Sunday 19th April 2020

We’d have been travelling home from our road trip now and what a road trip it would’ve been. We’d have taken Rio to Córdoba, Seville, Porto, Lisbon, Santiago de Compostela, Viga and somewhere else that we were going to do on a whim. I was voting for San Sebastián or Segovia. In true Easter fashion, the weather hasn’t been great so I guess in some sort of a way, it’s a blessing.

I worked a lot on Sunday. In fact, I don’t think I did anything more than work. I’d been told I needed to do two blog posts for the dance company before they’d let me stop working for them and pay me. It’s absurd and definitely not right. The amount of hours I’d put in doing social media work would double when they hadn’t asked for a blog post, but I’m not one to stand my ground on stuff like this. Plus, it’s not like I’ve got much else to do on lockdown so I may as well just do it. They weren’t difficult to write but it’s the time it takes doing that sort of stuff.

I was in the swing of it then. I had a whole to-do list that was building up for the cakes business so I got started on shortening that list. I edited videos, wrote a recipe blog post, created Instagram stories and Instagram photos, edited photos and researched trending cake topics. There’s so much that goes into content curating and social media managing that I don’t think people realise. Much like any other job where people’s idea of the job is different to what the job actually is.

We’d had Spotify on for most of the morning. I did feel awful when I noticed 12 noon had already passed while I was playing brawl stars and listening to music. I’d completely forgotten about the 3 minutes silence on the balconies.

I got my language learning in relatively early in the day. I’d have a lay in so the blog post was a little late, but I’m finding myself to be getting more tired recently. I feel almost groggy, like I’m not getting enough sleep. But, according to my watch I’m sleeping relatively the same, if not a little more. Which might be the problem? I’m finding myself to be getting all sorts of aches and pains that I never had too. Shooting pains in my foot and ankle (Alex says this a type of cramp?), and just general muscle heaviness. I guess it’s because some days my body is tired from the exercise, and also the sitting around for the most part of each day. I did my yoga and my ab blast so that’s another day ticked off.

I can’t believe how quickly the days past by though. I hardly have a second to think about how we’re in lockdown. Sometimes I do though and it makes me sad. It makes me sad to want to get out and use our time. I hate wasting days so I’m trying my hardest to fill each day with productivity. I’m not struggling with lockdown, I’m not struggling with mental health and I’m not sick, so I see there’s no reason for me personally to not use this time to better myself. Learn a new language. Get cracking on lots of books. Up my exercise regime. Of course, this isn’t the case for everybody. It makes me sad to see there’s so many people judging other people for what they do in lockdown. It’s perfectly ok to use this time to throw yourself into new projects, but it’s also ok to do nothing at all and get by. I don’t know why some people have to be so judgemental about what others are doing.

We’d had our cheese salad sandwiches for lunch. You might be wondering about the cherry tomato. Alex always places an extra cherry tomato on my plate because he knows I love them. I used to eat every single cherry tomato from a salad before any guests arrived to any party. I just love cherry tomatoes so much. I’m such a creature of habit though. I’ll do something continuously for a while and then just stop altogether. I’m very predictable at times. I think that’s why it’s easy for me to set up and start something new, like yoga everyday or language learning because I am such a creature of habit that once I’ve decided I’m doing it, I’m doing it. I’ve never had trouble sticking to New Years resolutions or anything like that. One year I decided I was going to drink nothing except water. No coffee, no tea, no alcohol (unless a special occasion). Nothing. I think I stuck to it for about 2 and a half years before I decided I really wanted the coca cola that Alex was drinking. This year I decided to start drinking water more again and other than my hot drinks, a few mocktails and a few wines, I don’t tend to drink much else.

I had some emotional messages from my friend which made my day in lockdown. A few years back we’d had a falling out over a misunderstanding. I’d ended up somehow in the middle of a badmouthing story. I don’t really remember much that was said anymore back then, but I do remember a lot of crying. Time had passed and it was all forgotten about. We’d worked on it before we moved to Spain and things were okay. It was so nice to get the message to say that I didn’t deserve it. I guess what I’m trying to say with this is if there’s somebody who things went patchy with, it’s never too late to fix something.

We’d had sausage casserole for dinner whilst watching High School Musical 2. Can anybody not love the entire High School Musical trilogy? Absolute 00’s kid TV gold. I’ve started on a new book now, The Unhoneymooners. It’s pretty good so far. It’s a right Spanglish book with some Spanish words dropped in every so often. Is it truly a Spanglish book without a Tía Maria in there? I loved The Switch and finishing that one brings me up to 8 books read this year, which is mad considering I haven’t read in years. I’m pretty pleased with my progress.

According to the news, the children being able to go out after April 27th is only for children under 12. It doesn’t seem fair at all. They have to go out with a parent which is fine, but for less than 30 minutes a day. It seems so unfair that a child of 13 can’t go out. There’s just as young and just as needy of some outdoor air. Spain treats everybody under the age of 18 as a child, but suddenly when it comes to this it’s only under 12. Imagine how annoyed you’d be if you were 13 and your sibling was 12? I’m hoping it’s a week or so and then they’ll start letting slightly older children out.

They’ve also announced that anybody over the age of 65 or those with respiratory health difficulties can take their SIP card to any pharmacy and will be able to redeem 3 free health masks. It sounds like they’re laying the foundations for a gradual change to lockdown rules. It definitely brings an element of hope for us all.

I couldn’t sleep last night. We’d gone to bed at 10pm which was an hour or so earlier than normal and I knew to it. Alex was tired, but I wasn’t. At 10 past 11 I remembered Joel had a TV show on ITV2, so I grabbed my iPad and we watched that. It’s a good little comedy show and I quite enjoyed it. It took me a while to fall asleep. But once I was, I slept blissfully. We wake up to the tapping of Rio’s paws on the floor and the bang of his tail on the door. He’s really good, he doesn’t wake up really early. If we sleep in, he does too. He’s usually up at about 8:00 if we haven’t got up and goes and sits in the living room or in the hallways and then comes and wakes us up about 8:30 if we’re not up. As soon as we open our eyes he comes jumping up onto the bed wagging his tail happily and licking our faces ready for his walk. I wouldn’t want to wake up any other way.

Keep safe

L x