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The Lockdown Diaries

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    Day 144. Monday 10th August.

    Made a massive Victoria sponge cake. Only realised halfway through making it that we were out of strawberry jam so went to the shop. Bought husband some chicken as well which he's spent the afternoon smoking in the smoker in the back garden. Sorted out lots of admin. Did lots of laundry. Watched Pinocchio. Took the kids to the park once the heat of the day had peaked. The council has now reinstalled the big circle swing and the zip wire so that was enough to entertain the kids for an hour. Jacket potatoes for dinner.

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      Got an email from my son's school last night detailing their distance learning plans (school starts next Monday).
      My son wasn't so happy, as they're now requiring students to be in virtual class basically all day, as opposed to last term where they had fairly minimal time with a teacher so he mostly played on his phone, though he did complete all of his assigned work. I suppose I could call it homework, but it's all homework now.
      The emphasized a couple of times in the message that your child "needs to wake up", which is clearly a problem for many teenagers, and that they need to dress appropriately. Last term my son wore a shirt and hid his lack of shorts under a blanket. I'm not sure how they expect to police this.
      The school district still has pick-up lunches available at several of the schools.
      No word for my son's school as to how long the current distance learning model is pencilled in for and when they might re-evaluate. My daughter's school is definitely distance learning to mid-October at least, but they haven't communicated exactly how they envisage it working this term.
      Frankly I'm mostly relieved that they aren't trying to make them physically go to school yet.

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        Day 145. Tuesday 11th August.

        Made a nice salad for lunch, apple, walnuts, spinach, brie, peppers, celery, radish, croutons. Found out that the local splash park has reopened so took the kids there for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Son ran round like an absolute loon giggling his head off, so it was definitely worth it. It now has temporary railings around it and two council employees supposedly monitoring overcrowding, but they seemed to just be enjoying having been posted to a park in the sunshine. A friend came round in the evening and we went for a walk, then had dinner at an outside table at the pub and played Scrabble. Very civilised.
        Last edited by Balderdasha; 13-08-2020, 09:22.

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          The war against the ants continues!
          A couple of weeks ago, after the ants made inroads onto my kitchen counter, aided by my fifth-columnist dog generously sharing his food with them, I decided to resort to chemical warfare. As I picked up my latest antibiotic I also purchased some ant traps, which I left for the ants to find. At least a couple of them attracted a heap of ants, the others were in cupboards so I couldn't observe as readily. After this the ant activity steadily died down, until by last Friday I couldn't find any ants, and none on Saturday or Sunday. Foolishly I then lowered my guard, and stopped anally cleaning up after the hound before I went to bed. Sure enough, yesterday morning I got up to a million more ants crawling around my kitchen. I'm not sure if these are actually the same set of ants, as they seem to have slightly different tastes to the original ones - they all love the dog food, but the first ones went for the breadcrumbs under the toaster and the latest lot seem more interested in something invisible on the kitchen counter and nearby tupperware. Anyway, additional ant traps have been purchased and employed and today, anyway, there has been a gratifyingly large amount of ant activity around them. Weirdly I feel guilty about poisoning ants, and would much rather they just wandered off on their own accord but they don't seem inclined to do that.

          Otherwise, Ian is My Name look away as last night we had day old chicken stew for dinner. The kids claim it tastes better the day after it's cooked, so that's now how I do it. It's also the only meal that I've found that cooks well in the slow cooker, which I can set up in the garage and not heat up the house at all. Tonight is pasta and artichokes.

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            The fun trivia about ants on the west coast is that they're all Argentinean ants, and they're all descended from the same queen, so all view each other as part of the same hive (the so-called Californian "super-colony"*) so they don't fight each other, which is part of the reason why they're so successful. They tend to not survive actual winters, so to see the "original" (and much larger) ants you have to get up to the mountains.

            * - There are similar super-colonies in Europe and Japan and apparently they're all from the same spawn so that ants from Kobe and Budapest and San Jose will all be non-aggressive to each other as they recognize each other as being related.
            Last edited by scratchmonkey; 13-08-2020, 16:37.

