Pandemic Update
Still at home, struggling a bit to find the enthusiasm to go out for our exercise. Taking Ms5 for a walk seems to be a good way to use up the full hour of allotted exercise time we have under stage 4 restrictions. Once we hit the trails in Blackburn Lake Sanctuary, she just wants to keep exploring.
When stage 4 was announced I pulled out the old Melways and drew our 5km circle, and the online maps suggest I got it about right. (I gather everyone in Melbourne was doing much the same thing). I hadn't been outside that area more than a handful times under stage 3, so it's not really a major burden. Psychologically however, it feels much more confining. Perhaps because the people I'm most likely to pay a visit to are just fractionally outside the 5km zone and now, even though I wasn't visiting anyway, I can't stop thinking about it.
The weekly shop today went fairly smoothly. Quiet, short queues, and most things back in stock after the panic buying of last week. No eggplant though. Normally I wouldn't care, but it is an important component of my Bolognaise sauce, and I'm nearly out. If it's anything like the great Broccoli shortage of last week it should be fine next time I'm in.
Since the last pandemic update, our LGA active cases rose fairly rapidly from 24 to 58 over 2 weeks, and continued into the 60's. Since then it has slowed down considerably, taking another 2 weeks to reach 72 today. Total cases are 157. Which demonstrates to my satisfaction that the restrictions were necessary and reasonably effective, but we were never likely to be ready to end them by mid-August. I've revised my expectations to "maybe we'll be allowed out before the end of the year".
It certainly is teaching me to carpe diem when I can.
Postcode data became publicly available last week, so now I know there are 8 active cases close to home in my postcode.
That's another change from the first lock-down in March. At that time there were so few cases, not in our area, that the chance of catching something seemed fairly remote. Aside from the remote learning it mostly felt like and enforced holiday at home, and I needed the break.
Now it's all more present in my thoughts as well as physically being around. I'm more careful on my forays to the shops, using the sanitiser, aware of what I've touched since the last clean. Remote learning is set to continue right to the end of term, no packing the kids back off to school.
That's a worry too. Last time I felt that as long as we got some stuff done, the teachers could pull the pieces back together once the kids were back in the classroom. Now I feel more responsible, and can't help but think about all the experiences they would have had at school but can't here.
For their part, the kids have mostly taken to the remote learning more smoothly this time around, but they too seemed demoralised when the first 6-week lock down was extended to the end of term. Motivation is hard to come by for all of us.
Mr8 has put in a request to go camping again, when we can. Ms5 wants to move house.
So I guess it's not too surprising that I (along with most of Melbourne?) am struggling with anxiety. Mostly fine during the day, it's when the lights go out that I have trouble sleeping, staying asleep, and the sleep I get is full of weirdly vivid stress dreams. I'm not sitting around specifically worrying about things, but apparently my physical body is desperate to run away, if only it knew where to.
Fortunately I have a cat who comes to cuddle up and purr at me whenever she senses that I'm awake. It probably helps.