Life in Pieces

4 April

Isolation Update – The bee was on the SOCK

Chris has just handed me the strongest margarita I’ve ever had in my life, so apologies in advance for any typos in this entry.

Hiccup.

I think my blood is now 100 per cent lime juice.

I refuse to cut back on the booze though, it’s the only thing getting me through. As I’ve said, I’m a pretty indulgent person, but I DO think a lot about what I put into my body. I have a few hard rules that I do break, but only rarely:

No processed food
No margarine
Very little sugar
No diet soda or energy drinks
No smoking
No palm oil
No artificial sweeteners
None of that fake butter shit they put on popcorn at cinemas, known to me simply as ‘cancer juice’
No charred meats (unless I burnt it myself by accident)
No doughnuts; they are unnecessary and we must have limits
Exercise, even if it’s just a little bit and despite how much I HATE it
And you know how I feel about meat

But as we all know by this stage, I am not perfect. I have my downfalls, and they are:

Hot dogs (but only pretentious, organic beef ones that I buy from posh supermarkets and make at home; I would have to be on the floor before I’d eat one from an outlet that couldn’t tell me what was in it)
Crisps and dips
White bread
Occasional sweet treats (very occasional, I don’t have a sweet tooth)
Being polite at a party – if someone invites me into their world and is kind enough to present me with food that consists of any of the above, I will generally abandon all health concerns and happily eat it, because life is for living and gratefulness is key
Cheese
Fatty meat
Pies
PASTRY (anything in pastry will have me begging)
BOOZE

As my list of downfalls is quite long, I do my very best with the other things to keep my risk of heart disease, obesity and diabetes as low as I can. I’d be able to drop every one of my vices pretty easily, if my health demanded it. But the thing I’d struggle to let go of the most is the booze.

Did I mention I love booze?

So last night, I heard Art scream in the garden. The kind of ear-splitting roar where I immediately presumed we were off to A&E. I was holding a hot roasting dish, and Valentine was next to me, so my response time was slow. Art made it all the way to the kitchen, his face luminous, tears like waterfalls. He couldn’t get words out. I scanned his body, but nothing seemed broken, and then I saw it … a poor little bee stuck to his sock, stinging him repeatedly with all its goddam might.

I ripped the sock off. A little red dot confirmed it. I wasn’t allowed to touch it. Or mention it. Or do anything for quite some time. It felt like Art was blaming me. I mean, sure, I should have sent Valentine out to grind up all the bees with his bare hands before Art went outside. I take full responsibility. I know now.

Poor Art screamed for ages, full throttle. Agony, fear, all of it. I hugged him and thought, ‘Fuck me, I’d love a big cry like this.’ Kids are so lucky in the way they get to release feelings without judgement. If a grown-up did that, I’d never want to see them again.

Chris took the kids to the park this morning, so I did a thirty-minute Peloton class. It was weird. Usually the Peloton studio is full, and the instructor does a real class surrounded by real people. But today, their studio was empty, and you know what? It made me emotional. I got sad. I had a cry. Not an ‘Art bee-sting’ level cry, but a little ‘WHAT THE HELL IS 2020 TRYING TO DO TO ME’ kind of cry. I miss my friend Caroline so much, it’s still so raw and it would have been nice to have dealt with it with a more normal life intact. Maybe, I dunno. Grief is shit. Also, I am worried about my aunty, uncle and dad (my three parents). I’m so far from home and can’t get to any of them if they get ill. I know I am not alone, so many of us are in this boat. It’s shit, and scary and sad. I hope you and yours are doing OK.

But my spin class was good. I did the full thirty minutes, which is unusual as I’m a rotter for dismounting five minutes before the end. I felt *Lizzo voice* – SMUG AS HELL – afterwards. I then had an egg and avocado, but I fried the avocado – and I am telling you it’s a thing and you need to do it. That’s right, I fry all my vegetables now too.

I’m terrified of running out of crisps, and that’s what happened today. All of them, gone. I don’t understand where they went. Last time I was in the shop, they were out. I will go to the shops on Monday, and if they are out, well, I guess I will enter a very dark phase of isolation. Also, I check my tequila supply most days. I can generally hold off until late afternoon, but I need to know it’s there. By around 10 a.m. I am craving that icy lime flavour of my margaritas. I can only compare it to cigarette cravings when I used to smoke, but I think the fact I don’t drink in the mornings means I have the drinking situation under TOTAL control.

