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Oh, hello, updating this is probably a thing I could do now and again
When I last posted, it was the day my house became mine and I got the keys. Gosh, that feels like such a long time ago. Practically a different world!
With hindsight, the timing of that couldn't have been better. I moved into the house on January 20th and got the most urgent stuff done by mid-February, which meant I was in a good place by the time the UK went into lockdown (and I went onto the NHS shielding list) on March 23rd.
The last three months have definitely not been what I expected. It's made me appreciate my house and it's beautiful garden so much. I've become a gardener (like so many other people) and I really don't know how I would have coped with all this in my old tiny flat. Having to be shielded and therefore not leaving the house at all until a couple of weeks ago definitely wouldn't have been good in the flat.
The first couple of weeks of lockdown were hard. I had a lot of anxiety and stress, because suddenly online grocery slots were impossible to get and I wasn't supposed to leave the house and my parents are 70 and 67 so not the people I'd chose to hit the supermarket for me and gosh that's surprisingly stressful! But eventually I got onto the priority list for Ocado and that side of things settled. My parents have been amazing about picking up stuff (medicine, bags of compost, bread and treats from the bakery) and bringing it round to me. I have a box set up in my garden for deliveries to into and for me to put things in that I want to pass to them. It's great they're just round the corner.
At the beginning of May I got onto the delivery round for my local dairy, so Mum hasn't needed to pick up milk for me at all since then. I'd been getting groceries every two weeks and running short of fresh stuff a few days before each delivery (it turns out I'd usually been doing several small top-up shops between deliveries and that's why fortnightly worked, who knew?) and milk was the one thing I really couldn't do without.
I'm keeping my milkman. It was something I'd planned to do anyway and I'd been kicking myself for not doing it before lockdown.
And this week I switched over to weekly grocery deliveries, which is making food and planning what to eat a bit easier. I'd been reaching a point of "why do I bother eating?" about food, but now I'm trying to vary things and try new things and that's really helped.
Local businesses stepped up so well here. My favourite local coffee place now delivers coffee regularly so I get lovely lattes (and a mocha on Fridays) several times a week. I have to order a week's worth in advance, but that doorbell announcing my coffee has arrived really brightens up my morning. I'll miss it when it has to stop! I'm quietly hoping things like that can continue after things reopen.
My local butcher delivers to people isolating so I've taken advantage of that a couple of times. And last week I put in my order, walked down with Mum (at a safe distance), and she went in and collected the order. I think we were following the letter rather than the spirit of the new shielding recommendations, but it felt nice to achieve that much myself.
My house is comfortable and spacious enough for me not to feel claustrophobic after three months in it. The garden has been such a help - I love sitting out there with a cup of coffee in the morning when I can. I managed to get a desk and chair delivered a few days into lockdown and now I have a home office set up in my smallest bedroom. It's something I'd always planned, the lockdown just kicked me into doing it rather than procrastinating. Working here is actually going really well and I'm planning to ask to be largely remote even after my office reopens. I get a lot more done here than I did in the office! And having the commute time back has made a big difference to my work-life balance.
Speaking of work, this has not been a good year to work in the travel industry. Thankfully my company is doing better than many and is optimistic about recovering well. But they did cut my hours to four days a week in April, May, and the first half of June. I'm back to full-time now, which is a relief. And even more of a relief - thanks to careful budgeting, I was able to get through it without dipping into savings or missing any bills. Phew!
I've had a lot of downs during this, times when I've felt lonely or the anxiety has been overwhelming or I've started to wonder whether anything has any point, but I've also had a lot of ups, too. Getting together with friends online for games or watching stuff has been lovely. I attended virtual![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
vidukon_cardiff this weekend was brilliant and I'm still feeling the happy joy buzz. Working in the garden always lifts my mood and I'm so excited to see things I planted are growing. Carrots! Sunflowers! Sweet peas!
I don't know what's happening next and I'm sure whatever the government is planning to announce for shielders will send my anxiety skyrocketing until I adjust to the change. I don't do change well right now. But today I'm feeling content and enjoying my current life, and I guess that's all I can ask for right now.
With hindsight, the timing of that couldn't have been better. I moved into the house on January 20th and got the most urgent stuff done by mid-February, which meant I was in a good place by the time the UK went into lockdown (and I went onto the NHS shielding list) on March 23rd.
The last three months have definitely not been what I expected. It's made me appreciate my house and it's beautiful garden so much. I've become a gardener (like so many other people) and I really don't know how I would have coped with all this in my old tiny flat. Having to be shielded and therefore not leaving the house at all until a couple of weeks ago definitely wouldn't have been good in the flat.
