Since it’s Wednesday, or HUMP DAY, I thought I’d come on and have a good auld bitch, just to reassure you all that while life as we know it is in a desperate state of flux, things here remain the same and I’m still a vinegary old bastard. I’ve been a cranky in the house, especially with the children, who have been very reluctant to do any of the school-work they’ve been assigned and have thus been getting on my nerves something shocking. Poor LSB- he got a chewing earlier too- I could have punched him in the face for crunching a Mini Egg too loudly.
Last week I was all excited about Joe Wick’s exercise plan as I naively thought that starting every morning with a good buck-leap about would be an endorphin-boosting start to the day, but I’ve given up on that. The kids only did the warm-up before sitting down for a spot of colouring in, and left me cavorting about, fantasising about emerging from this enforced hibernation with a six-pack and toned upper arms. I overdid it on Friday and spent the entire weekend in a state of agitation over the terrible tightness across the chest. I kept asking LSB to take my temperature for fear it was the dreaded virus but since no other symptoms presented themselves, I think it was just the press-ups.
I am also in the vice-like grip of ‘sunshine based anxiety’. Anyone else get this? It’s when you feel compelled to make the most of the great outdoors before the bright spell disappears and it pisses down, putting paid to all the things you planned to do when it was fine. Washing, for example. No sooner have I one load hung out than I have another flung on. I feel guilty about how behind I got with it all while I was at my work, and I am trying to atone for that lack of diligence. There’s not a bed in the house hasn’t been stripped and changed.
This ‘sun-shine neurosis’ also applies to gardening. Our garden is a huge embarrassment to me, because LSB wouldn’t know a weed from a wallflower and I haven’t much more of a notion. However, I do know that the big tendrils of tough grass which are strangulating my escallonia at the front looks most unbecoming, and on our government mandated walks round the block I’m noticing all the mowed lawns and spring flowers and tended hedges. Ours looks neglected and sad in comparison, miserable even, and certainly not sparking any joy. 4-30am it was last night when I jolted awake and said: ‘Stevey we have to fill the brown bins, while we still can!’ At that hour of the night/morning, he failed to see the urgency about bins and garden waste. I, on the other hand, couldn’t sleep and came down and stood outside to listen to the birds in an effort to calm myself. I’m telling you, there’s folk locked up who are saner.
And then, there’s the Mothership. Fuck me. Never off the blower presently. Here she was last week: ‘Now, I’m just ringing because I’m VERY WORRIED. You know Basil, from your Dad’s History Club? Well HE said that his home-help is now coming with a face-mask on her, (and only a week ago she was saying that the whole thing was a nonsense and was raging that there was no loo roll in Asda). She’s NOW telling him that he isn’t to TOUCH the mail with his bare hands in case the postman is infected, and passing it on, willy-nilly. She says he’s to put a pair gloves on and extract the contents with a pair of tweezers and put the envelope straight into the fire.’
‘I’ll not be going to those lengths,’ I told her, but sure then didn’t I google it and came across a crowd of folk who’d emptied their entire Tesco shop into a bath with disinfectant in it, with a loose cauliflower bobbing about in the middle of it all.
So Himself did a shop on Sunday and to be honest I wanted to go, but he said ‘no’ because if I got the fecking virus he couldn’t listen to me and off he went before I could argue. Then he texted from Forestside saying thank God I hadn’t gone instead because I’d just have said “Fuck this’ and come back minus the shopping and we’d have had no dinner. Meanwhile I was waiting with the Dettol spray at the ready, and when he got in, corralled him directly to the laundry room, told him to strip down to his boxers before bundling all his stuff into the machine and putting it on full whack with the anti-bacterial laundry cleanser. ‘I’m not in Maghaberry you know,’ he said, looking perturbed. Then I set to wiping everything down with my spray. ‘What have you become?’ he asked, his eyes wide with disbelief, as he reached for the red wine bottle. ‘NOT BEFORE YOU’VE HAD A SHOWER!’ I guldered.
I mean, please, tell me, do I have to be at this? It’s not like I’m working in the ICU at the Royal. (And a big million thank you from the bottom of my sour little heart to all of those who are. We owe you. Do you hear that Boris? We fucking OWE them.) I just don’t know what to be doing anymore- what’s best practice for groceries?
My nerves are shattered. I suppose that’s why the hamster wheel in my brain is churning round about washing bed linen and gardening because it’s infinitely preferable than worrying about your whole family coming down with the bloody thing because you were too lazy to take a Dettol wipe to a packet of fusilli. Send me good vibes. Send me advice. Send me anything. Let me know I’m not alone, slowly unravelling here.
