9 April

Isolation Update – Smug as hell

Well the day started triumphantly with a wet bed from Art, a pooey nappy from Valentine, a massive shit in the garden from Potato and a pile of sick from Lilu. Always sets me up for a corker when I basically run the local body fluids removal service.

Why do I even bother showering? There is certainly no point in me doing laundry.

I gave the kids breakfast and stuck the TV on, it was Saturday after all. While they watched nature shows that teach them more than I have ever learned in my life, I thought it might be pleasant to make a homemade face mask. I kept it simple – cucumber and aloe vera gel. I don’t have a blender, so I mashed it up the best I could then smeared it on my face. I looked like I had sneezed in a wind tunnel. It was so gross that I washed it off immediately. It gave me visuals of being on the tube and people sneezing on my face. Quite honestly the worst Covid-19-induced isolation visual you could possibly imagine.

I do realise it’s not the 1920s and I don’t have to make my own face masks, but I am trying to be the kind of woman who makes her own face masks, OK?

One thing I am loving about this is how resourceful I am being with products. By nature, I am a wasteful sod. My sister is the exact opposite. I’d buy new toothpaste long before the old one ran out, for example. In comparison, she would cut the tube in half and keep scraping dregs of toothpaste for weeks. She has a bar of soap, some shampoo and some conditioner by her bath. My bathroom looks like Boots. I have so many products, some that I have bought, some that I have been given (perks of the job). There are half-used bottles of lotions and potions that I’ve had for years in every drawer. Well, my mission is to buy nothing until I have used them all. Finally, my husband might find a place for his beard trimmer.

Even if it isn’t reflected in the unnecessary amount of products I have in my bathroom, I’m reasonably low maintenance when it comes to my beauty regime. I don’t get any Botox or anything like that. I get a pedicure now and again and a haircut every three months. I mostly shave rather than getting a wax because I’m not very hairy.

APART FROM MY MASSIVE BUSH.

But lockdown isn’t really dragging me away from anything major. The things I do regularly, that I consider to be essential, are:

Scrub my face

Pluck my eyebrows

Spray 7 tons of Elnett into my back-brushed hair

Apply moisture, sunscreen then CC cream

Apply strong eye make-up

Blusher

Straighten my fringe, bobbing it under a little at the end

Moisturise my body

Trim my nails

Take expensive skin supplements called ‘Lumity’ because what if they really work?

That’s kind of it, in terms of the things I do. I can be ready in ten minutes in the morning if I’m not drying my hair.

Maybe I’ll start taking long baths and put oils on my hair that would promise phenomenal shine.

But I probably won’t, I can’t really be bothered.

It’d last for five minutes with the amount of wee and poo everywhere in this madhouse.

ANYWAY. We’re going to get takeout tonight, isn’t that exciting? Chris wants a Chinese. Yum. Right now, it’s 3.30 p.m. and I haven’t planned the kids’ dinner. The only thing I have defrosted is a tuna steak. Great, I’ll cook that and then make a game out of them throwing it back in my face. Maybe if they get it in my mouth, they can have a multivitamin instead of dinner? Perfect.

For lunch I made the boys cream cheese and strawberry sandwiches. Art totally got the concept and loved them, but Valentine acted like I’d handed him a plate of nipples. Honestly, HOW can you not love the idea of strawberries and cream cheese? It’s basically a cheesecake sandwich.

I gave them plastic eggs to paint. They made them all look ugly in about three minutes and that was the end of that activity.

I’ve realised that I haven’t exercised in days, and I feel lazy because I’m not moving. The days where I do it are better, no doubt. I’m happier, more energetic and that is SO annoying, isn’t it? That exercise is good for you? I wish it was the nineties again, where we really didn’t grasp that concept. I ate all those Wotsits and was quite chunky, but my God I was happy. Now I know too much about nutrition. It’s ruined everything. If I could forget one thing that I have learned over the course of my life, it would be that some food is bad for you. What would you like to forget?

Other than coronavirus, obvs.

Love ya,

Dawn x

10 April

Isolation Update – Twit Off, Twit Face

Some bad news. I broke the last of my three favourite hair clips. This is sad on many levels. As you might know, I sport a bob hairstyle, but when it grows a little long, I pin it up into a gentle bouffant style with three extremely specific plastic clips. They are known as ‘Octopus clips’. There are thousands of styles, but only one of them works for me. The ones I like look standard but are hard to find. Occasionally, Target has them. Sometimes Boots, but nothing is a given. I buy a few packs when I see them, as they break often. Before lockdown I had three left. I have treasured them since. Regularly screaming ‘DON’T TOUCH MY HEAD’ at my kids and husband if I feel the clips are in jeopardy. I never, EVER lean back on them when I recline in front of the TV, and I know exactly where they are at all times. ALWAYS out of reach of my boys, who like to pretend they are crocodiles. Today, the last remaining clip refused to clamp. I am bereft.

I, of course, did what I always do when I feel sad and logged on to Amazon to buy things. I scrolled through until I saw them, and made the purchase – but they won’t arrive for a week. A WEEK WITH MY SECOND FAVOURITE HAIR CLIPS???

I knew lockdown would get bad, but this?

Today has been going on for weeks. The kids woke up so early and it’s torrential rain outside. WHEN will this end?

It was Chris’s morning. I was tired. My eyes just didn’t want to admit it was morning. Potato had needed to go out in the night, and I struggled to get back to sleep after that. I tried to relax in bed, but for some reason Art was having a massive meltdown, so to the sound of a screaming five-year-old at asshole o’clock, I sipped my coffee in bed.