The first couple of weeks of lockdown were hard. I had a lot of anxiety and stress, because suddenly online grocery slots were impossible to get and I wasn't supposed to leave the house and my parents are 70 and 67 so not the people I'd chose to hit the supermarket for me and gosh that's surprisingly stressful! But eventually I got onto the priority list for Ocado and that side of things settled. My parents have been amazing about picking up stuff (medicine, bags of compost, bread and treats from the bakery) and bringing it round to me. I have a box set up in my garden for deliveries to into and for me to put things in that I want to pass to them. It's great they're just round the corner.
At the beginning of May I got onto the delivery round for my local dairy, so Mum hasn't needed to pick up milk for me at all since then. I'd been getting groceries every two weeks and running short of fresh stuff a few days before each delivery (it turns out I'd usually been doing several small top-up shops between deliveries and that's why fortnightly worked, who knew?) and milk was the one thing I really couldn't do without.
I'm keeping my milkman. It was something I'd planned to do anyway and I'd been kicking myself for not doing it before lockdown.
And this week I switched over to weekly grocery deliveries, which is making food and planning what to eat a bit easier. I'd been reaching a point of "why do I bother eating?" about food, but now I'm trying to vary things and try new things and that's really helped.
Local businesses stepped up so well here. My favourite local coffee place now delivers coffee regularly so I get lovely lattes (and a mocha on Fridays) several times a week. I have to order a week's worth in advance, but that doorbell announcing my coffee has arrived really brightens up my morning. I'll miss it when it has to stop! I'm quietly hoping things like that can continue after things reopen.
My local butcher delivers to people isolating so I've taken advantage of that a couple of times. And last week I put in my order, walked down with Mum (at a safe distance), and she went in and collected the order. I think we were following the letter rather than the spirit of the new shielding recommendations, but it felt nice to achieve that much myself.
My house is comfortable and spacious enough for me not to feel claustrophobic after three months in it. The garden has been such a help - I love sitting out there with a cup of coffee in the morning when I can. I managed to get a desk and chair delivered a few days into lockdown and now I have a home office set up in my smallest bedroom. It's something I'd always planned, the lockdown just kicked me into doing it rather than procrastinating. Working here is actually going really well and I'm planning to ask to be largely remote even after my office reopens. I get a lot more done here than I did in the office! And having the commute time back has made a big difference to my work-life balance.
Speaking of work, this has not been a good year to work in the travel industry. Thankfully my company is doing better than many and is optimistic about recovering well. But they did cut my hours to four days a week in April, May, and the first half of June. I'm back to full-time now, which is a relief. And even more of a relief - thanks to careful budgeting, I was able to get through it without dipping into savings or missing any bills. Phew!
I've had a lot of downs during this, times when I've felt lonely or the anxiety has been overwhelming or I've started to wonder whether anything has any point, but I've also had a lot of ups, too. Getting together with friends online for games or watching stuff has been lovely. I attended virtual
vidukon_cardiff this weekend was brilliant and I'm still feeling the happy joy buzz. Working in the garden always lifts my mood and I'm so excited to see things I planted are growing. Carrots! Sunflowers! Sweet peas!I don't know what's happening next and I'm sure whatever the government is planning to announce for shielders will send my anxiety skyrocketing until I adjust to the change. I don't do change well right now. But today I'm feeling content and enjoying my current life, and I guess that's all I can ask for right now.
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glad things go okay
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And part of how Mom calmed him down from his temper tantrum at me hiring another contractor to do the job Mom let him think was guaranteed to be in his pocket (when I told her IN DECEMBER I was paying for my own bathroom so I could hire someone else) was letting him "fix" my flowerbeds. I put in many hours of work in the spring of 2019, laying stones to outline a flowerbed on each side of the path to the front door, digging them into the ground so the lawnmower wheels could ride atop the edges and not need a weedwhacker. I didn't put any real work into clearing out grass and weeds, beyond covering the future planting beds with newspaper and bark mulch.
The dipshit spent all last fall and winter working on Mom on the topic of my "failed" flowerbeds, what a pity I didn't have the time or energy to get all the grass and weeds out, let alone finish placing the stones along the pre-existing beds along the front of the house (a process stalled when the summer heat kicked in). He told her we needed to hire someone to finish the job, till the soil properly with heavy equipment, lay the stones "right." He got her to pay him to "fix" my flowerbeds in March. I couldn't do anything to stop her.
He dug out all the stones and stacked them on the porch and on a pallet out in the middle of the front lawn. Cleared out all the mulch from new flowerbeds and old. Removed my irrigation setup in the main flowerbed and didn't even leave me a regular hose to water my rosebushes with. Weeded by hand. Left denuded ground with no mulch or groundcover to keep weeds from reclaiming the disturbed ground.
Unlike Mom, I have not been working from home. I work in a medical testing lab and have been dealing with overtime. No free time or energy to redo the year's work the dipshit erased in a week. (Note that he left it like that expecting to be hired again to put it all back.) Also no motivation to put in work that some idiot may be allowed to come in and destroy with no warning.
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