Chris and I keep acknowledging we are drinking too much, but then also agreeing these are unprecedented times. We will revert to normal intake when this is over. And if this never ends, then who fucking cares anyway.

I was cuddling Valentine and he pointed at my eye and said, ‘Mummy, your eyes are cracked.’ He was referring to my wrinkles. You know what? Bog off.

I spoke to my dad. He’s so cute and staying home and being an absolute dote. We are talking more than we have in years, and I’m really enjoying it. He makes me giggle. He said he had been sent a really funny Scottish video that made him laugh so much (he is the most Scottish person in Scotland), but that he wasn’t going to send it to me because I wouldn’t understand it. He then talked me through the whole thing in tiny detail anyway. LOL, dads. I am extremely weepy at the moment. I power through the day but sadness taps on my shoulder constantly. I guess I’m in overdrive, the kids keeping me from collapsing on the floor. But it’s always there. Talking to Pops really cheered me up. I miss his amazing cuddles.

I took Potato for a walk this afternoon, and saw a car pull up to a house. Clearly an Uber Eats delivering food. The woman came out of her house and stood really far away from the car, telling the driver he needed to get out and put her food on the grass. I get it, but she was SO rude to him. I glared at her and hoped Potato would wee on her food. SOME people have managed to keep hold of their jobs through all this, and that is wonderful. We should be gorgeous to anyone who is providing any kind of service right now, because they are just trying to keep their lives going, and risking their health so that women like her could have a dumbass vegan stir-fry, or whatever it was she was bossing him around over.

She was dressed in hippie clothes and this is LA, so I am making what I consider to be a fair assumption about her diet.

BE NICE TO PEOPLE. Everyone is struggling. It’s all we can do.

You’ll all be delighted to know that Valentine wet himself twice, then did a poo on the toilet. So that was all thrilling. I cleared out the Tupperware and baby bottle cupboard. It was a bit sad to get rid of all the bottles, knowing we won’t need them again. I always wondered if we might ever talk about a third, but after this … FUCK THAT. I am done. Get off.

I made a curry with all the rotten vegetables in the fridge, so I’m really looking forward to getting food poisoning from that.

What else … I washed my hair. Fucking incredible feeling. It had been a while.

Love Dawn x

7 April

Isolation Update – What is faster, a … OH SHUT UP!

I’ve been drunk since Friday. I realise that’s nothing to show off about. The 4 p.m. margarita has become a crucial element to my day. It’s two parts tequila, one part Triple Sec, one part FRESH lime juice. That’s my recipe, and that is my drink. I could hoof ten thousand of them in one night (not entirely true). To me, there is nothing more delicious. Safe to say we drank too much and woke up terribly hungover yesterday. At one point I said the words, ‘Stop talking to me, I might be sick’ to someone. No idea who.

You know when you are feeling anxious so you google the thing to make you feel better? Well I googled, ‘What are the drinking stats in Lockdown?’ I guess I just wanted to know I wasn’t going to be the only one ordering a new liver on Amazon when all of this is over. This is the result I got:

As you might expect, one in five people are drinking more often in lockdown. These people tend to be people who were drinking more heavily and more often to start with. But at the same time, one in three people are drinking less often. And 6 per cent, or more than one in twenty, said that they had stopped drinking specifically for lockdown.

What the hell does that even mean? One in five are drinking more but one in three are drinking less? I drink too much to understand conflicting stats like that. I took my maths GCSE three times and still never got it, so I’m going to leave the mathematics out of my drinking from now on and just focus on the taste. I am drinking more, yes. As are loads of my friends. I send subtle messages out on WhatsApp like – ‘Might have a drink tonight’ – to see what kind of response I get, ya know, to make sure I’m not alone.

It’s nearly always met with a flurry of drunk responses. Again, this is where the time difference is useful. When I start drinking at 4 p.m. in LA, all of my friends in London are at midnight, already hammered and off to bed. The trick is to only communicate with them when I start drinking early, that way I’m not made to feel bad about it. My friends in LA are drinking more, but they start around dinner time, like normal people. It’s best I don’t communicate with them until later.

There’s loads of chirpy ‘YOU’RE ALL GONNA DIE’ talk on the radio, and the Prime Minister is in the ICU. It’s BANANAS. Everyone is so pissed off with governments, but no one wants that. I hope Boris pulls through, and I hope that it shows people this can happen to anyone, and that being careful is really important. Fucking hell, what a MESS. Los Angeles is going on even more of a lockdown, and the advice is to even stop going to the shops this week if you can avoid it.