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              Day 146. Wednesday 12th August.

              Oppressively hot. Made Quorn nuggets, coconut rice, satay sauce, green beans, baby corn and mange tout for lunch. Daughter was jealous of me playing Scrabble with my friend the day before so I played a game with her. She got a better score than my friend did (and that friend got a first from Oxford). We watched Up and I managed to not cry at the beginning, but only because I've seen it a couple of times before. I had a long chat with a semi-famous Hollywood based friend of mine who only calls about once a year. Then watched Knives Out with my husband after the kids went to bed, which was enjoyable.

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                Day 147. Thursday 13th August.

                In celebration of the heat breaking and the thunderstorms arriving, I spent two hours cleaning the kitchen this morning. Husband made egg fried rice for lunch and shampooed the dining room carpet. Kids have been watching Scooby Doo and building with Lego.

                I have a bit of a dilemma regarding my daughter's hair. It is ridiculously long, e.g. goes down to her knees. I measured it today and she has over 3 foot / 92 cm of hair from root to tip. It is beautiful and she loves all the compliments she gets for it, but it takes up an extraordinary amount of time to maintain. It's become a bit easier recently since we've discovered spray leave-in conditioners, and I've started doing a new hairstyle where I section her scalp into four quarters and do four plaits, which keeps it neatly off her forehead for a whole day (her hair is very silky and fine so if I do just one or two plaits then within about ten minutes she has hair in her face again, no matter how many clips I use to pin it back). Anyway, even though it's improved, it still takes over an hour each day to wash, condition, brush and plait up her hair, and once I start my job, I don't think I'm going to have ten hours spare each week to maintain her hair. The obvious solution would be to cut her hair, but she recently read about the Guinness record for teenager with the longest hair and it's now her ambition to beat that record. She's getting to an age where she can run her own bath and wash and condition her own hair, so that will reduce time spent a bit, but she'll still need me or her dad to brush and plait it for a while yet.

                I went into town this afternoon for a few jobs. Collecting medication, collecting a shoe gauge that we bought so I can measure my kids feet at home and buy shoes online, and unsuccessfully trying to find mini wooden dowels. My son leant on the, already dodgy, leg of our piano this morning, and completely snapped it off. My husband is trying to fix it but needs the dowels to do so. We'll have to order them off Amazon as nowhere in town sold them.

                ​​​​​​​Had a nice long chat with a friend who's planning to get married later this year. Whether or not she'll be allowed to have a hen do or many guests at the ceremony remains to be seen. I'm a bit concerned by a friend who is now 43+ weeks pregnant and not responding to calls or texts, but I'm hoping she's just given birth safely and is now immersed in newborn sleep deprivation.

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                  Longest teenage hair 190 cm

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                    I also made a cheesy broccoli pasta bake which is a bit of a family favourite.

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                      Originally posted by Sporting View Post
                      Longest teenage hair 190 cm
                      Yes, the girl who holds this record says she had her hair cut to shoulder length when she was six years old and then never had a haircut since then. As my daughter is currently six and her hair goes past her knees, and grows very rapidly, she thinks she's in with a good chance of beating that record.

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                        Maybe you could build a tower in the back yard and imprison her in it?

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                          Today I've done a day's work, been to a pub and had a meal with my wife at Pizza Express. It was almost like the before days...

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                            43 weeks? Don't they normally induce once you are 10 days past delivery date?

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                              Originally posted by Uncle Ethan View Post
                              43 weeks? Don't they normally induce once you are 10 days past delivery date?
                              It's not quite that simple. Induction is a medical procedure that you have to give consent for. Nobody can force you to accept it. They can strongly encourage it, but ultimately it is the woman's decision. I last spoke to my friend when she was 42+ weeks pregnant. She'd had scans that showed the placenta was still functioning, there was still plenty of fluid in the womb, and she had a midwife supporting her in her decision to continue with the pregnancy and hope for natural labour to start. There were signs that she was progressing towards natural labour.

