we watched the first season of Hilda last year and loved it. I wish there was more. Is there a second season anywhere? Or does anyone know if it's being made?

[Balderdasha]

Day 56. Thursday 14th May. 8 weeks in.

Day did not start well. Woke up to the carnage of my son weeing on the bathroom floor. Then realised that the council has restarted food and garden waste collections, but we obviously didn't get the memo and missed it. Would have been really handy to know as the bins are overflowing and we only just resorted to making a composter this week.

But onwards and upwards. More Scott of the Antarctic. More fractions (today was "unit fractions" which I'd never heard of before). Made "fruit animals" with my son. Had to be fairly creative as we're waiting for a Tesco delivery on Saturday so the only fruit we had left in the house was lemons, kiwis and pomegranate. Bonus side effect was that after helping me get the seeds out of the pomegranate and playing with them for a while, my son actually ate some for the first time ever and has now decided he likes pomegranate.

Sent the kids out to the garden while I cleared the kitchen and made lunch. Or rather, I told them to go and get warm jumpers and shoes and coats on to go out to the garden and after twenty minutes they appeared downstairs dressed as a knight and a dragon and told me they wanted to play inside instead. I sent them out anyway and told them they could do knights and dragons after school. Did a seitan / mushroom / beansprout / spring onion stir fry with buckwheat noodles (we're at the stage of rummaging in the back of cupboards for the weird food). Husband got inspired by the beansprouts and decided to try and sprout some quinoa we had (came in the delivery the landlord arranged for us, we don't usually use it).

Did some geography in the afternoon (countries of the UK) and read some phonics comics. Then left the kids watching an episode of storybots about "How many animals are there in the world?" Daughter appears to have learnt about taxonomy from it. Baked some slimming world friendly muffins (only ingredients are oats, eggs, frozen forest fruits and a Muller light yoghurt, they work surprisingly well).

Had a chat with a friend of mine who's struggling with boundaries with her husband's ex-wife and two teenage daughters that they share custody of.

Made eggs, beans, spaghetti hoops and garlic mushrooms for dinner. Husband was asleep on the sofa while I was cooking, daughter was playing Animal Crossing. Son took this opportunity to liberally draw all over one of the few remaining unadorned walls in the lounge. His punishment was no dungeons and dragons before bed which we'd previously been planning. He also weed on the lounge floor again. Possibly he's not 100% well as he doesn't usually have accidents these days.

Sent the kids to bed uncharacteristically early and I did an hour of ringfit adventure. We didn't make it out to the park today despite it being decent weather. I just didn't have enough mojo, so needed to do some exercise this evening. Son called me upstairs to plug in daughter's night light. I overheard her whispering to him and boasting that she knew how to plug the night light in and was just getting me to do work for her. So I took away all the stars on her star chart and ate one of her chocolate lollipops spitefully, because I'm really mature like that.

Husband is having a zoom call with a couple of friends, boys only. So I watched an episode of RuPaul's drag race and started on another ecobrick.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

[Nefertiti2]

Anyway, Bran Flakes. Where are they? I've not seen a box of Waitrose Essential or Kellogg's since this all began. I asked last week at the shop and they didn't seem to be aware of the issue. Is it an essential ingredient in a baking recipe that has gone viral?

Bran flakes are reserved for regular customers.
<sorry >

[Jon]

"Yes, we watched the first season of Hilda last year and loved it. I wish there was more. Is there a second season anywhere? Or does anyone know if it's being made?"

It should be coming out later this year. In the meantime, like I said, read the comics.

[caja-dglh]

Yes, we watched the first season of Hilda last year and loved it. I wish there was more. Is there a second season anywhere? Or does anyone know if it's being made?

Meant to be coming later this year (fall 2020). My daughter started asking about it again out of the blue (or maybe because I suggested the cat attacking her calico critter world was like a massive monster tormenting a tiny village).