I can’t avoid it; I have a family to feed. I spent a huge portion of my weekend – when not drunk – trying to find a food delivery service. The earliest delivery I could get was 20 April, almost two weeks away. I don’t want to go to the shops, but what the hell else are people supposed to do? The company I found was the ugly veg one, which is great. All the weird-looking produce that the supermarkets won’t sell. I’m excited to get some carrots with bollocks and potatoes with nipples. Should give the kids and me something to talk about.

I downloaded Becoming by Michelle Obama. I should have read it ages ago but didn’t. I’m spending so much time in the kitchen that having a book to listen to, specifically in there, is nice. I tried some fiction, but autobiographies seem to be easier to focus on when both kids are pulling my pants down, begging for snacks. I’ve done Demi Moore, and now Michelle. Both really good.

On Saturday night we barbecued baby back ribs, sausages and corn. YUM. Valentine spent most of the meal with his arse in the air, yelling ‘LOOK AT MY NAKED BUTT.’

I literally have no idea what happened to my life. This is not what I imagined when the plane touched down in Los Angeles nearly twelve years ago. Exactly the opposite, actually. Well, minus the naked arse being in the air, but I always presumed it would be mine.

On Sunday morning, Art woke up early and let Lilu out. Lilu is a Siamese cat and sounds like a screaming baby, so that got me up at 6.30 again. I went into the living room, and Art announced he was going back to bed. Right then, I thought, I’ll sit here and contemplate life while the rest of the family sleeps. Great!

Actually, it was nice to be alone. A rare and indulgent treat. We live in a lovely but modest three-bedroom bungalow. Chris and I got this house long before we had kids, and it’s perfect in many ways, especially for a couple, but it’s a weird shape for a family of four. (It does have a pool though, which is amazing, but it’s too cold to go in right now). So we’re moving house soon (it was supposed to be last Christmas, it feels like it’s never going to happen now) and the new place has an upstairs, which I am so excited about. As things stand, you get to the garden here by walking through our bedroom. This means there is nowhere for Chris and me to escape to. Our bedroom is not a sacred space, there is always someone that isn’t us in it. Usually, that’s OK, but in lockdown, it’s intense. I just hope we get into our new place soon; the idea of being able to close my bedroom door and get some space feels like the dream of all dreams right now. This is why I currently hide in cupboards.

Coming up with activities for the kids is still hard. I had an idea to make macaroni necklaces with them. You paint the macaroni, then thread string through them and make jewellery. Fun, huh? Only, have you ever tried to get string to go around a bend? FUCKING DISASTER. I should have used penne. The lessons you learn, eh?

I give up. TV is better for them than my stupid ideas.

I feel like I didn’t stop all day. Also, Valentine pooed his pants on the trampoline. It was so awful. I couldn’t cope, so I just threw them away. Oh, and I lay in bed and ate a plate of bacon. Just bacon. On its own. This is not related to the Valentine shitting himself story, I just wanted to let you know that I am now the kind of woman who eats a plate of bacon in bed, like that’s normal.

You know what goes well with bacon in bed? Tequila, that’s what. Stop judging me, I’ll do better when I have an upstairs.

IS IT REALLY ONLY MONDAY?

How you all doing? Tell me the news from your caves.

Love Dawn x

8 April

Isolation Update – Back of the net (who even says that?)

You know you’re drinking too much when you have a legitimate breakdown in a supermarket because they have run out of your favourite lime juice. (Funny fact, the lime juice in LA sold out SO fast.) I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Rows and rows of lemon, apple, orange, mango, mango and passionfruit, coconut but no lime juice. WHERE WAS ALL THE LIME JUICE? I walked up and down the aisle like a madwoman, muttering under my mask, ‘There must be some here somewhere, THERE MUST BE SOME HERE SOMEWHERE.’ I asked a guy who worked there, ‘IS THERE ANY LIME JUICE OUT BACK?’ He didn’t even go to look, he just said no, because it was ALL GONE and he knew it.

WHY IS THE WORLD SO CRUEL?

Instead I got real limes, 450 of them. It’s not the same. I mean, it should be. But I find it hard to achieve the perfect level of tartness with real limes, but I will try. Yes I will. BECAUSE I HAVE TO.

