Staying home, staying safe – week 17

This is a little diary of our seventeenth week in social isolation (well, ish by this point), encumbered by home learning’s last week, working from home, and himself in work from time to time. It seems a very long time since this all started now.

With the end of term on Friday, this is going to be my last round-up, thanks for reading everyone. I’ve loved exchanging comments with people and sharing the trials and tribulations of this lockdown life.

Here are this week’s highlights and lowlights.

See what happened in week 16.

Keep staying safe everyone, I hope you’re doing ok. How was your week? xxx

Highlights

Oh how I dislike Mondays these days. This week though, the highlight was a lovely long chat with one of my colleagues. We don’t work together so much these days, but she leads our corporate LeanIn group. She’s a champion of inclusivity and diversity and I’ve expressed my admiration for her before. We had a great catch up, talking about home and life and lockdown, and about the future of our LeanIn. I came away feeling positive and refreshed. Onwards and upwards. In the evening we had a double game of Bug Bingo, so many weird and wonderful mini beasts we’d never heard of.

The boys’ end of year book bundles were ready on Tuesday. Small boy’s teachers had documented a learning journey throughout his reception year, full of photos and comments and notes about his progress. They also included his writing books, its wonderful to see how he’s improved since last September. Large boy’s bundle included all his workbooks; maths, literacy, and topic. He’s written some really funny little stories and we can tell what his favourite TV show was at any given moment. His Bear Grylls choices phase is reflected in a teacher’s comment “please don’t include choices in your writing”.

On Wednesday I started the wind down to the end of term. No more RWI with Rosie however much we love her, instead small boy is just reading and writing a sentence of his choosing. Large boy can do as much maths as he likes and reading whatever he wants.

Large boy was made up on Thursday to receive a letter from his head teacher and class teacher with a certificate congratulating him for reading 3 million words. I was made up with the email from school saying that all children would be back in school full time from September and breakfast club will be back on.

Friday marked the finish line of home learning. We’re done and we’ve survived. I’m pretty sure the boys have learned some stuff. I’ve learned that teachers are saints and I am not one of them. The other amazing highlight Friday was going to get my hair cut. I feel awesome and more human, less bush on legs. Then to cap it all off, I had a video chat with 3 friends and a large cocktail.

We had one of our lovely outdoor adventures on Saturday. We visited Dovedale and walked along the river, explored a cave, played Pooh sticks, climbed a rock face and spotted lots of birds, walking 4 1/2 miles in the process.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Smelly Socks and Garden Peas (@andsmellysocks)

Sunday was rugby, this time taking small boy with me as a shield against the judgy antisocial mums. Large boy has definitely lost some fitness, we had best keep running through the summer. After another ace gougère for lunch, made by himself, we went for a walk from Danebridge in the Peak District. We ended up going a shorter loop than planned but I’d forgotten my knee strap so that was a good thing. Plus it meant we had time for a cheeky half at Wincle Beer Company before heading home.

Lowlights

Monday was beset by little niggly issues. Builds that failed for no obvious reason, magically disappearing pages and more builds that failed for good reason this time. I was rather relieved when the end of the day arrived.

The saga of the bathroom ceiling continued on Tuesday. We thought it needed one more touch up, then noticed that the masking tape around one of the lights had striped off a bit of paint. So more wrestling with paint tin lids and soaking tiny kids paint brushes and staring at wet white paint on dry white paint and trying to blend them. I love painting walls but I hate ceilings!

The crescendo is building at work. I found myself back at my desk after dinner again on Wednesday, until almost 8pm, again. I have to stop doing that. My work life balance doesn’t need to get any more skewed.

Thursday was fraught with a really tricky work problem, no one knows why something’s gone wrong and the only person who can fix it is on holiday for 3 more weeks. Bugger. Then large boy’s Nintendo Switch controller started playing up. Himself is requesting isopropyl alcohol to clean it out. I’m dubious.

My video chat was interrupted on Friday evening by wailing. Himself poked small boy in the eye with a tooth brush. No idea how he managed this feat and there didn’t appear to be any real damage, just lots of tears.

Come Saturday morning, the sore eye was a bit puffy and bruised. Well done to himself, giving a 5 year old small boy a black eye with a toothbrush.

Himself decided to cook a lovely Spanish pork dish by Rick Stein on Sunday for dinner. This means that I was on duty for the rice and veggies and the herbs and finding ingredients.  Not really a hardship and it smells delicious.

Things I wrote

Review: Bug Bingo

A morsel of normality

Updated: Making Cocktails

That’s all folks! Thanks!