                              I went 12 days overdue with my son, but at that point I opted for an elective caesarean as having had a caesarean with my daughter, there are increased risks associated with an induction second time round.

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                                Yesterday my son was an absolute delight. He was happy all day, he ate all his food with enthusiasm, he was mostly kind to his sister.

                                Today, so far, he has cried because:
                                - we offered him a cheese sandwich
                                - his father ate the cheese sandwich that he said he didn't want
                                - he doesn't have a sticker with his name on
                                - I won't let him bring all the duvets downstairs (we're tidying the lounge because my mum is coming over later)
                                - we asked him if he wanted to watch a Disney film
                                - I gave him some pennies to put in his money box

                                My husband is coping with this by imagining that he has PMT. I have to believe that he has some sort of low level cold or similar illness, as that's usually when he turns into a total arse.
                                ​​​​​

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                                  In fairness, I once went two weeks without having a sticker with my name on it, and it was a very stressful experience, so I can fully empathise with Balders Jr.

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                                    Days 148-155. Friday 14th August to Friday 21st August.

                                    This week in August is always a bit busy because there are two birthdays in the family, my daughter and my husband. So there's been cake baking and present wrapping and blowing up balloons. The good thing is that the arrival of presents means new things to play with at a point when the kids are getting bored with the summer holidays. So my daughter has a new bike which she's been practicing riding, and we've been playing with an electronics kit, a chemistry set, the Jumanji board game, a draughts set, a skipping rope, a Spiderman Lego kit, etc, etc. And now there isn't another birthday until mine, so I don't have to organise any party paraphernalia for ages. Both birthdays went well.

                                    I don't know if I'm going to keep this diary for much longer. The kids will be starting back at school in September which is pretty much the official end of lockdown for us. It's perfectly possible that another lockdown will be implemented once cases rise again in winter, but fingers crossed my pessimism doesn't come to pass.

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                                      Oh, and the pregnant friend who was very overdue, finally had her daughter at 44 weeks, and I've been helping her out with breastfeeding.

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                                        Dare I ask how heavy the baby was?

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                                          Originally posted by Balderdasha View Post
                                          we've been playing ... the Jumanji board game
                                          Are you sure that's wise? I've heard stuff about that...

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                                            Originally posted by Balderdasha View Post
                                            I don't know if I'm going to keep this diary for much longer. The kids will be starting back at school in September which is pretty much the official end of lockdown for us.
                                            It's an incredible feat and a priceless text that you've produced. i hope you have it stored somewhere safe. i can't get enough of mass observation type documents from times of crisis and great social change, but yours is public too and i'm sure i'm not the only one here who appreciated its daily emergence during the peak of the uncertainty. i've been living inside for five months, trying to take pleasure in small things and focus on the here and now, and your diary has guided me in that.

                                            i never ever beat Nou at Scrabble, not even in English, which although frustrating is just as well because i'm sure your six year old copes better with losing at board games.

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                                              What laverte said (though I have never played Nou at Scrabble)

                                              There are a number of archives whose collection of pandemic material would be significantly enhanced by Balders' diary

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                                                If you decide to stop Balders, just know that you kept a lot of people entertained in a difficult time, Bravo!

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                                                  Awkward Covid Moments of our time:

                                                  Walking to my son's (outdoor) football training, and get caught in a sharp shower. Just then a car draws up beside us and the parent of one of his team-mates offers us a lift. Surprisingly awkward to refuse, though we did. Not getting indoors (or in a car) with anyone when it isn't absolutely necessarily. Getting soaked through a far better option. Luckily just then the rain started to ease anyway.

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                                                    Originally posted by Nocturnal Submission View Post
                                                    Dare I ask how heavy the baby was?
                                                    A very average 7lb 8oz (don't know what that is in kg sorry). The mum thinks her estimated due date was off by a couple of weeks.
                                                    Last edited by Balderdasha; 04-01-2021, 21:39.

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