I am still getting great amusement taking photos of the moon, this time at 10 am in the morning! The explanation as to why we see the moon during the day is here. I also learnt this week how the moon got a lot of it's craters.
The moon, like friends, is always there, even if you don't see it. It also sometimes turns up unexpectedly giving much delight.
I thought I'd been rocking the ISO, even though for me, my world had changed 100%. I'd introduced nightly board games and Badminton and outdoor garden games like Finska. We'd amped up sunset with the LED version of Badminton (I think the neighbours must be glad the nights have cooled as we were noisy!). I was making the dinners more interesting and getting more exotic with the cocktails. There were lots of laughs and good times.
For Mother's Day, I'd organised a huge feast to be delivered the day before for lunch (as we were working on the actual day and I had to visit my mother). The restaurant failed to deliver the food in time, and it arrived at 2pm. I was devastated. I knew I was blowing it out of proportion but I couldn't help it. I really plummeted emotionally. That was a sign something wasn't 'normal'.
We went to dinner at someone's house. It was in a different suburb (only 3 kms away but not a street I've visited), and I got dressed up in heels and make up. I drove (as I'm still not ubering or public transporting) so didn't drink at all. However, it was like I was drunk with the giddy elation of it all. The next morning, it was on a high that lasted well into the evening. That was a another sign that I'd actually been affected more than I realised.
The last one hit me as it happened. I usually walk around drinking tea, everywhere I go. Because I've only been walking the dog around the block, I haven't filled the thermos up in 8 weeks (we shut in a little early - I've been following the OS best practice). As I was making the tea to visit mum (so there was no chance I infected her by touching any of her stuff), I felt a burst of joy. This simple thing I'd not even thought about, I'd somehow missed. My subconscious celebrated what it saw as a return to 'normal' and I suddenly felt excited. It was very odd.
So even if you are having a good time and enjoying the most of ISO, note that there is still an underlying stress or anxiety that you may not even be noticing. It is there and affecting your resilience and balance. Be kind to yourself. This ISO stuff is harder than we think.
On the positive - we will all be high as kites on natural endorphins doing the simplest of activities soon enough!
I had noticed one or two cafes closed for good, just as I was driving past, so it didn't personally hit me, I just felt sad for everyone. Everyone who is limping along, hoping their business can survive.
I had ordered some food from Two Good Co and was picking it up the day CarriageWorks announced Voluntary Administration. This hit me hard. I was there quite regularly for art exhibitions and talks or concerts. It's a venue I love.
We are beginning to reopen but we haven't seen the end of these types of collapses and closures. Will the restaurants survive with their limited patronage (Covid-allowed regulations)? Will the venues be able to continue with music and art? Can a theatre operate in a cost covering way while keeping the patrons safe?
I was mourning everything when it shut for lockdown, but now I'm mourning again as I realise we don't quite get back all that we lost.
I hope for everyone the flurry of activity brings the necessary returns to survive.
To not leave on a downer, we went out to dinner (to a house in the next suburb!) and I got dressed up in heels and make up and even though I drove to minimise infection risk (so didn't drink), I felt so elated the next day! It felt SO different and new and exciting to be out and somewhere different. I could bottle that feeling. It was the burst of happiness I really needed. It carried me well into the next day. So there are definitely good times ahead. We just need to make sure we don't get locked down again.
Don't get careless. Stay safe and socially distanced (and remember the app doesn't work properly on iPhone so don't rely on that. Keep up to date with CasesNearMe.Com and keep sanitising when out and washing your hands where possible. Get tested if you think you have been in contact with a possible COVID case- even with out symptoms. Let's beat this thing and surge forward.
If you love the arts, or love Carriageworks, here is the petition to save it.
In the lockdown school holidays, one child 'camped' around the house. Making tents under tables or behind the lounge, she slept on beanbags or blow up matresses or a myriad of other make shift bed materials. Each night before bed there was an industrious building of a cubby before settling down for sleep.
I decorated the surrounds with the vine fairy lights, so she was 'in the wild'.
It was silly.
It was funny.
It made the 'holidays' different to the last 2 weeks of lock down school in the exact same place.
In these strange days, small things are becoming everything.
Make that exotic cocktail.
Read in the sunshine.
Dress up for zoom.
Do whatever you need to in order to make it a little less dull, Find things to differentiate the days.
This weeks song is the lovely cover of the Beatles classic, and as we ease slowly out of restrictions, it seems fitting as the tentative interactions with the outside world become more regular.
Take care everyone - remember you still need to Social Distance and sanitise, app or no app.
Please note you need to take extra care if you have the app on iPhone as it's not registering contact properly. Pay attention to where the outbreaks are and make sure you get tested if you may have come into contact with them.
