Wednesday 8
Day 32
Phew. Recovering sleep. Make coffee and resolve to have steady morning catching up and uploading blog. But first, call with Peter and devour black chili omlette breakfast. Oh, and now my wonderful Secret Seven Facetime meeting. There’s Di and Judy and John and Anne. Loretta and Margaret could not get through but Di gets them up on her iPad and holds it up so that all of us are on the screen.
Then shower and make the bed and bring up Jonathan Mill's voice class online. It is ever soothing and stimulating, with a sense of others in the same boat. Oh, and here's delivery of boxes of fruit and a mass of meat. Spraying and sorting and washing. A fastidious regime. Up and down and up and down the hall with sanitised items. Loads of washing things. Every piece of fruit. It is stressful and tedious. I set up a folding table in the cattio as a staging place. There are so many different times the virus can survive on different surfaces. I have the official list posted on a kitchen cupboard. Trying to remember. Bloody cardboard is a bad one. Plastic, too. Wash hands, sanitise, wash, wear gloves, wash gloves, wash door handles…feel exposed.
.People on message. Damn it. I sit in the gentle sun with a book and a cup of tea. May as well.
No planes in the sky. Strangely quiet.
Message from Judy Potter offering shopping-style help. Surprised and touched. She has hated me since I upset her with something in a gossip column decades ago. What an interesting outreach. Covid maybe can bring some good.
Ryder sounds less stressed. That gives a little relief.
He later rings after shusshing up the condo for an inspection. It is still on the market. Sigh. He calls by way of a “drive-by wave” as he passes on the road nearby. He is always full of ideas and vitality.
Sam, on the other hand, has been remote and distracted. He has both girls over and is cooking pizzas. I ask for Facetime with girls but it does not happen. I feel a pit of loss. I pull up photos of them and miss them terribly. My love for them actually hurts. I miss family dinners. I miss their bickering. OMG, did I ever think I would say that?
My days begin with Peter on the phone and end with Margaret, Marg and I have made our cocktail hour calls an anchor to our days. I am pleased with how well she has organised her world in this pandemic and I no longer feel anxious for her but pleased at the large support of community and old friends which fills her days.
I have somehow accidentally ordered a lot of cucumbers. I find a new cucumber salad recipe and make it. It is tart and gorgeous. We have it with Marino sausages, baked turnip and Sazi’s special zuccini and tomato fry. Another huge dinner, after which we lie abed watching TV like zombies.
I note the distress of the theatre and performance world in the light of the government’s contemptuous new funding decisions. The Liberals have taken advantage of the cessation of entertainment to enact some of their policy discriminations and screw the futures of a number of companies while also making it harder for the entertainment industry workers to get financial relief. Bastards, I join the online campaign with a posting from my stance as one of them. Critics, also, depend on a healthy arts industry,. We are arts workers, too.
Thursday 9th April
Day 33
Anxieties and fears rattling the cage. The stress of sterilising things weighs into the night. I worry that the cat could climb into the cardboard boxes and bring viremes into the bed. I go out into the cattio where Dexter looks down from his perch atop the cupboard, one of his favourite high places. My delivery boxes are scattered with a few things in each. They are all sprayed but how can one spray cardboard properly. They have to wait in the air.
I have a hierarchy of steriles. I resolve that I must retrieve a tarp from the car to put over stuff at night.
Being a pre-existing germ phobe is no help psychologically. I am worried all the time.
Social media has become a bigger part of daily life since I don’t go for the paper in the morning any more. Too hard to spray the plastic wrap and extract it. I get the news online and follow Twitter threads and what my friends are posting on FB.
Boris Johnston is improving in Intensive Care says the news. Prince Charles has recovered.
But here in SA we have our first death from locally-acquired coronavirus, a 76-year-old man who was in contact with the American tour group at Lyndoch Hill Winery in the Barossa Valley. This is a bad and sad marker in the progression of the virus.
Peter sends a photo of the queue he is in at the supermarket. OMG He asks if I need anything. I say limes and wine vinegar. Why has wine vinegar become impossible to buy? Are people cleaning with salad dressing?
Sam calls in and is horrified that he forgot to Facetime me with the girls, last night, Perhaps a catastrophic leak under the kitchen sink distracted him. Um, well, that would. Indeed.
