#LivingInLockDown
Day 3 – Wednesday March 18th
I woke up late this morning to the blissful sensation of no pain. I had some cramps during the night but soon got back to sleep. Another cycle over and done with. I cannot describe how great I feel today, normal service has been resumed. When I was travelling back to Madrid I had all these plans in my head of things I could get done whilst in quarantine. Time to start those plans.
Out of bed and a scrummy breakfast of toasted hot cross buns with fruit. I do another run up and down the nine flights of stairs and add squat jumps and a one minute plank to the full burpees I do today. I manage 4 sets of ten each throughout the day, spurred on by the fact that I have mild lower back ache that I usually get if I’ve spent too much time sitting down. This is hardly surprising as I am averaging 3k to 4k steps a day when I usually do 20k. My week before quarantine would include at least one hike up a mountain, 3 hours of swimming, one visit to the gymn to do weights and somewhere between 11km to 14km of walking a day. At lunchtime in Spain you can catch the American show ‘My life Over 600Ibs’. I thought that is going to be me if I’m not careful. Possibly an exaggeration but I was feeling like a total slob, hence all the burpees.
Time to tackle that fridge! Thankfully only one bag of salad didn’t make it. Everything else was still in date …. just. I spent most of the day batch cooking meals to freeze: chilli con carne (no beans because there weren’t any in the shop), beef stew, pasta sauce, bubble and squeak. My freezer is now full and I have no Tupperware containers left. If I do come down with Corona Virus and I’m unable to leave the house even to get food, I will now be OK. I have sufficient frozen and dry goods to last over 14 days.
Onto some house cleaning. The bathroom was a wreck and got a thorough scrub. The kitchen was also a wreck by the time I’d finished cooking. This also got a thorough scrub. Finally I managed to totally empty my laundry basket and get everything washed. Including all the towels and cloths I’d used over the past two days and the sheets. I’ve upped the ante on washing and things only get used once or twice before going in the laundry basket. Just in case.
Then of course there’s the constant hand washing. I’m amazed my hands haven’t dissolved. But this is necessary, because try as I might, I cannot stop touching my face. Fortunately before all this started I had a friend staying who gave me a gift of turmeric soap from India. I was a bit dubious in case it smelt of the spice, which is great in food but not a scent I wish to spray myself with. Thank fully it doesn’t. It does in fact have a really strong floral scent that has been following me around wherever I go, which is lovely. I don’t usually have fancy soap in the house, so this has been a life saver.
I did contemplate the idea of working out how to use my oven. This may sound odd to some of you, but will amuse my family, because I am famous for never using my oven. Haven’t done so a single time since moving to Madrid over 10 years ago. It seems a waste for one person and they’re a bugger to clean. I decided batch cooking was enough kitchen time for one day. Besides I’ve been toasting the hot cross buns under the grill in my oven, so that counts right? Mind you it took a bit of time to work out how to do that, as the markers around my dials have all rubbed away.
I also managed to get through to my sister in care. She was not happy. Her form of dementia means she’s fairly non communicative, but this time she made a whole sentence to let me know she was feeling down. She is unable to explain why, but I suspect not going out is starting to get to her. I explained the situation as best I could without scaring her and promised to call every day.
Another quick meal that served as both lunch and tea, as I’m still on just the two meals a day, then I showered and changed ready for a conference call. I had signed up for a Zoom meeting being run by Madrid Bloggers Network on making Podcasts. To be honest I’m not that bothered about podcasts, though it was an interesting seminar. They always are from that group, which is very professionally run. I was however interested in learning about Zoom which I’ve never used. I’m looking to run drink and tapas nights via video conferencing for the ladies in Costa Women Madrid. I’ve never used Zoom before so this was the ideal opportunity to see how easy it is to log into an event. Pretty damn easy on the whole.
I didn’t really need to get changed as the event was run as a webinar, where only the presenters are visible on the video conference. I suspected as much but better safe than sorry. I don’t want the whole world to see me in my scruffs. Besides it was nice to make the effort and feel like I was going out.
Whilst the conference was ongoing I multitasked and wrote up the first two days of this blog, which you probably noticed given the number of Facebook posts yesterday. Completely missed the 8pm cheering session. I did however manage to sign up for a Zoom account and arrange a tester drinks and tapas session for the following night. A bit last minute but I prefer less people on this first session whilst I work out what I’m doing.
Pretty productive day on the whole with little thought given to the quarantine or the virus. This is best. I had looked at Facebook but it seems less people are posting. This is partly because many of the groups I belong to are no longer doing events, but I suspect some people are staying away as they don’t want to see any more bad news. I don’t blame them. I went to bed early and nodded off whilst reading. Woke at 1am realising I hadn’t posted the video conference event. Did so then and as I had the munchies ended up scoffing the last two hot cross buns….oops! Probably wont be hungry in the morning.