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Showing posts from March, 2020

Staycation Island Diaries: week 2

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This post is mainly photos and diary entries to look back upon later... no deep thinking here... Day 8 - Friday, 20th March Our Staycation is a week old! We made rainbows to put in our window, N(5) dreams of flying away on an aeroplane (her creativity is blooming) and after Mr finished work we went to the forest again to throw rocks in the river. Day 9 Our second weekend in Staycation begins and we decide to drive to a beach we know that's normally pretty much deserted. It certainly wasn't - there was still space enough for social distance but it was definitely the busiest we'd ever seen Sand Bay! Day 10 - Mother's Day It's Mothering Sunday. The church is no longer meeting in person, now on Facebook instead. Maybe I wasn't faithlessly overreacting after all? N(5) has drawn me a gorgeous picture and my heart is happy. We all went for a walk into the nature reserve behind the house in the afternoon.

What if we have only weeks to live?

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Here's a sober thought; any of us may have mere weeks to live. This virus is taking lives - including those of healthy people our own age and younger. So who's to say ours won't be among them? This is not a doom and gloom idea, it's a realistic possibility for all of us (thankfully excepting our children, as far as I'm aware there have still not been any deaths of under-10's) and we need to think about it. I totally understand the temptation to stick your head in the sand, get busy focusing on keeping the kids busy or not gaining 20kg in this captivity or sorting out all the neglected jobs in the house. Distraction. Watch TV, surf the internet, don't think. Busyness driven by fear, which may well be underneath our consciousness - but it's there, gnawing at the edges. Fear tries to keep us from looking death in the face, but I've always been a bit of a detached realist. And more importantly, I choose to consciously remind myself that I have no r

Golden Time

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I'm on Facebook a lot, watching conversations and a lot of humour as people deal with having to stay home. As I've posted before, staying at home is not something I do under normal circumstances - there seriously isn't a day, ever, that we aren't out and about. Staying at home has always felt like a wasted opportunity. Fear of missing out, perhaps, or my father's voice in the back of my mind telling me that I'm wasting my day by staying inside. In any case, now I'm home. All day, every day, with the kids... and turns out, it's a golden time . Facebook jokes that "I never used to have time to deep clean my house. Turns out, time wasn't the problem." - and I get that, but this kind of thinking is what actually gets me to do things. Now I have time. What have I been putting off, pushing away? What will I likely wish I had got done, when this lockdown is over and life gets busy again? Will I, should I  allow life to get

Staycation Island Diaries: week 1

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This post is mainly photos and diary entries to look back upon later... no deep thinking here... Day 1 - Friday, 13th March I'm only just starting my diary and everyone else is still out and about as normal. Wondering if I'm overreacting, I still cancel the planned get-together with the kids' grandparents for tomorrow because I don't want to potentially expose them to the virus if my kids are carrying it. Because we're now not going to see the grandparents, D(3) gets to try on his new pirate swimsuit in our house only. Day 2 We're spending Saturday at home and at the nearby nature reserve, feeding some bread to the ducks. Day 3 It's Sunday and I decide to leave the kids at home, away from vulnerable people at church. Because I sing on the worship team I don't feel I can stay away myself without letting the team down. At church, the message hasn't got through at all yet - I get a distinct vibe that people think I'm overreacting o