Staying home, staying safe – week 13

This is a little diary of our thirteenth week in social isolation, encumbered by home learning, working from home, and himself in work a few days. It seems a very long time since this all started now. Here are the highlights and lowlights.

See what happened in week 12.

What will week 14 bring?

Stay safe everyone, I hope you’re doing ok. xxx

Highlights

When all the work communication tools fell over at the same moment on Monday, the boys and I went for a walk. It was sunny and warm and we went to visit our rock snake which is now enormous.

My mum went to see my grandma again on Tuesday, only this time we were organized and planned a video call for the afternoon. By the time my mom and grandma were sorted after lunch, I was meant to be in a meeting. It was a really relaxed one with two colleagues in France, I knew they wouldn’t mind me being late for such a good reason. So the boys and I had a lovely 15 minute catch up with their grandma and their GG.

Himself was in work again on Wednesday, so I was very grateful that the boys chose that day to be super good. No moaning or whining or thumping or interrupting or shouting. Large boy wrote a letter to his great gran and we walked to post it. We had some super heavy rain too to keep the garden happy. Then while I was in my last meeting of the day, my lovely friend dropped around a big bunch of flowers.

Thursday is the new Friday. Well not that new. But still, the best thing about Thursday is that it’s the last day of my week. Also small boy read a purple RWI book and large boy did some excellent maths. Uneventful really but that’s not a bad thing.

Usually Fridays are total chaos, really hectic and not at all a “day off” just because I don’t work. This Friday though himself was off too, so I sent him to the supermarket while the boys and I had loads of fun catching up on missed school work from the last 10 days. We made fairy cakes and mixed fruit juices for large boy’s maths topics on measuring using weights and volumes. We folded paper boats to sail in the bathroom sink for small boy’s topic on sinking and floating. Its amazing what you can do in a couple of hours when you aren’t tearing yourself between work and learning. When we went to pick up next week’s school work we saw a brother and sister who are each in the same class as our boys, plus the headteacher and small boy’s class teacher.

Super cool moment on Friday was getting a mention in Bill’s podcast.

It was the birthday of one of small boy’s friends from toddler-hood on Saturday. He had a super fun video call with them all making their faces look like pizza. After lunch we went on a long walk. Returning home, I found myself the very excited subject of 999 twitter followers and then 3 more hopped on board! I’m beyond grateful and thrilled.

It was Father’s Day on Sunday. We had a nice lie in and gave himself his meagre gifts (mitigated by his ridiculous scalextric purchases of late). The three males of the house played xbox while I had a little run and potted on some tomatoes. After lunch we had a lovely walk and built a massive stick den.

Lowlights

I felt cross and annoyed at everything on Monday, too much being pulled in several directions all at once. Then large boy had the gall to claim I just sat about on the sofa doing nothing on Fridays and weekends. Well I let rip, gave him a long list of the 3 million things I do when not working and before I get to sit down. I was fuming, my children will not grow up thinking all those things happen by magic. Apparently himself sits about playing Xbox, I’ll let him defend himself on that front.

My interminable work mystery continued on Tuesday. I spent 90 minutes digging with a colleague and we thought we had the answer 3 times. Then a log claimed it didn’t know where Java was and we thought an update and environment variable would sort it. Nope. Reinstall all the customizations? Nope. Still stuck.

Wednesday was a milestone for us. It would have been boy3’s first birthday if he’d been born on schedule. I had a few wobbles through the morning and then soothed myself with chocolate in the evening.

Our weekly team meeting erupted into discord yet again on Thursday. The arsehole and my manager butted heads some more. It’s really not a positive environment sometimes. Hey ho though, it brings the pennies in and I enjoy lots of other aspects.

Large boy was signed up for a STEM lesson provided by himself’s work on Friday afternoon. Zoom was an absolute bloody nightmare. We signed in 5 minutes early but as soon as the teacher started the meeting Zoom crash. We quit and rejoined, it crashed again. And again. And again. I tried it on my phone but no luck there either. Eventually I installed it on my work laptop and bingo, 10 minutes late. Once that was sorted it was all good, but way too stressful getting set up.

Our Saturday adventurous explore somewhere new ended up a with us getting slightly lost. We climbed a small hill that turned out not to be so small, and the turned a corner and the path carried on up. Eventually we asked someone heading in the opposite direction where it went, only to find that it definitely wasn’t taking us back towards the car. So we loped back down again, me knee complaining as it hates going downhill.

On Sunday morning I had to share some sad news with the boys. One of the TAs from the preschool, who had also run breakfast club, has died in a hospice. She had been poorly for a long time and not in school since Christmas. However, her kindness and support affected both boys and we mourn her loss.

Things I wrote

Missing Le Mans 24 Hours

Non-birthday

Updated: Making stuff 14: Cocktails