As an aside, YUNA is doing a live stream this week on the 7th (I'm a little confused about the Australian time, so can't help, sorry).
I'm going to say at the start I'm not a counsellor, so this is just my opinion. Get proper help if you are having problems. Don't stick with or discard a relationship because of anything you read here. And definitely don't stay with anyone abusive and don't let someone chip away at your self-esteem.
A week or so ago, someone posted on Facebook that they'd never had the kind of love that the character has in After Life (the Ricky Gervais series), and that they really wanted that kind of consuming love. It was a really heartbreaking post to read, but as I hadn't watched the second series yet, I said nothing. I have since watched it, and went back to respond but it's vanished, so I'm writing my thoughts here.
Firstly, in After Life, the wife has died. The husband is grieving. So the husband is focused on all the good things about her that he loved and missed. In the second season, there are hints that he wasn't the most attentive husband. He tells how he wouldn't say I love you back at the end of a phone call if other people were around, and how she'd be busy in the kitchen and he would get annoyed if he had to help and wouldn't dance with her at parties and so on. These are all fairly normal things, and are part of a long life together where we take opportunity for granted (we think our lives together will last forever, so that opportunity to say I love you on the phone won't be our last opportunity to say it). The show does give us glimpses that the husband is idolising his wife, but that perhaps it wasn't the most perfect relationship in real life, in no small part because of him and how casually he loved her at the time. All of which I would say is actually pretty normal. (Maybe not right, but normal).
Secondly, there is this brilliant talk by Alain De Botton on what shapes our idea of romantic love and marriage, and what it actually should be. It is part of the Opera House's Digital Season (which if you haven't checked out, it's worth doing - I've been making up for my lack of weekly visits by 'catching up' online). You can run it in the background while you're doing something else, so while it's an hour, it doesn't need to take up any time.
The bottom line is, with a romanticised idea of love, there's no room for arguing about towels. However, life is all those things, and so is love. It's utilitarian as well as being swept off your feet and a driving desire. It has to be.
While talking about lockdown, we were talking how lonely some people were, and my husband said "I've never felt that. I've always had you." He meant it in the sense that there was always someone to off load stress to, and someone to play Banangrams with when bored, and someone whose presence shone approval, rather than someone actually being there. There are plenty of people lonely in their marriage. The pragmatism of the statement was an acknowledgement of 20 plus years of marriage and friendship, rather than an indication of a romanticised 'great love'. Love is the little day to day things added up, not just the grand romantic gestures.
Lastly, just remember you forget. When you first got together you probably had that all-consuming love and desire that floods through many new relationships. But time dilutes its power and other glue emerges.
I think De Botton gives some very good advice at the end of the talk to a lady who asks about bringing some more romance back into her long marriage. 'Act as if tonight is your last'. Say that I love you in the phone call, plan something special for no reason. Do that thing you used to do but stopped because of kids, school, work or the million other aspects of life that got in the way.
This is a long post for a person who I hope reads it. I don't know if she will or how to find her. My advice, is don't throw away a good thing for an ideal that is impractical and just shaped by the Romantic Poets (this is discussed at length by De Botton in the talk). We are influenced in our ideas on love by movies and shows that do not show arguments over towels because it's too boring to watch. But those arguments about towels* happen all the same.
*De Botton uses the towels example. I don't have a nutty obsession with towels or a passive agressive issue with towels - at least not with my husband. The kids on the other hand....but that's another post.
I am still getting great amusement taking photos of the moon, this time at 10 am in the morning! The explanation as to why we see the moon during the day is here. I also learnt this week how the moon got a lot of it's craters.
For Mother's Day, I'd organised a huge feast to be delivered the day before for lunch (as we were working on the actual day and I had to visit my mother). The restaurant failed to deliver the food in time, and it arrived at 2pm. I was devastated. I knew I was blowing it out of proportion but I couldn't help it. I really plummeted emotionally. That was a sign something wasn't 'normal'.
The last one hit me as it happened. I usually walk around drinking tea, everywhere I go. Because I've only been walking the dog around the block, I haven't filled the thermos up in 8 weeks (we shut in a little early - I've been following the OS best practice). As I was making the tea to visit mum (so there was no chance I infected her by touching any of her stuff), I felt a burst of joy. This simple thing I'd not even thought about, I'd somehow missed. My subconscious celebrated what it saw as a return to 'normal' and I suddenly felt excited. It was very odd.
I had noticed one or two cafes closed for good, just as I was driving past, so it didn't personally hit me, I just felt sad for everyone. Everyone who is limping along, hoping their business can survive.
