Saturday 28th March 2020

Today is Oliver’s 16th birthday and I feel really bad for him. He can’t go out and see his friends. He can’t have a party, or go to the cinema or go out to a restaurant, he just has to stay at home. I’d already got him a card that was sitting in the bedroom, but I hadn’t sent him anything for his birthday yet, so I sent him some money from us whilst having my morning coffee.

As it’s the weekend, Alex didn’t have to go to the balcony room and give classes or anything so we had bacon sandwiches for breakfast and watched episode 2 of The Imagineering Story. It was mainly about the building and the creation of EPCOT, one of my absolute favourite Disney Parks. It talks about how Walt Disney originally wanted a real-life city for people to live in which revolutionised the way people live. A cleaner, greener way. Instead, it became a park which made real life fantastic, as opposed to Magic Kingdom which made fantasy life, real. It also covered the Tokyo park and how it came about. The story covering cultural significance of Tokyo is really eye opening.

It’s been a weird type of weather today. Total blue skies, not a cloud, except it rained. Like totally vertical rain, not hard or heavy, but enough that it would annoy you if you were out. How this rain came to be, I don’t know. It was almost like a don’t worry that you can’t go out, it’s raining anyway.

I FaceTimed my family today and I FaceTimed Oliver for his birthday. Today went really quickly which only solidifies my theory that hours in a weeks day pass by much slower than they do on a weekend. What’s another feasible explanation? We’ve been doing the same things everyday but on this sunny yet rainy Saturday, the hours sped by and suddenly it was already 6pm.

We got the board games out today too. Family Trivial Pursuit and Friends Scene It. Alex won one game of trivial pursuit and I won another. I thrashed him on Friends Scene It. You get 15 seconds to answer a question and by 2 seconds I’d already finished the question and got it right. Winning.

We had nachos for lunch quite late so neither of us was hungry enough for a proper dinner. Alex watched some Big Hero 6 Series on Disney+ whilst I opened Duolingo. I’m trying out the pro version for £12 a month. I figure it’s much cheaper than a tutor and while I’m in lockdown it would be good to brush up on my language skills. I did a level test and according to it I’ve pretty much mastered Spanish. Of course, I still use it to practice and still learn a new word everyday, but it’s not really difficult, it’s much just refreshing or a new random word.

So I decided to use my time wisely. I’ve got all this time and 36 hours is equal to a university semester and if I could learn all that Italian in one semester then this could be the greatest time for learning. I’ve decided to study Italian (from Spanish) so I can refresh and pick up more and understand more, study French and study Russian. Italian and French are so similar to Spanish in terms of conjugations and phrases and sentence structure so I’ve been finding it real easy. Even if I don’t understand it by sound, by sight it’s super easy to work it out. Loads of words cross over between the three too. Russian on the other hand is difficult but then also kinda easy. I’ve worked out some of the sentence structures are literally just two words and taking out any joining words. By sound, some words sound similar to some English. I’m still having to get the hang of the alphabet. Though I have only studied it for 30 minutes so far!

Alex did his workout in the balcony room today and if there’s one thing this room is good for it’s home workouts and yoga. Back to the idea that there’s nothing in it except my ottoman, it means there’s plenty of space to roll out a mat, balance the device on the table and get active. If I wasn’t worried about Rio eating something he shouldn’t (like when he ate Alex’s lemon plant that was on the balcony and got sick) I’d make it my yoga room.

Fill the room with cushions, and plants and candles and a tv on the wall. That is something we are considering for this room though, a smart TV so we can sit on the ottoman in the morning with YouTube on or Netflix or Disney+. TV one way, beach the other.

I don’t think we’ll be getting our sound bar and hoover delivered anytime soon. The president announced today that all non-essential work must stop for 14 days to help combat the virus. That means no building work, no deliveries, no takeaways. Spain had its worst day for fatalities so they are toughening the rules. There’s a lot of kickback from the public as it was made clear that 14 days is the incubation period so lots of people will contract in this week as before then people were able to move around normally so we won’t see if lockdown has worked until later on this week.

I think Rio knows something is off with us being here. When he gets back from his walks now he doesn’t just run up to me, kiss me and then run off and do something else. He comes running up to me, kisses me and then tucks his head for a long cuddle. He’s been very cuddley recently. I think he’s confused about why we’re at home so much and not going out in the car, which is one of his favourite things. He loves going out in the car for an adventure as he knows we always stop somewhere for dinner and he gets some of the food.

He’s still on his ointment and his tablets and he’s doing really well with them. His tablet we just put in his breakfast and he eats it and his ointment he has twice every three days. He sits so patiently as it’s rubbed on and then moves to the other side of the sofa to have the other side dowsed. He did bring his tablet to me the other day, like why is this in my food? I told him he needs it and be a good boy and eat it and he did. He pulled a this doesn’t taste good face. He’s such a good boy.

I did a nighttime yoga routine in bed and drifted off to sleep by 10:30. Tomorrow the clocks go forward which means spring and summer is on its way. I hope with all of us being inside it means that nature gets a chance to really bloom and blossom and lots of animals can thrive in this time. As the gardeners aren’t around though, I wonder what will happen with the usually perfectly pruned flowers and trees that they work so hard to maintain.

Tomorrow is another day. Keep safe.

L x