18 March
Isolation Update – Totally holding it together
Well there goes another day of total bollocks. Look, I plan to get my shit together and storm through this with grace, but I need a week of being an asshole first. They are saying the schools will be closed here until September? Whoa. I presume by then we will have tests, so we can at least share the kids with other ‘negative’ families, and get them some playdates going? We’re not dealing with the bubonic plague here. I get that we need to stop it spreading, but it can’t fill us all with so much fear that we never leave the house again … can it? I just want to get these two weeks of isolation over, so I can drop my kids off at their friends’ houses occasionally – that would make all the difference. I’m not sure what the deal with having any childcare is, because how can I control what that person does with their time while they are not with us? Kid share sounds more likely. With families who you know are doing everything right.
MY GOD THIS IS MENTAL.
It’s blowing my mind to think that just last week I was with a friend in London. We said goodbye to my sweet Caroline and among the sadness of it all, I was making jokes about coronavirus, saying how I wouldn’t have risked getting it for anyone else. Not so funny now.
I woke up with a cold and have felt low energy and a bit glum all day. Although I did do an hour of ‘school’ with my son Art. This involved teaching him how to write the letter N, and finding things around the house, and in his books, beginning with N. We both got bored, but he can now spell ‘Nope’, so it wasn’t an entire waste of time.
I forgot to give the kids lunch then, when I remembered, they ate it like it was their first meal in years.
I’m eating too many crisps. Today I had them with a mayonnaise-based dip. I plan to do that most days. If I’m going down, I want to do it slathered in mayonnaise, eating Kettle Chips. Is that too much to bloody ask?
Talking of going down, I have had Dido’s ‘White Flag’ stuck in my head for days. Nice and chirpy.
I need to exercise, but I genuinely don’t feel amazing so maybe I just let this thing pass first. I only wish I knew if I had the bloody virus. I can’t get my head around that I may never know. This is America. THIS is madness. You can spit into a tube and find out if your Great-Great-Great-Great Uncle Wally had a Spanish uncle, but you can’t find out if you have flu? Well done, Trump. Nailing it.
At least the weather is improving. We did some bee-saving today because there are hundreds of docile ones on the lawn. I accidentally drowned one in the sugary water and felt like total shit about myself all day. Art put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘It’s OK, Mummy, he didn’t look like he was gonna make it.’ And so I cried.
Why have I turned into a pathetic heap of blubbing nonsense?
I do think, as this goes on, things will fall into place. I have romantic ideas for isolated communes where we all get high while the kids play games like tiddlywinks and snap.
I have some good kaftans that would be perfect for such a scenario.
There are lots of people sending around ideas and activities to do with the kids. I need to get on it, rather than just resent the fact that to do any of those things involves me doing them too. But the reality is, if we fill three hours a day with solid activities, then the rest can be more fluid … free play, food, park, TV. So, I will do better. I just want to sit and read, or start my new novel, but these days aren’t really working out that way. I guess what I’m most nervous of is that this school closure will become all about the kids. (Obviously, it is about the kids, but bear with me.) We must keep them motivated, fit, stimulated, but that leaves no time for us to work, does it? And if we can’t work, then everything is a nightmare. So, hopefully schools are going to take that into account while they experiment with all this remote learning, and accept that the kids will get a bit less attention than they would at school.
WHAT IS HAPPENING.
In terms of activities, the school suggested that we cut out little leaves from paper and then the kids come up with things they are grateful for. (All Valentine, my two-year-old, ever says is ‘whales’. All Art, age five, ever says is ‘poo’.) You write what they say on them, then hook them onto twigs and put them in a vase. A little gratefulness tree. Quite cute. I think I can manage that. I’m grateful for weed gummies. Stick that on a leaf and smoke it.
My dog Potato is having the best week of his life because we are all home. Honestly, I wish I was a dog. No, I don’t, I wish I was a fish, because you can’t get Covid-19 in the ocean. Can you? Oh God, what if it’s in the water?
I did nail our Paddy’s night dinner last night though. Corned beef and cabbage, with mashed potato and sweetcorn. It was yum. I think that tonight I’ll make something extra special like … hmmm … hot dogs. Done.
Of course, this isn’t all awful. I have two amazing boys who make me laugh all the time and happily occupy themselves when I ask them to. They are healthy, gorgeous and kind. It could be worse. There could be three of them.
OK, until tomorrow …
Love Dawn x
19 March
Isolation Update – The head in the cupboard
Today was considerably better and I attribute this to two factors:
Turns out, if you totally give up on even attempting to nourish children intellectually, everyone is happier. What a revelation to come out of this strange and total shit-show of a time.
