While the Australian government has been annoyingly vague about the COVID-19 situation – often providing contradictory or downright spurious information – I would estimate that this is about the third week of our (mostly) self-isolation. Being self-employed, I always work at home, while Andrew normally goes to an office so has switched to working at home. He's commandeered half of our dining room table as his new office. To draw a clear line between 'home' and 'work', he's been covering his monitors with a towel when he's not working, and also walking around the block (in lieu of a commute) at the start and end of each work day.
What else has changed? I've been surprised at how quickly all my usual activities have become virtual: a regular Thursday evening cheese and wine gathering now conducted via Zoom, virtual coffee dates with Andrew's workmates and my (former) workmates, and Sunday night dinners with friends moved online. Isolation is strangely social.
Also, my boot camp instructor Rex has started offering online boot camp. Four times a week he emails a list of sets of exercises, complete with videos to follow along. It's great fun and I'm finding I work out just as hard as I would if it was in person. Weird. Hope my enthusiasm keeps up ...
High knees
Work-wise, I'm still getting plenty of editing. I'm very grateful for this. Most of my clients, whether new or recurring, have been working on their research projects for months, years or even decades, so the pandemic doesn't seem to be hampering their output (so far). Still, the current restrictions on movement mean I have more spare time than before, and I've been seeking out activities that give comfort, whether gardening, reading, cooking, listening to podcasts or curling up in front of the TV.
What I'm reading ...
... or rereading, as the case may be. In between some new and mind-expanding books (How Many Friends Does One Person Need? by Robin Dunbar; Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow; All That Remains by Sue Black, and many more), I've been dipping into old favourites (The Millstone by Margaret Drabble; Destination Saigon by Walter Mason; A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans; The Velvet Room by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, and many more!) Unfortunately our local library (where I'm an avid member) has closed for the duration of the virus crisis; I'm glad I have a backlog (and back catalogue) of Kindle books to read.
What I'm cooking and eating
Yep. Comfort food. It's late autumn here (indeed, there's a touch of winter in the air this weekend) and in half anticipation of shopping restrictions becoming even more stringent I've been filling up the freezer with hearty, flavoursome dishes and cooking old favourites. Things like ...
nachos
potato and pea curry
teriyaki tofu and veges
shakshuka
vegetable soup
cheese soufflé
chocolate mud cake
Andrew and I usually avoid buying takeaway food and drinks to avoid packaging waste; we prefer to eat at cafes and restaurants. Now that sitting down in public is banned we've had to bend our usual rules! We want to support our favourite cafes to help them stay in business, so have been buying coffee each day and also having a couple of takeaway meals each week.
We're standing by you, Stand By Me
What I'm listening to
Podcasts! So many podcasts. Coronacast on the ABC (of course), plus more escapist goodies such as No Filter with Mia Freedman, 9 Days in July, Armchair Expert, Friday Night Comedy, Modern Love and Andrew Leigh's The Good Life.
The garden is a joy. A place where we can zone out and forget the world is in uproar. Right now we have ...
... lots of ripening chillies ...
... and some cute baby pumpkins
Soon I'll need to harvest the chillies to make room to plant garlic.
One final thought. While all overseas travel is cancelled for the foreseeable future, the current need to wash our hands dozens of times per day has seen us delve into our bathroom drawers ... and be reminded of past overseas holidays. While other people buy knick-knacks while travelling, apparently I buy soap. Handy, in the circumstances! Here's what I found:
Clockwise from top left: Fiji (visited in 2019),
in 2013), New Zealand (last visited in 2020)
Timor-Leste (visited in 2018)
Left: Canada (last visited in 2017),
right: Japan (visited in 2016)
It's lucky soap doesn't go out of date!
Good luck, everyone.
2 comments:
So I wandered over to your blog to grab your chocolate mud cake recipe. Glad to see I'm not the only one craving comfort food! Sadly though I don't think I have any cooking chocolate in the pantry :(
May have to settle for another chocolate mug cake instead (https://tasty.co/recipe/chocolate-hazelnut-mug-cake)
Meanwhile, the weather is getting nicer and it's time to get out into the garden. I don't normally plant seeds, prefering to get my vegetables ready started, but I've ordered some seeds this year as the garden centres are closed. Looking forward to planning those up over the Easter weekend.
Stay safe c
Hey Chantil ... thanks so much for popping by! Hope the chocolate mug cake went well (and thanks for the recipe. I will try it). I'm having the opposite problem re: chocolate in the house ... there's rather a lot of it at the moment! I keep (ahem) stocking up in case of emergency.
Have fun with your gardening ;-)
xx k
Post a Comment