I really, really, really did try this time to write a bit more often than every 2 weeks, but it's like I blinked and already it's the 17th, no wait, 18th? Each day just seems to have rolled into someday.
It's been fun (thanks sun), but it's also starting to get a little routiney...the roads are still quiet, we still barely leave home, El Puma and I still sharejuggle everything, but we are all just a bit...meh. I think it's that we are all together, all the time, and I am starting to hear myself sound like a stuck record: shut the door behind you! wash your hands! sit still! Finish XYZ before you go out!
Knowing we are all (pretty much) in the same boat, is actually a little helpful, but seeing France open up and now England a little ahead of us, I think the hope and expectation that something is about to change is rising. And even if it's not major change, some change at this stage still feels like a good thing.
To be fair, I've actually enjoyed lockdown. I've enjoyed the unexpected extra time with the kids, and not rushing around with after-school activities, or squeezing in work travel. But I have hardly been able to read while in lockdown, which shows something about the demands on my time, and I am really hoping that June, July and August are going to be substantially different. I need them to be!
But still, a wee reminder of the MANY benefits of lockdown #4:
1. Our early morning walks and slow school starts
 |
| My girl's a runner. It's ALL she wants to do! |
2. Imaginative play (really, it was pretty poor round here until about 6 weeks ago)
 |
| Dem curls! |
 |
| A gorgeous bluebell wood |
St Andrews by the Northern Sea,
A haunted town it is to me!
A little city, worn and grey,
The grey North Ocean girds it round,
And o’er the rocks, and up the bay,
The long sea-rollers surge and sound.
And still the thin and biting spray
Drives down the melancholy street,
And still endure, and still decay,
Towers that the salt winds vainly beat.
Ghost-like and shadowy they stand
Dim mirrored in the wet sea-sand.
A haunted town it is to me!
A little city, worn and grey,
The grey North Ocean girds it round,
And o’er the rocks, and up the bay,
The long sea-rollers surge and sound.
And still the thin and biting spray
Drives down the melancholy street,
And still endure, and still decay,
Towers that the salt winds vainly beat.
Ghost-like and shadowy they stand
Dim mirrored in the wet sea-sand.
Oh the wind, the wind! I had forgotten the wind! (I don't know how, the memories came back quickly!). I remember thinking it used to blow the cobwebs away. Now I find it cleansing, refreshing, a salty gift. Crevette: not so much.
In this case it's construction, and it's right outside our back door as the neighbour's get a new back patio. I've seen the stone and it's going to be gorgeous! And also, quite nice to see a new face for the first time in weeks.
6. And crevette finally got a goody bag specifically for her age range sent home from the nursery.
It's been brilliant - I was struggling a bit and sometimes it felt like she was just tagging along to the older kids' actual school work. But now she has her own set of pens, we made play dough together after they provided all the ingredients, we got paints, and this week we will plant the seeds she was given.
