Staying Home: Day 49

I came to a couple of realisations about how to tackle my work today. The first is that I need to avoid taking either too late or too long a break at lunch time. I stopped for lunch at about quarter to one today, and didn't start on Job Number 2 until around two. By that time I had wound down, and struggled to get going again. It then took me far longer than it should have done to get the relatively small amount of work I was aiming for finished, and I didn't finish until after 3.30. The second is that having swapped my little green table for a little brown table as my pop-up desk, I need to swap back again. The new table is slightly taller (better?) but also slightly narrower, and by the time it got to the afternoon my legs were feeling squished. So, the plan for tomorrow is to switch tables then get started promptly by 8.45, work until 12.30, take a 30 minute lunch break, and then work for another hour or so after lunch, finishing at 2 or soon after. I am also wondering whether I should do the freelance work first while I am feeling fresh, as this particular job is a brain-taxing one, and then move on to archive work.

H went shopping at Morrisons this morning. She is working her way round the different supermarkets in turn, as they all have different strengths and weaknesses. M was her chauffeur for the day. I'm hoping it won't be too long now before the lockdown is eased enough for our little car to be fixed. There will be no shopping trip for her next week, as Waitrose now have a good number of delivery slots so I have put in an order with them for next Monday. They had most of the things she was looking for, though baking powder and yeast now seem to be difficult to find.

We went back to the woods again for our daily walk, this time with proper walking boots on so that we didn't have to dodge the mud. The bluebells are now past their best, but there is still lots of hawthorn blossom - also known as may after the month it usually flowers (although these days there is always plenty of it around in April).

TG got on with her school work this morning then took a break after lunch to make a pineapple upside down cake. She had an online dance class at 4, then we started to watch the National Theatre Live production of Frankenstein, which is available on YouTube until Thursday. Frankenstein is one of the set books for TG's English Literature GCSE, so her English teachers have advised them all to watch it while they can. We watched the first half today, and will probably finish watching on Wednesday as TG has two online classes tomorrow - ballet at 3.45, and then her youth theatre group are testing out a Zoom session at 6. Meanwhile H ploughed on with her final essay and also had an online uni class this afternoon.

Today was a rather indulgent foodie day. I ate up some asparagus from last week's veg box for lunch. H brought some doughnuts back from the supermarket, then there was the pineapple upside down cake, and we ordered an Indian takeaway for dinner. M, who doesn't like Indian food, had chicken and chips; H and I both had baltis (lamb for her, prawn for me), and TG had a chicken korma, all with naan instead of rice. Now M is watching television, TG is watching Netflix, H is chatting with an international group of friends from her year in Genoa (all now also back in their own countries), and I am going to read and knit for a while.