#LivingInLockdown
Day 7 – Sunday 22nd March
It’s a grey Sunday morning after a boozy Saturday night. What else is a girl to do except have a nice lie in. Time to settle down to some serious slobbing in bed with a mug of tea, some online games and a bit of book reading. To be honest with you I’m good at slobbing. I can lose hours down the rabbit hole that is my iPad. Something I always thought of as a weakness previously, but which is coming in handy these days.
My iPhone has sent its usual weekly report on my screen time use, which is surprisingly down by 35%. Seriously! I would’ve thought I was using it more not less. I ponder this problem until it dawns on me that as I’m at home I’ve been using my iPad and the computer rather than the phone. After all they both have bigger screens which are easier to see. I don’t think you get screen time reports for these devices. It would be interesting to see how much my total screen time has increased.
The sun finally pops out for a short while and I go sit in the sunny spot in my lounge and absorb the rays. Vitamin D is apparently very good for the body’s immune system. Not that I’ve seen much of it this week. Even if I was allowed out I’d still be moaning about the lack of decent weather. It would be nice to see some blue sky again.
No exercises today. I’m not up to it due to the wine last night. But I do decide to try and up my step count. I have a Fitbit that for some reason thinks I should do a minimum of 250 steps an hour and keeps buzzing me. I understand why. The idea is that you should exercise throughout the day rather than do it all at once followed by long periods of inactivity. 250 steps an hour for say 14 hours is 3500 steps a day. Even under quarantine I’m still over that step count. I decide to aim for 500 steps an hour. Walking in circles around the house is dull but it takes hardly anytime to do 500. There are people out there who never do more than 3k to 4k steps a day. How do they manage to live like that!
I also do the run up and down nine flights of stairs. Today’s excuse for going downstairs is to take the empty bottles out. Normally I wait until my recycling rubbish is overflowing, but these days it’s out as soon as it fills a small bag. It’s one of the highlights of the day. Given I never meet anyone on these daily stair trips, I wonder why I feel like I need an excuse to do them. In France and Belgium going out for a run or walk in the fresh air is still allowed as long as you keep your distance from everyone and do not congregate. It would be difficult to do in a city, but oh how I wish!
When I got back I was hungry and was craving a chilli con carne. I have been craving one since I did the batch cooking. It’s torture to cook your favourite foods and not be allowed to eat them. So I finally cave and heat one up. I still have enough frozen meals to last without this one and I can always do some more batch cooking if need be. Turns out my portion sizes are way too generous. It is huge! Totally swamps the rice. I will spend the afternoon waddling round my apartment circuit feeling uncomfortably full.
The afternoon is spent on the phone with my two sisters and sorting out a few emails. One of my tenants has a problem with the hob. It may need replacing. I have no idea if this is possible. Turns out AO are still delivering and installing, though for how long I don’t know.
Then of course there’s the writing of this blog. It’s surprising how quickly the day goes by. At 5.30pm I have a scheduled video conference organised by another group to brainstorm ways to manage our community groups during this quarantine. It’s an interesting meeting and I walk away with a number of ideas should I decide to increase the activity for Costa Women Madrid. At the moment I feel the Wednesday and Saturday drink nights are sufficient, as there are plenty of other options from Costa Women nationwide and other groups in Madrid. In fact I could be on a video conference every day of the week if I so chose.
I join in the 8pm cheering and then settle down to watch TV and review my first week in quarantine. We humans are creatures of habit and I guess I have set up a new routine of sorts. Mornings: do exercise, write blog, deal with any work issues, make phone calls to family and friends. Afternoons do more exercise, then a choice of going to the supermarket, getting a key activity done or switching off with a book or siesta. In the evenings I’m either doing the video conference socials or watching TV. Between all these activities I do some cleaning, washing, prepare meals and look after my personal hygiene.
Key activities, in case you were wondering, are a list of jobs I feel I should tackle whilst in quarantine. During week one these included getting an exercise routine up and running, sorting out the Costa Women Madrid posts and online socials, and doing the batch cooking. For week two I want to get my photos sorted into some semblance of order and refocus on my wine blog. I suppose you could also call this blog a key activity but it was never on the list. It just sort of happened.
Whilst I have spent a week establishing my new routine, Spain, and especially Madrid, has struggled to contain the rising number of Corona Virus cases. As I write this blog, on Monday, the number of diagnosed cases in Spain has risen to 33k of which a third are in Madrid. 2,182 people have died, 942 in Madrid. In our city alone 9 hotels have been commandeered by the authorities for the less severe cases and the IFEMA conference centre has been converted into a field hospital for 5000 more. The authorities have already agreed a further two week extension to April 12th and will like extend it another two weeks after that. Nobody believes this will end any time soon.