Later I call Ru and hear that, undiagnosed by no less than three scans, she is still having stabbing stomach pains. They are sending her for bloods next. Poor lamb. Spasms or stabs? She does not know. B and I discuss at length the mystery of this pain. B wonders if perhaps she is coming into a painful womanhood. I wonder if perhaps she should see a woman doctor instead of lovely Kajani who is, after all, a Moslem man.
Both my sons seem to be caring for poorly women. Haley is chronically weak with Endo. She should have reached the top of that endless elective surgery waiting list about now. Sigh.
I don’t know how I seem to be so busy all day. Washing, hanging out, bring in. Washing and sorting more delivered stuff in the timed regime I have had to create.
Peter says I am the only person in the world doing this sterilising of whatever comes to the house routine. He chides me for it when he hears I leave cardboard parcels in the sun for a couple of days. I just wonder what planet he is on. Certainly not Covid 19.
But he is kind enough to drop off some limes, red onions and precious vinegar.
Big thrill of the day is a delivery from the Barossa. Margaret has sent an Easter treat. Two bottles of the divine Matriach gin AND a bottle of ethanol. I am beside myself with bliss. Ethanol! And there I had been fretting in the night about my limited supply of proper sanitising gear. Happy Easter indeed,
Good Friday
April 10
Day 34
Peter and I both grumpy. We argue about theatre classes for children. He wants them all to be free because he does not want “children left behind”. He would seem to prefer that no children should be taught rather than some not be taught. I cannot grasp his logic and explain the economics of running a school. He says I am lecturing him in capitalism. The argument goes on. It keeps us entertained and sparked.
I tell him of Jonathan Mill and the voice classes and how successful this is becoming, so much so and in such good spirit that he is making money on paid Zoom gigs. I am too shy to do Zoom classes. I suggest that he come on Smart Arts.
I am charmed and amused to find Bruce putting on a good shirt and dressing up to go into the living room. He is off to Zoom with his Yale classmates.
I do the bed and shower routine and do some reorganising of the bathroom cabinet. Covit fever impulse. Cleab, clean.
And am devastated to discover that Jonathan Mill has cancelled the free voice class. Because he has more paid work. Class again on Monday.
So I decide to wash my shoes.
Then I make up an ancient low carb bread mix. It has sat around for a year. It is out of date but why waste it?
Sit down and listen to Barbra Striesand’s Don’t Lie to Me song to Trump. Kamahl has sent it. I shed a tear. I love her for it. https://www.npr.org/2018/09/27/652138634/barbra-streisand-addresses-trump-in-new-song-don-t-lie-to-me?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR1amh7uPCv2tmwa3yp1JxUItK0tV1lI4DwvKM9umr46Z8KqMMmtanXVKe4
I am very near to tears a lot these days.
The cat has a third coughing fit. Cats have this thing when their tongues get stuck and they have to cough it free. Dexter has always done it and the vet long ago explained that it was normal.Nonetheless, three times. I start, not for the first time, to worry that he is in the covid frontline out there in the cattio where I leave the cardboard boxes and things coming from the outside world, Covid cat? So easy for a cat to brush against an incoming and carry the virus on its fur. Let along to sniff and explore incomings in the depths of the night. This house is not big enough for another staging system. I try to suppress my anxiety. Bruce pooh-poohs me.
The dense, seedy dough has risen. I pop it in the oven and enjoy the fragrance of baking bread. It comes out unexpectedly wonderful, Bruce and I indulge in thick, heavily buttered slices while it is still warm. It is our first bread in a very low-carb year. It is a swoon experience.
Gulit sets in. My stomach is not as flat as it was when I was doing aquarobics. I am not getting enough exercise, albeit I manage 9000 steps up and down the house most days. I trawl through YouTube and find an indoor walking and stretching class and get into it. It is a bit of a worry. My co-ordination is not what it was.
Bruce dozes in his chair. He does less indoor walking than I and misses the outdoor walks more. I wonder when we may resume them.
No one phones.
Finally, it is cocktail hour. I take our freshly-roasted almonds into the courtyard and B brings the drinks, mine with the gorgeous Matriarch gin from the Barossa, and we sit and admire the blue sky and variations of beautiful cloud formations. Not a single plane today.
Friend rings with a story about riot police being called in to Mobliong Prison because prisoners are stressed out by corona conditions. No visitors was hard. Stopping their education program was hard. But closing the gym was too much. They rioted. Riot police called. Negotiations. Gym re-opened. I pass on the story to one of my beloved old Tiser colleagues.
