4 month isolation milestone

Today marks our 4 month isolation milestone. 4 months without proper contact with the outside world. 4 months without having gone into any kind of shop or building other than our own home. 

Many things day to day are the same as in our 3 month isolation update  but in the past couple of weeks, I've just felt more fed up. Not fed-up of being isolated as in truth, there is not too much that I feel I miss as such. As an introvert, I can keep myself busy at home and feel sufficiently connected with friends via messages and zoom calls at the moment. But just fed-up that the covid situation is dragging on when things could/should have improved more by this point. I have a feeling we are heading into a time of divide again where some people won't feel comfortable with the easing of lockdown and returning to "normality" whilst others are desperately wanting or needing to get out and about again. So I hope that we will all be able to respect each others opinions and decisions during this time as everyone is navigating new territory. 

I certainly don't miss grocery shopping which always felt like a chore. During this time we've actually managed to work out the precise amount of milk, bread and essentials that we need from one week to the next so all those little in-between trips to the local shop we used to do won't be necessary in future either. 

We are disinfecting the grocery deliveries when they arrive so that is a "new" chore that we didn't have in pre-covid times and that can take well over an hour each time to do. We are also re-thinking hygiene all around the house ready for when we may have visitors in future - so shoes are strictly to be removed in the porch only. This is something we tend to do ourselves but it is harder to insist for others to do. We've been super strict with not even taking 1 step beyond the porch whilst wearing shoes. 

I've ordered new handtowels so that we have plenty for washing even more regularly than we do at the moment. I am thinking of doing a 1-use and wash small towel system in our downstairs loo, I used to do this when I was childminding and it helped with good hygiene. 

We have hand sanitiser by the front door so once we put our shoes on we can use that to clean our hands when leaving the house, and we all wash our hands thoroughly when we get back indoors. 

The other thing I haven't missed at all is catching all the normal illnesses - all the little coughs, colds, tummy bugs etc. and avoiding nits. It's something I remember being a big plus point of when we homeschooled previously. Although hayfever seems to have been bad at times this year in our family, it has been brilliant not to have caught any illnesses because of not coming into contact with anyone else. 

So this past month we've had the one year anniversary of Miss T's tooth trauma, Father's day, J's 16th birthday, and plenty more baking and crafting adventures. 

I know a lot of people may be using this time for armchair travelling planning places to visit in future or just seeing wonderful places at the click of the button on the internet. We've found ourselves so thankful for this little blog where we've kept so many of our travel memories  so we've been using our previous blogposts to reminisce.  

Going out mainly in the evening continues to be our norm and J has been running regularly again with D joining in for some walks. 

The photos have ended up in a rather random order, but we also have the new section of patio more or less finished (needs a bit of cleaning up and then made to look nice with garden furniture and accessories).

And our raspberries have remained fruitful meaning that we've had to find even more ways of using them so we made another batch of our raspberry and chocolate muffins (using white chocolate this time). We've also added them to scones using this recipe with raspberries added in place of sultanas. And of course raspberries are great in smoothies too like the unicorn smoothie we made.

I've included photos of our chocolate dipped strawberries too as they remind me of happier times from last summer. After one of Miss T's hospital appointments in London we headed to Harrods as I had a voucher to use. A Harrod's voucher doesn't stretch very far but we thought it would be a fun experience for Miss T. It was rather too busy for our liking but Miss T chose a cuddly toy and then in the chocolate department she had her heart set on a cone of chocolate dipped strawberries.

However much I tried to convince her that £10 for 5 strawberries really wasn't worth it, she really really wanted them. We got the strawberries and enjoyed every mouthful. At the time I still hadn't felt it was worth the price tag but it's funny how perceptions change over time.

Now I look back so fondly at that memory and it makes me smile.

So recreating our own chocolate dipped strawberries brought back the memories from that day - but at a fraction of the cost.

At the start of all this back in March when we began our isolation, I honestly thought that by June and July time we would all be emerging slowly and cautiously into a covid-free country. Sadly that is not the case. I hope that by the next milestone update, that the situation will be more positive. In the meantime, we continue to take one day at a time and remain truly grateful to all those amazing keyworkers getting us through these difficult times.