Wednesday 8th April 2020

It’s funny how quickly your mindset changes to view something as a productive day. Under any other circumstances, today would have been another lazy day but now I file it under productive day.

Productive days are now seen as the days when I read lots of my book and jump at least 30% forward. Or days where we finish a TV series. Or days where I can tick off every activity I needed to do.

Read at least 30%? Check. Finished YOU by binge watching 5 episodes in one day? Check. Studied my languages for at least 20 minutes? Check. Yoga and the ab blaster? Check. Coloured in my bullet journal? Check. Filmed a second for my one second everyday? Check. That’s it, I’m done. My productive day has been achieved.

Gone of the days where productivity was measured by how many steps I’d managed to do, or how many blog posts I’d managed to write to get myself ahead of schedule or how many photos we’d managed to take and edit. Or how far we’d managed to get to across Spain for a day trip (I think the record is Cuenca, or maybe Albacete).

I start the day as I do everyday in lockdown. Looking out the window, writing on my ottoman and Rio by my side. Alex comes in on cue and asks “which drink would you like today?”, today it’s a tea day. I’m not one of those people that drinks coffee because I’m tired and tea just because. I know people are usually a tea or a coffee person in the morning, but I just like switching it up. If I was going out, I’d be coffee all the way. There’s something so spanish about sitting out in the morning sun with a small coffee. They just taste like holiday. And good mornings. But as we can’t do that, it’s home morning drinks for us and some days I just fancy a nice cup of tea.

I start doing my language learning straight the way after writing. Get it out the way sort of thing. Alex doesn’t have to do any live classes until 11am so he starts with his morning workout. After, I start reading some of my book. I can’t decide if I love it or hate it. It’s so entitled. And ridiculous. And here’s what I did in my teen and uni years that absolutely nobody else did. And, I can’t stop reading. It’s almost like a real life Bridget Jones but it’s supposedly all true. I can’t get enough of finding out what else happened to her. Like a man asking her to move in with him after one day!? Or a man calling her up and proclaiming that he only has “group sensual parties” not 1:1 if you get the drift. Like, it’s all so ridiculous but also I want to know what else happens to her. And when this all eventually slows down?!

Alex has been taking Rio for his walks, but I want to go for one soon. Maybe tomorrow I’ll go. Rio has definitely noticed a change. It seems most dogs have. They’re missing their friends and their adventures and the saddest part is they don’t know why. Rio can’t work out why his walks finish on the road he started on, or why they’ve dropped from 20 minutes to 5 minutes. Or why we’re not “going for a drink” which is his favourite thing because it means food from the table.

The photography challenge today was looking away, so when Alex and Rio were looking out at the island I took a picture. It worked well. Alex took photos of some flowers for his something yellow.

I got dressed properly again today. A white crop top and a yellow denim skirt. I must admit, it does make me feel better when I get dressed. We had lunch whilst watching TV. I had cheesy pasta and Alex had Pasta Pesto. After finishing YOU, we started on Tiger King on Netflix. We’re on episode two and it’s already nuts. Is Carole Baskin not just running a slave version of a zoo but with smaller cages too? Her husband??? Just disappeared??? Nah things don’t add up.

We’d listened to some music and Alex watched The Mandalorian so I caught up with more of my book. It’s addicting to just read a few more chapters to see that % go up. I’m well on track for finishing 4 books before lockdown ends. By this time, it’s already getting late and we haven’t had dinner.

I changed into my leggings and sports bra and did a 6 minute ab workout before dinner. We had a burger and salad today. We played some Brawl Stars and by the time we finished it was getting really late. I did a quick yoga stretch in bed as I’d already been falling sleep on the sofa. Rio woke up screaming in his sleep about 2am and that’s when I noticed I’d fell sleep doing yoga. 3 hours my watch had clocked up that I’d apparently been doing yoga, and burnt more calories than any other yoga workout I’ve ever done. Ha!

There’s a huge moon tonight. Shining bright over the apartment block in front of us. I think I read somewhere that there’s a Super Luna so I snap a photo, just in case it’s some astronomy marvel, then remember I have an iPhone camera and the photo looks terrible. Not like those who have super lenses on their fancy cameras. I hope we have a fancy camera one day. I know Alex would love one.

Spain now has had 148,000 cases and 14,797 deaths as a result of COVID19. That takes us above Italy. Making us the highest number of cases in Europe, and the second highest in the world. The active cases are, of course, lower at 85,407. Italy is still the highest in Europe with active cases at 95,262 cases and the USA is the highest in the world with a staggering 397,472 active cases. The good news is over 48,000 people have recovered so far in Spain.

The police have declared that they’re shutting off Benidorm and other coastal towns completely meaning nobody can get in unless they live here. There have been more and more people making late night journeys across the peninsula to reach their second home by the sea. In a bid to stop this, the police have cut off the access points and put police blocks on the main access roads. Only cars with proof of main residence will be allowed through, so the address that is on your residencia or passport. I should think a rental contract won’t be accepted as this doesn’t show main residence.

They also released that they have been tracking mobile phones carefully. I assume they’re doing this around the world and just haven’t told people. They announced that the Valencia region has a greater compliance with lockdown than the rest of Spain, according to phone tracking. It showed that the decrease in distance travelled has been reduced by up to 59% whereas the rest of Spain average have decreased travel by 51%. It also showed that 89% of the Valencia population haven’t left their residential environment with highs of up to 96% in places like Denia. The study also found that there was a 53% drop in non-residential mobiles in Benidorm. According to the study, the huge compliance by the region has prevented more than 8,000 deaths and secured the area as being one of the least infected considering its size and population.

After all, the virus doesn’t travel, people do. If you can, stay home, stay safe.

L x