I cook up a bol sauce while talking to Marg on the phone. We always have lots of news, albeit families or politics or corona. I am so pleased with the way she is dealing with the self-isolation and the support of her boys. I love that woman to bits.
We have the bol with spiralled zucchini. It is heaven. Jelly and chocolates and a strange and intriguing Ridley Scott movie, Life in a Day.
Then, while B goes to sleep, I continue exploring platfoems on which to mount this journal. Learning new ones is tedious and tricly. Blogger has made improvements but still wants fiddling with images unless I move them all to Google. I give it a go. Hmmm.
Easter Saturday
Day 35
What a rotten night. Sleep is elusive. The brain is tired and edgy. I have resorted to an Audible book, Shadow of the SilkRoad by Colin Thubron. It is very depressing but I keep going back to it.
The cat walks on me to get me moving. He falls on his cat soup and leads me to the laundry to supply some more dry food. He has had a big night in the yard. He is soon asleep on the end of the bed.
Bruce showers and dresses for his big Zoom date - the replacement of his Yale reunion.
Morning news says cases are falling. Social distancing is working. 400 or so cases here. Three deaths. Ten in ICU. The British PM is steadily recovering... I hope this does not make everyone prematurely too cocky.
Peter says the PM wants to make us a “guinea pig” state - open us up as normal and see what happens while the rest of the country stays in lockdown. My blood boils. Nice one, PM. SA has always had a bum deal from your mob.
Peter announces he is writing a BOOK. Brilliant. It is a compilation of his old shows and funny stories. We discuss its name. I like Hard Rubbish. He has another idea about String that is too Short to Use. I think that is esoteric and one should avoid a book title that is too far down the alphabet. I am proud of him for having the oomph to throw himself into a solid project. He will have something to show at the end of this.
I post an encouraging report on the SA corona stats on my FB page and find an old friend with conspiracy theorist antivaxxer beliefs starting an argument about the WHO and Bill Gates and contrarian theories. I eventually tell her to leave off and delete the whole thing. We make up on messenger. I have known her a long time and she has always been alternative. But not on my FB page, thanks.
Still disgruntled.
Can’t settle.
Feel a bit off colour. Take a vitamin pill.
Amotivated. Feel guilty about it. Guilty about the work undone.
Struggle a bit more with Google photos and getting Blogger to upload pix more easily. Fail.
I suggest that we go outside and walk to the Post Box. B likes the idea. Then I look at the corona rules for going out, the clothes changing etc. and I go into a cold sweat at the precautionary bother of it all. B looks at me and says, let’s just stay home. I am massively relieved.
Do some half-hearted cleaning.
Try to do the exercise video and tire out.
Take my book and sit in the soft sun in the courtyard.
Marvel that a prop jet goes overhead. There is no air traffic any more.
Finally it is cocktail time. Oh, that Matriach gin is lovely. My home-roasted almonds are lovely.
Marg rings full of beans with her happy easter activities, setting up distant visiting table outside for sessions with her boys etc. I walk the house while talking to her. Blow me down, by the time we have finished, I’m up to my 9000 quota.
Lamb chops cooked a la Bruce, Sazi cuke salad, tomatoes and cauli-broccoli. Utterly sated. Watch a delightful Cadbury Australian chocolate-making documentary.
Easter Sunday
April 12
Day 36
Slept. Waken softly with the cat. Oh, it is still all real out there. Make coffee and hear the covid-covid-covid news.
Social media is busy with easter greetings. I love the Queen’s message. She has come up leadership trumps in this time. The world’s women leaders all have done so.
We eat scrambled eggs with toasted low carb bread.
I read the latest about social benefits to the unemployed and that the stance has reverted to means testing and feel heartsick for my Sam. Because that little trust fund ekes out just enough to cover his rent, he will not be getting a penny for food. He has applied for every bloody job going and had no success. It is just dire. We are sharing housekeeping with him as best we can and I fear we will have to keep doing so.
