Toilet roll situation:  Yup. Still on the same loo roll. Still have about 32/35ths of toilet roll left.

Pasta stocks: Exactly the same as yesterday. 

Cough: better! Bad in the mornings or if I talk too much. Lungs don’t so much hurt anymore, as I am aware that my lungs exist in my chest when I breathe. Muchas improvement.

Temperature: Nooopeeee!

Today’s verdict on whether I have coronavirus: I guess the only reason this matters is if this means that I am then immune to future self-isolating and am allowed to hug people without the risk oF DISEASE AND DIRE CONSEQUENCES. But, I won’t know this so, eh.

Human contact: 

Phone calls:

• Housemate to check in. I miss her and not just because she cleans (I actually hoovered yesterday, Grace. See — sometimes it does happen!), but her beating me at mariokart and the ‘how was your day dear’ routine.
• Mother to ask what I should cook for dinner because I knew that I did not want to cook any of the things that I have in the house for dinner
• The friend who I mocked for having to self-isolate the day before me. We have planned an epic outing for when we are both free (by this I mean, we are going to the gardening center to buy plants; given everything is cancelled this year, this is the best chance I’ll ever have for keeping something in my garden alive. If I can’t do it this year, there’s no hope for me)
• Father / sisters / brothers-in-law/ mother. We’ve been playing remote board games of ‘Ticket To Ride’ on the computer while having a general group call running. I probably failed to mention we’ve done this almost every day with varying different numbers of participants. This is nice because my-sister-in-Scotland and I probably manage to call each other about once a year. I have spoken to her twice this week! And I have learnt that they don’t have any milk at the shops in Scotland, either. 

Video calls:

• No work meetings today, but as everyone is now working from home indefinitely they have a video call setup to drop in on at various points, so chatted with a few colleagues there. 
• Remote video call lunch with colleague. Now know lots about the status of her house plants.

Visitors: Loadss!!

• Friend / neighbour / colleague who dropped round a cafetiere approximately 10 minutes after mine broke and left me coffee-less. Best customer service ever!!  Buy houses next to your friends, folks, it’s awesome.
• Lovely neighbour who set up the street whatsapp group who bought me round some flowers and some chocolate 🙂 
• Two of my church friends who came and sat on the step in my garden and talked to me through the glass of my conservatory. So SO lovely to feel like life is a new bizarre kind of normal! We played PSYCH and Head’s up and drank wine from separate bottles with naught but a glass door separating us. Really fun. Made my heart warm (and definitely much warmer than their’s, given they were sat outside).

Also, one of them kicked over a random bucket that has been collecting rainwater and all of it went in her shoe and I laughed hard enough that it hurt the (unconfirmed) coronavirus in my lungs. 

Mum’s top tip of the day:

Now is not the time to start a new fitness resume or do any aggressive spring cleaning.

(In regards to my lungs not feeling the best).

I plan to live by these words every day of my life. Going to get it tattooed onto my left buttock. 

General:

More challenging day.

Essentially my day began by:

Me: Another day of working from home freedom! Time to drink my nice ground coffee and eat my nice pancakes as a metaphor for enjoying the small wonders of life.

My cafetiere: Lol.

This is what prompted the visit from lovely friend / neighbour / colleague, who saw the message I put on my work whatsapp group about my coffee and dropped off their spare cafetiere before I’d had a chance to clean the whole thing up (yes, from a 2 meter distance). Also, while I was cleaning this up my pancakes burnt. It was quite overcast today, too, so I ate my burnt pancakes with my second attempt at coffee in my slightly cold conservatory and, to be honest with you, it didn’t really feel like a magical experience.  I did find the coffee thing kind of funny, especially because the thing I’d written about it being a metaphor yesterday was pretty fresh in my mind and I’m the first to laugh at myself (sometimes the only one), but it was just…. You know, a bit more indicative of the kind of day I had.

Got a lot of work done and then started programming my spreadsheet to give me nicer error messages because the #ERROR! Is actually a little impolite (my recommendation is =IFERROR( (formula), “Sorrrryy to bother you but, uh, I think that, maybe, you might have made a little mistake there. Sorrry”). Decided I was losing my mind, so stopped work.

Also, Eurovision is cancelled. And my Easter Holiday with my two amazing besties to Malta. And Schools. And Wednesday is the day that my small group from church usually come round and we eat food and do bible study or play mario kart or whatever and I had to cancel because I am of zee plague. Church generally is cancelled; I missed the last service because I was self-isolating. Not-Scotland Sister now also self-isolating with two and a half year old niece and husband.  Also, I’ve run out of garlic. I guess the latter’s not really a big deal, I just like garlic.

(Also, real stuff, like the fact that there are lots of people who aren’t as financially secure and supported by my friends and family like me. The friends I have currently looking for work and the friends that I have that are getting married in the next month or so. What’s going to happen to small and medium sized businesses and the economy and all the clients that the Debt Counselling charity I work for helps.)

Did a few laps of my garden to try and ease restlessness. Didn’t feel less restless.  Instead, realised that it was cold and I haven’t mowed the lawn in approximately a decade and I’ve lost the key to my shed, so now can’t mow without removing the hinges from the door with a screwdriver or buying a bolt cutter. Pretty sure my screwdriver is in the shed. So. I’ll work it out, at some point.

Then a friend texted and said they would come and sit in my garden and we would play games and talk through the window! Brilliant pick me up. Had such a lovely time and then a lot of the church small group & I played PSYCH remotely (PSYCH! Outwit your friends app — ‘And the Truth Comes Out’, brilliant fun) and I began to feel much better about the whole thing. 

 

Only have to do a few more days until I can go to the shop and find that you can’t buy food anymore anyway or go for walks (I’ve never done this before, but maybe I will. It could happen). Will have a really good time at the garden centre.

Today’s top 5 benefits of self-Isolation

1. Socially acceptable to wear my Jeremy Corbyn Christmas Jumper even though it is March because there is NO such thing as social acceptability, because there is no socialising (except for, you know, all the socialising I mentioned above). 
2. Have not spent any money at all this week.
3. I actually find it really easy to focus when working from home, so I made lots of progress.
4. When my friends came to see me, I was the one sat inside while they were sat outside in my garden with perilous rain-water buckets and the bad weather
5. People bring you things when you need them. When you’re allowed to leave the house people expect you to leave the house. 

Today’s top 5 pitfalls of self-isolation

1. There’s literally no excuse for the fact that I haven’t done any laundry. I like to pretend that this is because I am ‘very busy’ and ‘never at home at a convenient time to dry it’. I thought this was actually true, but it is not. I am behind on laundry because I hate laundry.
2. It’s cooooollldddddd at home. Probably need to commit to the astronomical heating bill and turn it up.
3. Felt guilt tripped into eating housemate’s leftover slightly sad looking parsnip, given the situation in supermarkets and finite food in the fridge.
4. I didn’t look in the mirror until after video calling work colleague / friend and I looked rough. Oh well.
5. Have eaten 3 home cooked meals today and yesterday so I am probably never going to fit in my jeans ever again.

Although, given going outside is more or less cancelled for everyone, not sure I really care about this. 

(Did I actually ever look for the shed key?? Maybe this is another thing I could do while stuck in the house. Probably won’t, but I could.)