I missed Twitter today for the first time. I feel out of touch. I’m not doing great at finding my news elsewhere, so end up knowing nothing. In one way, that’s nice. I am escaping a lot of drama and anxiety induced by the fear that Twitter instils in people, but I miss being up to date. Chris isn’t loving me continuously asking what’s going on either, but I have to get my news from somewhere and he always knows everything. You see, I quit Twitter a week before isolation began. I’d been thinking about it for ages, but never thought I’d actually pull the plug. I was in London with my friend Josie (the most beautiful human on earth, a mutual friend of mine and Caroline’s). We had just got back from Caroline’s funeral and we knew that change had to happen – there was no choice, the best we could do was be in control of at least some of it. We wanted to clean up parts of our lives that were not serving us well. For me, Twitter was a big one. Knowing EVERYTHING about EVERYONE isn’t good for us. Why was I seeing stupid comments from right-wing activists who were spreading hate and trying to wind people like me up? Why did I know about the personal lives of loads of celebrities who were telling us too many details of their lives? (She says in her lockdown exposé.)Why could I see one woman tell a male celebrity that she was considering killing herself that night? Why was everyone showing such massive outpourings of love to my friend who just weeks before they had taken great joy in tearing apart? Every time I went on Twitter, I felt like it was one of those flick books of anxiety and stress-inducing comments being rammed into my brain so fast I hardly even noticed, all to come back and haunt me when I tried to go to sleep. It suddenly felt like madness. Who FUCKING cares what everyone is doing? I really don’t. It started to feel like I was hiding in people’s closets, watching them at their worst through a gap in the door. It’s not right. I’m out, for now anyway.

I have no plans to leave Instagram because I think it’s a very different platform. You don’t get caught up in other people’s shit in the same way. You follow who you want to follow and don’t see anything else. People don’t add you to a conversation where someone is saying they hate you. You’re not being fed with opinions that you should have about other people. I realise Instagram comes with its own issues, but in terms of the conversation and for me, personally, it’s a healthier and way more fun form of social media. (Also, I love posting pictures of myself looking pretty so I get loads of compliments.)

It’s true that Twitter can also be incredible and powerful. My friends Josie, Lliana and I literally launched an entire movement on it. Our charity ‘Help Refugees’ (now known as ‘Choose Love’) became the biggest source of aid to the refugee crisis across the globe, JUST from us tweeting about it. It was incredible, electrifying and important. It led me to believe that I needed Twitter to be a good person. I’d post lots of things to encourage people not to be assholes, and then I’d feel good about myself all day. Job done. But it wasn’t ‘real’ good, just flash-in-the-pan good that made me feel good, rather than actually doing any good. We all know that. Tweets won’t change the world, but action will.

I do miss the jokes, and the rants, and the news, but I won’t give in. I think a lot about how many hours I would lose by being on it right now, and even though I am achieving nothing, I am a lot more present as a result of leaving Twitter. I must stick with it.

Experts are saying we will have to isolate again in the winter, so I’ve been wondering how to make that easier. With warning and preparation, could this even be fun? The horror of this is that it came out of nowhere and was so new. I mean, it’s MENTAL that no one is allowed out because of a virus. Excuse me?

I think we could all get good at isolation, given time to plan properly. How would you do it differently next time? Would you go to your parents? Siblings? Be alone? Get help? Move? Tell me! I’m so tempted by the idea of a babysitter living with us, but the truth is it fills me with fear. Have any of you ever had live-in help? I can’t imagine it. It scares me. Or at least it did, until Covid-19. Now I’d let them sleep in my bed. AND with my husband.

I look forward to receiving your applications

I’m making a chicken and mushroom pie tonight. The filling is on the hob now and smells amazing. I had some tarragon so used that. My God, I love pies.

When it rains, the left-hand side of our house sinks and none of the doors work. That’s right. I got locked in the bathroom for twenty minutes this morning, and Chris couldn’t hear me shouting. I gave up after about four minutes and accepted that I was probably going to live in there forever. It ended up being quite nice. I gave myself great hair and did full make-up. I should get stuck in there more often. Maybe I’ll just lock it and pretend that I am.

The only problem was, and brace yourself because this is bad, I was desperate to pluck my eyebrows but the tweezers were in the bedroom. Isn’t that awful? I got disproportionately upset about it, then focused on the perfect cat’s eye and prayed for no one to find me.

They did. They always bloody do.

I’m still making an effort with my appearance. I can’t do the slob thing. I love my clothes and can’t bear the idea of not enjoying them. Also, I am emotional about my image and how my boys will remember me. It’s not a vanity thing, it’s about them having something solid to remember. I am a massive pessimist at heart and always think I’m going to die, isn’t that jolly?

Just to really wallow on the sad stuff for a minute, my memories of my mum are all sensory or visual. I was so young when she died, and can’t really remember her words, or her voice. But her perfume and eighties sundresses, they’re what I think about when I remember her. For me, an image is how you create memories for other people. What do you want them to see when they think of you? And it’s not just about beauty, or fashion, or vanity, it’s about how you look representing who you are. Which is something that I really care about, personally, and I really work on the connection between my appearance and my soul.

And my soul? Seriously, who the fuck am I?

Anyway, you get my point. Basically, I’m not losing my style during lockdown so my kids will think I’m pretty when they remember me after I am DEAD.

Have I cheered you up yet?

Love Dawn x

NB After I wrote this post I went outside because Valentine was screaming. I found him crouched down, with another bee sting. Art cuddling him, repeating, ‘It’s OK, Val, it’s OK.’ My heart melted into a puddle on the floor. Then, having removed the sting, Chris handed me a tequila. It was 4.50 p.m. Everything is going to be OK. I love my people.