[HORN]

My weekly food bill is soaring. Even before this kerfuffle we rarely ate out, only had perhaps one or two takeaways a year, so it's not as if we are moving significant proportions of our outgoings from one pot to another. Yet somehow my weekly food bill is consistently £20-£30 higher than pre-pandemic levels.

Admittedly there's been a degree of culinary experimentation that's required occasional extra ingredients but this is surely offset by a reduction in alcohol expenditure (I have switched to buying beers from local breweries).

I've always been a bit of a bargain hunter, chasing down offers (BOGOFF, 2 items for £3 etc). These seem unusually few and far between at Tesco nowadays.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

My weekly food bill is soaring. Even before this kerfuffle we rarely ate out, only had perhaps one or two takeaways a year, so it's not as if we are moving significant proportions of our outgoings from one pot to another. Yet somehow my weekly food bill is consistently £20-£30 higher than pre-pandemic levels.

Admittedly there's been a degree of culinary experimentation that's required occasional extra ingredients but this is surely offset by a reduction in alcohol expenditure (I have switched to buying beers from local breweries).

I've always been a bit of a bargain hunter, chasing down offers (BOGOFF, 2 items for £3 etc). These seem unusually few and far between at Tesco nowadays.

We're the same, despite more carefully planning out the list to buy exactly what is needed for the week, and with less waste as a result. Pre-lockdown, in the days when I was often rushing in from work and back out again for something, there would be a lot more quick and cheap evening meals, whereas now everything is cooked from fresh and decent standard (not that I didn't cook from fresh before, but 4-5 times a week rather than 7). Plus we are buying a lot more in the ways of snacks and desserts. And decent ground coffee because I got a filter machine as a "lockdown treat" to myself, so I could get a pot on first thing that gets me through the morning. That's another thing actually - because we're spending all our time in the house there's a lot of "we could do with a new..." and we've been buying more non-food stuff at the supermarket than usual.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Yep, same for us, we're getting a delivery every 5-7 days and it's mostly perishable stuff but we're paying more, we're not popping out for things either so I'd like to think we're paying less but I'm not sure.

I think to stop waste and over buying supermarkets stopped their bogof offers.

Had our Tesco delivery this morning, no plain flour but replaced with self raising. A real first world problem. Apart from a few logical substitutions we got all we asked for.

[Ginger Yellow]

I think to stop waste and over buying supermarkets stopped their bogof offers.

Apart from jaffa cakes, apparently.

[Jon]

Yes, food bill is definitely higher. Not looking forward to seeing my electricity and gas bill either.

Still no Bran Flakes (they're for my mum actually, she's been asking every week since lockdown began), the closest I've come to them is this tweet from yesterday.

[URL="https://twitter.com/Ianwilfred39/status/1260924774722809856"]https://twitter.com/Ianwilfred39/sta...24774722809856[/URL]

[ursus arctos]

There have been general increases in grocery prices here that stores are attributing to increased wholesale prices and the extra staff and store costs associated with the crisis

[Balderdasha]

Day 57. Friday 15th May.

Fridays are tricky. I'm tired. The kids don't want to do homeschool any more.

They did Just Dance for PE this morning. We did a virtual tour of Chester Zoo with an eye spy sheet of animals which my son loved. My daughter wrote a short biography of Captain Scott, but she gets bored of doing the same topic all week.

I did "edamame and mung bean pasta" (amazing what you find in the back of the cupboard) with pesto, peas and pine nuts for lunch, while the kids played in the garden. The kids ate a tin of rice pudding and a tin of peach slices for dessert between them.

More fractions for daughter, Duplo letters for son (he actively wants to learn his letters now which is very sweet). Then we did "olde treasure mappes" in the afternoon. Stained paper with tea, hung them on a makeshift drying line in the garden, burned the edges (I may be inadvertently breeding arsonists) and drew islands with X marks the spot. It really fired my son's imagination. He spent about half an hour running round the garden with his map jabbering about buried treasure.

