Day 8 - Voluntary Lock Down

Woke this morning with an 89 (fitbit) sleep score and feeling great! I guess that answered my question from yesterday, if it wasn't already obvious enough. Ahhh another day. Although this one's a Monday.

The sun's shining and I have far more flexibility to enjoy it, given the new world order :)

Would love to get stuck onto the house today, but have to first get my finances in order (eyeroll).

Heading to the toilet downstairs, I noticed the bamboo was not looking well at all. Yikes! What could it be? Pretty quickly I realised that I'd switched off the reticulation quite a while ago, with all of the rain we'd been having. Being a grass, it was probably showing early signs of stress. Wow! Lucky I noticed. I love that bamboo. Doubled down on love and attention.

Reminded me of the people I love and how I need to be looking for those 'early signs', as much of their world is drying up around them.

Sat down with some avacodo on thick crusty loaf toast and a coffee (bliss!) and took in an ABC News update. Parliament was sitting, and we were watching it live. "Shoot me now!"

But wait! There was something really different going on. Twighlight zone material even. Members on both sides were respecting each other. Was this satire? But they're not actors??

They appeared to be focussed on achieving something together, rather than just pulling the other side down. They were asking good questions and they were getting direct answers. They were admitting mistakes and they were being understanding of others. They were being constructive. It made me feel considerably more confident in our system of government. These are crazy times!

Revo Fitness had sent through their hibernation notice and they were automatically suspending all gym memberships until the crisis was over. I let the boys know as we'd been communicating on that the day before. Many of these things would take care of themselves, if we just allowed some space.

But unfortunately there were some things that I needed to sort myself. Looking at the sunshine outside, it took a great deal of resolve to focus on finances and admin. Urgh! Had to be done. It was important. Must-Put-First-Things-First.

Stop the press! My daughter's school has made the call and are switching to full remote learning tomorrow. Yes! So impressed with and grateful for their leadership. Well done Iona!

They're keeping the school open for essential workers, who need to send their kids to school, and those kids would also be following the remote learning model, from school, as with the majority who'd now be schooling from home.

And there's more. My favourite pilates and yoga studios were announcing their respective hibernations and going to offer cheap online memberships for us to be able to continue from home. Brilliant! I signed up.

Back to finances and admin. Hmph.

Checked in on a few family members and all seemed to be doing well. My daughter even suggested that I really didn't need to FaceTime "every single day." I must be doing things right :)

With my finances, and distractions, sorted I decided to go for a loooong walk, to get some of that sun and the exercise I needed to stay strong physically and mentally. Listened to an awesome podcast on encouraging high performance and overcoming pressure.

While walking I noticed that there were 'some' who weren't being careful about distancing. Initially I was making an exaggerated diversion to signal to them that space was important and others were taking it seriously. Then I came up with a new strategy. Where I had been keeping as wide as I could, to create space, 'some' were just taking up the extra space I'd created.

So I changed my approach. Instead of going wide, I started walking just my side of centre, so that they'd need to move to their side. Then, just before passing them, I'd head wide. Worked a treat! :)

After the podcast had finished, I noticed I'd missed several messages from my daughter, who wanted me to pick her up to come and stay with me. Yay!

When I picked her up, she and her mum were waiting out front. Awesome! The reason was that my ex had been feeling unwell. She wanted to protect me from catching what she may have. She'd just been giving my daughter a hug and so I couldn't really see the point, but really appreciated the intent. Turned out she'd been feeling unwell for a couple of weeks and my daughter gave her some great advice.

Don't be paranoid about getting sick. Focus on what you want. Being well. What can you do to stay well? Child genius!

Once back home with my daughter, I whipped up a Spicy Vegan Pad Thai recipe I'd found on Pinterest, which rocked. Watched a couple of episodes of 100 Humans, had some belly laughs and went to bed.