Yup, four whole weeks of me and my mini-me at home together, just the two of us – cue Bill Withers, or Will Smith, they’re both good… and we’re both still alive and still friends.
Getting back into home school has been a challenge after two and half weeks of “Easter Holidays”, but we got there eventually. Chocolate bribery may have been involved, but I won’t tell if you don’t. She has happily applied herself to maths work, but pretty much laughed in my face at the mention of anything else. Still, tomorrow is the start of another week, and my brother in law excelled himself with the most gargantuan Easter egg I have ever seen. I’m pretty sure it was bigger than my head. This may or may not constitute bribery capital for the entire week ahead!
Our daily walks have continued to reveal more about the world around us, that I am only noticing as we slooooooow dooooown. 
More beetles have been photographed instead of run over, and many flowers have been admired. These two may or may not be the same type of beetle, but I stopped in the middle of the road to take pictures twice, so you’re getting both of them.
The orange poppies that grow in the wall of one of the houses as we walk up the hill came into flower this week, swiftly followed by these lovely big pinkish red ones. 
You get a bonus point if you can tell me what the flower is. I get a bonus point for the bee in the photo. It’s only fair.
There are also the most stunning tulips outside the house down by the stream. 
They have already had a crop in their back yard that you can see from the road, and as those ones withered, these stunners sprouted in the front. This is also the garden of the lovely couple who rescued the trapped ducklings we found a week or so ago. They’d fallen down into a drain and couldn’t get out, and with our two dogs on leads but desperate to kill things, there was no way I could help them.
Almost done with flowers I promise. This week I also discovered that blue bells come in different shades. Not the best photo in the world, but we only see these ones in the bank by the roadside on the stretch where some people still hurtle along at 60mph, so we don’t linger. Blue bells in violet, lilac and almost white. I never knew they existed in variation like this.
So slowing down has been something of a blessing. I do wonder what the transition back “up to speed” will look and feel like, but I don’t think we need to worry about that too much just yet. 
My things I am proud of this week include completing a workout with Jo, when it would have been oh so easy to sack it off, weeding like a person who knows what they’re doing in the garden and then planting a load of things, cooking from scratch a roast veg soup that Tils actually ate, and this curry. Yes, it looks like vomit, but is actually damn tasty.
On Friday I braved the queue at the pharmacy to pick up my prescription, then dropped off the 8 kit bags I had made for the intensive care team at the hospital. James said anything “Federation” would go down well with the geeks on the team. I think that meant Star Trek. I don’t have any Star Trek fabric under the bed in the spare room, but I did have Disney Princess curtains, some pink stuff and a yellow duvet cover to re-purpose. I was sorely tempted to write “May the Odds be Ever in your Favour” (Hunger Games), “May the Force be with You” (Star Wars) and “Live Long & Prosper” (Star Trek) on the plain yellow ones, but then I wasn’t sure if my sense of humour was too dark. Anyway, I dropped them off and hopefully they have found new homes. I look forward to design feedback before I cut up anything else. Any tips on how to make old pink pillow cases look more “Federation” would be great. Ta muchly.
Other creative endeavours this week include today’s painting session, where I proved to myself that even as an adult, with crappy kids brushes and kids paints, I am still fairly shit at art. 
I do love it though 😀
My childish style shows I am confident with colour according to a friend who is a real artist, and I’m taking that as an endorsement. I’m sure she had to try quite hard to come up with something that sounded genuinely complimentary, so it would be rude not to! lol
Tilly displays a great love of using an astonishing amount of paint. Some of this still isn’t dry and we came indoors hours ago… I think the horse is great though and love her NHS homage – she told me the green stuff is representative of either snot or phlegm. Delightful.
Mostly, I am living in a state of gratitude that we can be at home together and that we remain healthy, that we have a garden to play in and an obscene amount of crafty paraphernalia to choose from, that our tech is enabling us to check in with the ones we love and that Disney Plus launched at just the right time.
Am I firing on all cylinders? No. Far from it.
I am exhausted by the end of the day. The end of the day feels very much like it should be when my little delight goes to bed, even if that’s at 8pm. I save up little bits of myself to share with my team members twice a week and occasionally with my parents, boyfriend or a friend on a call. But essentially, once the short one is in bed, all I want is silence. I saw a meme that said something like “being in quarantine with a talkative child is like having an insane parrot super-glued to your shoulder” and I agree. Pretty much every iota of my ability to people is given to her. I have been asleep before 10pm twice this past week, and would happily sleep until 9am each morning. I still haven’t seen Fleabag on the theatre stream, because I can’t stay awake watching anything by the time I’ve got her to bed. Teachers are amazing, especially when they cope with a classroom of thirty and then go home to their own kids. I honestly don’t know how they do it.
How has your week been? Xx
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