My husband was supposed to be taking the kids out to the park and the time for it kept being pushed back due to work calls. By the time he eventually took them out at 5pm everyone was hangry and we had a ridiculous row (summary, I am British and think that if someone cooks you a meal the only appropriate response is "thank you, it's delicious", he is Italian Palestinian and believes in critiquing every single dish because how else would anyone's cooking improve? There is a wider issue here where I hate being critiqued / criticised about anything ever, when I had annual appraisals at work, I cried every year without fail in the meeting. My husband actively wants constructive criticism about everything). Also, my mother-in-law appeared at the door with fresh home-made falafels and houmous while I was cooking. When I'm in a good mood I know that this is just her trying to show love (she's a feeder). When I'm in a bad mood I view this as her thinking I don't feed my family properly.
Anyway, I made pancakes for the kids for dinner and the adults had Mexican rice with onions, carrots, black beans and tomato puree with fried eggs. Husband also made himself some chicken with garlic and roasted red peppers.

Now we've eaten we're all slightly less angry and planning to watch a film together.

[ursus arctos]

ursus minor would get on well with your husband.

He is an excellent critic and has actively improved a number of my usual dishes

[scratchmonkey]

Got absolutely no sleep last night after a couple of nights of little sleep, so feel like an absolute zombie today. It was the works last night, trouble falling asleep, then overheating over the course off the night waking me up when I did manage to drift off. Got a bevy of test/scan results back over the last couple days and the most interesting one came back this morning, they did a CT scan of my chest to make sure that my lungs/heart are alright with the blood clot and they had "incidental notes" indicating multiple lesions on the thyroid, including one bigger than a centimeter. Most thyroid lesions are nothing and don't cause any symptoms; however, with my weight loss and overheating at night, I'm naturally inclined to suspect that something might be up here. Next step is to get an ultrasound done on the thyroid and potentially a biopsy as they can just get in there with a needle.

With all this medical stress on top of the regular lockdown stress, I also talked to a psychiatrist this week and on my second day's dose of Zoloft. I shouldn't expect to really notice anything until a month or so from now; I'm hopeful that will help overall and potentially with my sleep issues.

We're all going a little nutty from being stuck in a small house with each other day after day; we still feel harried trying to make sure that our work gets done as well as keeping on top of the distance learning for the two kids, our son got up at 5AM today and did all of his work as early as possible with his best friend so that they could then start playing on the Minecraft Realms server that I set up for them. On one hand, that's an admirable approach to making sure that his responsibilities get done (plus he happily stopped playing to eat lunch and then do his remote ukulele lesson); I feel like we might have to institute some mandatory electronic recess time moving forward. I also need to nip over to the city and grab one of the office chairs as we only have one in the house for my desk and I've been letting my wife use it recently as she spends a lot more time working than me.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Good luck SM, hopefully this is more positive news as there seems to be something more to go on. With the home schooling just do what you can. Take care.

[Antepli Ejderha]

[Antepli Ejderha]

Apologies if this has already been posted but I really liked this.

[S. aureus]

Good luck SM. Good that you're talking to a psychiatrist, I don't envy the amount of stress you must be under right now.

[S. aureus]

AE - that's good, I'd send it to my department head but I'm not sure that he'd get it.

[Jimski]

Apologies if this has already been posted but I really liked this.

Where does it come from, out of interest?

[Nefertiti2]

Where does it come from, out of interest?

its from the Canadian Government apparently

https://twitter.com/jeremyfarrar/status/1261227129825628160?s=21

[Jimski]

Interesting - it was sent round to people at our work - wondered where it had originated.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Where does it come from, out of interest?

I saw it on LinkedIn, they also said it was from the Canadian government but some people have said they've not received it.

[Eggchaser]

Interesting - it was sent round to people at our work - wondered where it had originated.

As good a firm as I work for, it definitely won't be sent round mine. Appraisals are to be held no later than the end of June, cash is king, here's your list of aged debtors to chase, here's your list of aged Work In Progress (bill everyone you can), keep those targets in mind.

I'm not complaining, that's just how it is, lockdown or no lockdown.