Talk to Peter as Sunday usual as he drives to work, signing off when he gets to McDonalds to order his breakfast. Prepare my stuff for Smart Arts. I have trawled up some stunning online theatre recommendations. COVIDEO!! Love it. Theatre in the bath. Practitioners in gloves. Alternative stuff. Plus mainstream treats on YouTube. But, when the time comes, my phone connection is so bad that I am on and off and on and off and I have no idea what I communicated. Steve’s line was better so he carried the criticis this week. Just as well there are two of us.
Struggle some more with the Blogger platform and images. Bruce tries to help. No joy. Pffft.
Easter Monday
Day 37
The day I broke.
I thought I was dealing so well really, despite the periods of standing and gazing, of just thinking… despite the lack fo direction and the inability to latch on to a task…
I have felt emotionally rocky from time to time. Often very near to tears. But I am not a weeper, unless there is a dog suffering in a movie. Few people have seen me cry. I just don’t. But today I did. Today the straw broke the old camel’s emotional back. I did not have anywhere to go to hide from my own emotions. I went under the clothes line. I hate the weakness. Day 37 and I have seen no one. B and I go about our separate business all day. He reads in his chair. I prowl and clean and read and maybe write and sometimes talk to people. No one has rung me for days now. Messages, yes. But no one has rung in. Well, exept Peter every morning and Marg every evening. But of the myriad people I know out there in the world, it seems no one likes me. And this includes my family, I am supplanted. Both my sons have “other” mothers now. This strikes home hard today. I won’t go into the minutiae. Just that it hits home that, out of sight, out of mind, I am outer. The sense of hurt is acute. Where is my intellectualising of all this? I think things through and they are worse. I am profoundly demoralised.
Marg is full of the joys of her privileged world, so grateful for it. It is full and busy and she daily is having visitors in her lovely open courtyard. I am really pleased with how well it is working out, altough tonight my spirit is damp. She recognises this and offers succour and distraction. It works. I love her.
But my emotional vulnerability is a worry. I have spoken to both sons today. But I ring them. They never ring me. They have families. They are busy. They have “other mothers”. I am in isolataion, now wondering why.
Woolies delivers the shopping.
I set about the sorting and spraying, spraying and sorting. There is still I do not have. I miss being able to shop. The household provisions are imbalanced. I am going to have to make another order, if they will let me. Woolies has been wonderful. But still no loo paper or sterilising stuff.
Tuesday
April 14
Day 38
I am still tearful.
I can’t get on top of it.
I feel marginalised, overtaken. irrelelvant. The only value I have is in being dead.
I can’t intellectualise my way out of it.
I try to do Jonathan Mill’s voice class but my heart is not in it.
Sam sends good morning texts. I just don’t want to know. Been here before He has moved into a new family, Haley has a big highly socialised family, lots of activities. I have never been included. It is HIS new world. The girls’ new world. Not mine. I wouldn’t know these relatives if I fell over them. Haley rarely communicates. Rarely is an exaggeration. Sam adopted Lucy’s family back yon and life was never the same. They hated me. There were so many of them, too. We all tried a bit but the bridge was never strong.
Now the pattern repeats.
The burden of tears drags down my shoulders. I am heavy with loss. There is no spring in my step. I can’t un-sad myself.
Sam Facetimes me and apologises for excluding me. He wants me to come out of isolation and social distance in the park. He loves me. He messages every day.
The reassurances help. But I am still tearful as I bring in the teatowels. And amotivated.
Exercise lifts the psyche. I do some brisk hall walks, sterilise more incoming groceries. Can’t get Glen 20 any more. Try Dettol Bathroom spray. Bruce is not sure it will work against virus. I Google madly and the result seems positive. I spray the shit out of the drink bottles and repair to the courtyard coughing.
I seem to spend a lot of time just pondering these days, gazing at the clouds or the bees. Loving the sun on my little courtyard flowers. The little pot garden is gorgeous. The fountain’s rich tinkle of water is musical and soothing.
I’m reading Annette Marner’s book, another Shade of the Colour Blue. It is about domestic violence. She writes beautifully. I linger over her thoughts and descriptions.
Graduallty I am pulling out of the enervations of sadness.
I ring Merry and have a lively chat. Ruby calls. Aaaaah. My Ruby. We talk about books she wants to read. Catcher in the Rye? She is 12.
I force myself to do a short exercise class. Walk some more. Hit my desk and catch up on a bit of writing. And, suddenly, it is time to G&Ts in the courtyard wirth my stunningly perfect roast almonds and a cheering call from Margaret. I think I am out of the woods.