I didn’t think things would get this bad. But here I am, surrounded by limes but without the perfect juice. Why are they so hard to squeeze? The hardest of all the citrus fruits. THIS is why the lime juice in bottles is so vital. Anyway, I realise the amount I have already talked about this is showing I clearly have a problem.

ONE MORE THING THEN I AM DONE – I am going to buy multiple bottles when it’s back in stock, so I am NEVER in this mess again.

OK, OK, I’m over it.

You’ll never guess what happened today. I put twenty plastic Easter eggs into a bowl and Art and Valentine threw them across the room. Isn’t that FUN?

I’ve had it with Easter, and it isn’t even Easter yet. Knowing that it would be cruel to deprive my kids of chocolate, but also knowing how loopy it sends them, I am nervous about the whole goddam thing. Sunday will be a hard day for us all. The excitement, the treats, the sugar rush, the crash. Be assured I will be drinking by noon.

I did get lamb chops last week though. I’ll defrost them Saturday night and do something sensational with them on the big day. I’ve been thinking about them since I got them. Imagining them in the freezer, hoping they are as succulent as they are in my dreams.

I have spent far too much of my time imagining my lamb chops in the freezer. Please can someone send me some porn?

I had a bad night’s sleep. Weird dreams, dark thoughts and I needed a wee but couldn’t be bothered to get up to do it.

I ate crisps at 9.30 a.m., 11 a.m., 2 p.m., and 5 p.m. Brilliant. I thought a lot about how I would feel if I ran out again, wondering if I should slow my consumption. But you know what? The world’s gone mad, who knows what tomorrow will bring. We have to just eat the bloody crisps.

I’m still so upset about the limes.

Art talks all day long. All day. No breaks. It’s pouring down with rain here, so it’s quite intense inside with these two children. Sometimes I wonder if Art has a secret speed dealer who slips him drugs under the fence, because he acts like he’s off his chops on something … all loved up with a LOT of chat. He’s like a random fact generator. Dinosaurs, big cats, anything that can run fast, he knows EVERYTHING about ALL OF THEM. It’s wonderful, in a way. He watches hours of nature documentaries and retains all the information, but fuck me I wish I could turn him off for twenty minutes. It’s really hard to focus on Instagram when he won’t shut up.

I got bored today. Actual bored. I kept having moments where I just walked away to sit down. Bored, low energy, couldn’t be bothered. Let them throw Easter eggs at the hot oven, they’ll work it out. Do you really need to parent constantly to be a good parent? The rain is such a massive kick in the teeth. It makes the days so much longer and harder. The dream would be to light a fire and watch movies all day, but you can’t do that with small kids. Art could just about manage it, if I agreed to watch shit all day. But Val gets bored after twenty minutes of TV and wants to play or be occupied in some way. I know this is hard on everyone, but I can’t help but wish this had happened when Chris and I first got together. We’d have fucked, eaten and written our way through it. Oh, the books I could be writing … maybe lime-squeezing wouldn’t be so stressful if I had more time to do it?

But I am not lonely. And I know a lot of people are. I hope you’re all OK.

I gave the kids leftover pasta Bolognese for dinner. Valentine ate it like I’d never fed him a meal before, but Art refused. He hates pasta. HATES it. Isn’t that the cruellest thing you’ve ever heard? It means I must try quite hard with their dinners. Which usually I don’t mind. But today, I could have served them soil. I just could NOT be bothered.

I had a cheese board with the gooiest cheese at five o’clock, and I didn’t touch booze until six. PROGRESS.

I do think I need a few nights of not drinking so my body can have a break. If I never saw another drink again, I wouldn’t really care (despite how it may sound in this diary). But I am so enjoying that feeling of, ‘And . . . . relax …’ at the end of the day. Or half-way through the day, sometimes. Usually, I would drink four nights a week, not seven. So, I think I should aim for that. If this is our life now, I have to come out of it with some organs.

But what night will I be strong enough NOT to drink? It’s food that’s the problem. As soon as I taste it, I want wine (post 5 p.m.). Tonight, I am making pasta with pesto, bacon and toasted pine nuts for me and Chris – how can you not have red wine with that??

I think we all know what is going to happen.

Oh, Chris came up with a great game to play with the kids in the hallway just before bedtime. He throws as many cuddly toys as he can hold at them, and they must catch as many as they can. Bloody hilarious. I particularly loved it, because while they played, I got to crack open my first bottle of the night.

And that’s it from me. It was a long and eventless day.

Love Dawn x