So … the day started well. I woke up at six something, but the kids didn’t wake until seven thirty. They’re going to bed late, and for this period that works fine by me; at that time in the morning, to sit and have a coffee before it all kicks off is nice. My favourite part of the day is by far the mornings. Everyone is generally quite happy to see each other after social distancing in our bedrooms throughout the night. Chris came up with the genius idea of putting a few chocolate cereal pieces into their regular healthy cereal, which means breakfast time is a dream. We don’t give our kids much sugar because Art acts like me in the early 2000s in dingy Liverpool clubs at just the sniff of anything refined, so when they get any, they go into a trance.
I did playdough with the kids for nearly an hour. As expected, they squashed all the new playdough together until it turned brown and then threw it around the room yelling, ‘I’m throwing poo-poo at you.’ At first I shouted at them to stop, but soon realised, as I scraped it out of my hair, that I will never win. So instead I asked Alexa to play a ‘Farty Party’, and I pretended to do playdough poos all over the living room. This is where I am at.
NEXT, I ordered the kids a really cheap tent, which I popped up in their bedroom. They thought it was the greatest thing ever to happen for about forty-five minutes. While they were in it, I did a face mask, and then applied full make-up. There is so little I can control right now, but my eye make-up is something that no one can take away from me. I also wore double denim and didn’t take my slippers off all day. If this is still going on when the weather cheers up, I’ll bang out some kaftan action. I really feel that kaftans should be the traditional dress of isolation.
I gave Chris the morning off kids to get some work done, and right now Valentine is supposed to be napping. But he isn’t. He is rubbing banana onto my bed sheets while I say, repeatedly, ‘Mummy needs FIVE MINUTES.’ He is not giving me those five minutes.
I’m defrosting some ready-made pesto chicken thing for dinner, and I had two packets of crisps with my lunch. It’s 3 p.m. and Chris just walked in and gave me a margarita. What a guy!
Things I want to get better at during this time:
But one day at a time.
Talking of days, what day even is it? I literally have no idea. Not that it matters.
OK, I’m going to go and turn the TV up for ten minutes, so that my kids can’t hear me scream into a pillow. I hope your days went OK?
WHAT IS HAPPENING.
Love Dawn x
20 March
Isolation Update – My kid is green
OK, well today was marginally better. I put this down to me completely abandoning any sense of self and committing fully to the children’s happiness and housework. Turns out, when not trying to do anything else, one can mother better.
This simply cannot go on.
I need to continue to work, when I can. But for today, I didn’t even try, and we all got through it.
We started the day with some rock painting. You get paint, you collect rocks, and then you paint them. You let the paint dry, stick some googly eyes onto the rocks and then do not wash either child until bedtime, no matter what colour 90 per cent of their faces are. (Art – green, Valentine – red and black).
Donald Trump, our orange president, did a briefing this morning. LA is on almost a complete lockdown now. No shops, bars, bloody anything remain open. It’s a ghost town. The weird thing is, I have become totally used to this and can’t remember a time when I walked freely down a street, sneezing willy-nilly, instead of bathing in anti-bac every time the postman delivers a package. This is our new normal, for however long it lasts. Listening to Trump on the radio has never been pleasant, but now it’s even worse, as every time he is telling us that more of America is closing down. People are losing their jobs by the second. It’s the most devastating thing to hear. All we can hope is that we are wrong and, in a week or two, everything will be OK. Let’s hold onto that thought for as long as we can. Because, as mad as the world is, and things keep getting worse, things could also be mad enough that they just get better and all of this madness will end.
I hope you’re all OK.
Did I tell you that Chris panic-bought 200 worms? Well, give a two-year-old 200 worms and you have around twenty minutes of being able to think about something else. This activity was not relaxing. I rescued at least 40 worms from decapitation (got them all, no worms were harmed) and spent a very long time scraping soil off my carpet. Valentine named all the worms ‘Mr Worm’, and then was entirely over it by snack time. The worms are now in a large pot with moist soil, and I apparently have 200 more pets than I did yesterday. Great.
I ate crisps for lunch. With a side of cheese. I did not exercise.
I am making Jamie Oliver’s chicken and mushroom pie for dinner. I am also digging out all of my trousers that have elastic waistbands because I wore jeans today and they hurt me.
I’m committed now to hunkering down. I’ve got lots of food. I can cook and deliver to anyone I know who gets stuck, and we could survive for a month. The reality of being in LA at the moment is that the last things open are the food shops. It’s likely they will soon be closed too. Which is WILD.
Art (the five-year-old) misses his friends and has so much energy he can’t burn off. I feel bad, but there isn’t much we can do about it. I’m just trying to do as many activities as possible, and not lose my shit when he loses his.
Valentine, on the other hand, thinks it’s awesome. We are potty-training him now – we thought we might as well – so the house is covered in his piss, as well as the cat’s. By the time this is over it will probably be covered in mine too, to be honest.
OK, I’d better go. The kids are clawing at me again, and I want to cook the pie.
Sending love to you and yours, I really hope you’re all OK,
Love Dawn x