B cooks Woolies beef sausages which I adore. I have suggested mixing fennel with cabbage as the veg. It is fabulous. As is my tomato salad with my garden basil.
Hmm, I have done 9000 steps. Again.
Putting the bins out, Bruce notices Venus smiling brightly in the night sky. Come out and look, he says. So, we open the front gate and stand in the quiet night street and there is Venus. We walk down the street a little. It is all ours in the night. Do you suppose we could sneak out on night walks, he says?
Wednesday
April 15
Day 39
The cat nibbles my elbow. The sky is glowing with its new day. It is 6am. Bed is comfortable. I seem to have my spirit back.
The radio news is full of Covid gloom. Of course. Donald Trump has put big bully boots on and is telling America that he is the boss and it will do what he says. He is unfunding the WHO.
What a mess.
No one knows how to respond to this plague. No one knows which way it will go. No one knows if it will pass. No one knows if a vaccine can be found or even if it is possible. The virus morphs all the time.
Peter is in high drama that a stranger has parked in his parking space. He has building supervisor and even the cops involved, barely slept all night, up and down checking if the intruder car had gone. Oh, my. We chat on about Anzac Day and politics until I have to hook in to the Zoom session with my old walking group. It takes a bit of time to get everyone onboard but it is good value.
I watch a 1966 Commonwealth Film Unit doco on life in Adelaide and relish the nostalgia.
I am still strangely rudderless. I yearn to leave the house but dare not. We are the olds who must stay at home. Stick with it. Yet, I um unsettled. I simply don’t want to do things. I stand about and gaze and think…
I get excited when I hear a plane go over. That is really rare now. I run outside to look at it.
Sam offers to get stuff for us. I make a massive order at the bottle shop. Can’t run out of drinks, let alone the dehydrated orange which makes my G&Ts so special!!!
Meanwhile, to assuage my sense of loss in contact with my darling Grandies, Ruby Facetimes me for most of the afternoon, full of the complexities of being a child in lockdown.She is have online lunch parties with schoolchums, she is endlessly looking at tempting shopping online, she is tossing up what books to read…
I read some more of Annette Marner’s book which is so poignant, it brings me to tears.
Barb rings with tales of her side of this world, so much harder when one is caring for someone with dementia. Her retirement did not go to plan. Poor Brian. Poor Barb. She feels very alone despite all her family, friends and neighbours.
I cook chicken and capsicum stirfry. Have cocktails in the gentle evening air. Talk to Marg as is our nightly habit…rant may be a better word…and repair to eat and drift into the night.
Somehow between loads of washing, cleaning cat litter, sweeping the cattio, doing the daily exercises and pacing about on the phone, I have managed to rack up over 9k of steps within the house.
B thinks it is time to try an outdoor walk. Disaster.
Thursday
April 16
Day 40
There is a false sense of confidence in the low coronavirus figures in Adelaide. 430 cases. 10 still in hospital. 250 or so recovered. No new ones in 24 hours.
Politicians are restless to get the bottom lines moving, profits into business. A right wing government has had to behave in a socialist manner to get through this pandemic. This must stick in its craw.
Latest idea is that if we all download tracking devices, we can go back to work.
They talk of letting everyone develop “herd immunity”. The idea of dollars dazzles them.
But look at the rest of the world. Hello? It is a global pandemic. We are not actually immune. We are just a quiet spot in a quiet moment.
The Internet goes down, just as Jonathan Mill’s Voice Class begins.
Bruce gets busy. Today he is getting the razor out and trimming his beard. Stop the Presses.
AND, he cleans the pond pump. Gold star Bruce.
Ryder has good news on his condo sale. Lots of interest over Easter. An offer which just needs to go thru settlement. We will hold our breath. Good news is hard to come by. Nicole is still poorly, though. Bring on the return of elective surgery.
Ponder a post-corona future. Will I ever want to go back and sit in audiences let alone cramped planes?
We will talk about this on Smart Arts on the radio on Sunday methinks.
The day is cool. I push myself to do steps in the house. Push myself to do the Lucy 20 minute workout. Write cards at the desk. Sort desk drawer and make even more of a mess of it.
Picture on the phone. The butterfly has emerged from its chrysalis. This is the caterpillar that came via Kristen Messenger’s lovely project for kids at home. A lovely, fragile new Monarch.
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