First week of lockdown and I'm enjoying the free time. I organise basic work for the kids and wait. They didn't do much last time and I'm not expecting a lot this time. It's hard to get motivated and hard to keep motivated. Let's see....
We're encouraged to wait and see in fact. It's almost like we're in lockdown but not really. Not in Te Wai Pounamu where there are no Covid cases. But that's another wait and see. We'll know for sure next week, especially with people working in the North Island, Auckland in particular, coming home to go into lockdown. In the meantime it takes a while to adjust to this new way of life and I go into school to organise resources. I get out my phone and scan my Covid tracer app for the first time in ages. Like many Kiwis I've become complacent and use it hardly ever.
The community outbreak is being traced and more and more sites of interest around Auckland and the Coromandel, where the first case had taken a weekend break, being posted online. I'm aware I've mixed with Auckland teachers at the I and O conference and as the week goes on school students are diagnosed positive. How easily it could spread.
I watch the 1pm updates, set school work and get out in my garden. This time is a godsend to get the outside organised. Spring is here, the weeds are growing, and sap is rising in the trees and plants I need to move. A finite window of time gradually diminishing. And an overwhelming job. I start weeding and digging, needing to see space to organise. And think. It works. The overwhelm quietens. I tentatively dig up and transplant, prune and trim, look at growth.
This time we wear masks. The mall's nearly deserted and I slip in and out of the corn chip, chocolate and dairy isles. My freezer is overfull. I call my last lockdown mate, Chris. He's in a bubble of two with Biff, his 90 year old mum. My bubble is 3...Kahu, Sharyn and me but Sharyn's parents pick her up on Saturday. It will give us all a break. The floors are getting more marked by the wheel chair and we're at our wits end trying to figure out how it's happening.
Kahu tidies his room, a nieghbour mows the front lawn and I borrow a mower to give the back a much needed haircut. I'm more in control and sit back with a pinot noir to listen.
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