Down the levels we blunder guided by the masters but ultimately doomed to self examination

Onwards and downwards through the isolation levels the seven billion dwarves toddled, heading out of the mines and back to normality. That's where the fairytale analogy comes unstuck and I don't know the ending. We are not going back to normal so stop being so fucking cheerful.

It will never be the same but one day it will be ok. Thats what I tell people who I work with who have suffered big dramamtic changes in their lives. It's a mighty big pill to swallow at the moment and the giant size bottle has one gag-inducing dose for each of the little dwarfs on the planet. We don't usually think of ourselves as dwarfs, being the alpha's of the animal world but nature got one over us this time, all of us, all at once. We are dwarves who think ourselves giants with our massive frontal lobes and pocket computers and soy-chai-lattes in disposable cups.

In our home school today we have learned fractions by making jelly traffic lights, and cut up the house and garden magazines to make surrealist art. The teenagers mooch along independently and I am mostly leaving them to it, except for the odd check one hasn't developed bed sores from being permanently reclined and the other hasnt developed hearing loss from his earpods that are growing into his brain. They are happy as. So is the big guy, working, building and exercising, sending time with us all, thinking up a new future with the kind of relish. Why would you want to go back? is his attitude. This is great. He flicks a switch and has moved on.

But I'm still coming round. Does that make me slow learner? In the adult school learning I am stuck in a drawnout lesson in being kind to myself, being kind to others even if you have to spend weeks with only them, and being kind into the future.  I find the first one the hardest, how about you? So many questions, this is what my brain pings off all the time. I have been learning from my school masters - Brene Brown who is doing an amazing pod cast navigating pandemic called Unlocking Us, Glennon Doyle who is my new lady brain crush, and of course revisiting the life lesson that is Kungfu panda for a booster shot of Master Oogway.  I have been trying to use my happiness toolbox - walk, music, cook a nice meal, swim in the sea, do a jigsaw puzzle. The work days feel like the old normal but the other days, they are still pretty hard. Does anyone else feel like a mess? It would be nice to know I'm not alone. Brene tells me about the downfalls of comparative suffering. Oogway says a person often meets their destiny on the road she takes to avoid it. Glennon grammed a sentence I never realised I have waited a long life to hear - You are not a mess, you are a deeply feeling person in a messy world.

Slippers, time slippage and portals of thought that grow gnarly like the trees of the ancients

There isn't much of a differentiation between the nights and days in our bubble, perhaps only a gentle slip from night time slippers into day time slippers. I no longer need a watch, I just look at my feet to find out all the information I need to lead my life.
Time has been slipping all around me, here we are at a month? A month of what? A month of this. Who remembers anything except the first horror filled push over the top of day one as we stocked our toilet roll holders to maximum capacity and counted our blessings in grains of rice and kilograms of chocolate. I wish I'd bought a spa pool to slosh around in drinking gins, but there you have it. No regerts or reverse loops in this time slip allowed. Its against the game rules of this global tardus.
The big push has faded, and memories seem to blow themselves out into extended warps with all the cooking fading into one meal, all the walks have become one long puff uphill,  all the days and slipper changes flick through my mind in an endless rollodex. Now, a month in and at least three weeks likely more, we walk in circles around no man's land. When I work I try and engage an upbeat enthusiasm, I mean who doesnt love passing the yawning jaws of time with a few lunge squats? Of course these are work appropriate bed foot wear on zoom! Anything goes from the waist down.
I also pass time as a part time teacher which I can now muster concentration to achieve for a good 7-8 minutes a day per child. After that they are on their own, or I'm at C.I.L.L. level. Today I made Room One stop listening to DnD podcasts and check into his google classroom to see if there is any work, tick for Mrs Mum, I suggested that Room 2 consult google for how to install scipad, or at last resort, ask his actual teacher a question through online chat, another tick. Biggest tick went to the hard working teacher of Classroom 3, yep that unflappable Mrs Mum, who assisted the resident filmmaker to learn how to reverse a video we'd made. Then I suggested some class stabbing (it's called needle felting in the art world) but then it looked so satifying I confiscated it for myself and downloaded then subscribed to a piano learning app which I did absolutely no research on. Go Mrs Mum. Two hours later she is still on the piano lessons and I am sharing my stabbing equipment with the students in Room 1 and 2.
When I'm not in the eternal moment, I can't really fathom how the time has passed but I suspect I've been sucked through a portal. (Dr Who is of course Whaea J-Cindy and the tardus is this lovely bubble I dare not pop for risk of Death of myself and those around me.) Oh, actually, I recall some gardening blobs. And a bit of telly time.
Did you know, class, that I love portals? Not counting the upstairs for thinkin holy trinity of self doubt, reliving stupid arguments with husband, or planning next food and drink consumption, I spend most of my upstairs thinking dreaming of portals. Tree portals are my current fav mode of transportal (as my sisters with blisters found out last tramping holiday and yes there are heaps of potential portals in Waikaremoana, the ancient beauty that she is). Books are my most used portal. The bath another. I did a few years in a time distorting cave, but you can read about that one day another publication I hope.
Anyhoo, I forgot where I was going with all that. See how useful portals are? They just take you somewhere like. surprise! If I could choose a portal right now I dont think I'd chose to fast forward three weeks. This is a tunnel with a pinprick of light. And I'm not sure if I want to know how bad the world will be hurting when we emerge into the land of shoes that you wear out of the property. In three weeks time we might have a concert pianist in the family or a lot of key shaped firewood. Meanwhile I'll bid you Congratulations for making it this far, players one to five million and Kia Kaha for the next three weeks. I will parole the perimeter and keep checking the tree trunks on the property. I might find what I'm hoping for - that portal into a bar that's open and serving beers and chips to all my friends and family while we hug and dance.

Tampering with my life essence in a bubble where everyone is a Bumface, as diagnosed by the King Teen

He swings like a long-limbed prepubescent hairless monkey through the high leafy canopies and low muddy marsh grublands of the emotional jungle that is our bubble.  He is rapidly becoming King of the Teens in a house where late development is the modus operandi, he's the emerging horse you'd back to win by a length.
Yesterday he was his usual articulate self when I woke him to remind him of impending doom disguised as home school, I was informed: ' Mum, you're tampering with my life essence'.
Today all I got was ' You're a bum face'.
After a small pile of porridge buried under a mountain of sugar he was able to elaborate. When I said he probably wouldn't be going back to school anytime soon, he told me 'That's ok, I'm content.'
Meaning there are enough people here to abuse and moan at daily as well as well exerything I need in the form of warm pjamas and a happy array of technology and books to keep my teen mojo doing that thing that yeast does - oh yeah, fermenting.
The older teen specialises in original insults, the top of the circulating pile to be used when asked to empty the dishwasher or other life joy sucking activities that interfere with his PS4 time,  is currently 'Mum, you're a Corona virus.' Or the ultimate reply to being asked to cook dinner : 'You're a Corona virus graph sheet.'
The youngest grows an inch every 12 hour stint she sleeps. She is thrilled to get her weekly school task sheet and negotiates the day across multiple digital platforms accompanied by the incessant ping of the tiktok peeps chat.
We set travel abroad once more this time transported to the muli-faceted delights of rural Tuscany via our latest puzzle.
I spend half an hour cajoling, bribing and dragging them out the door for a daily walk round the bush track only to get to the end of the driveway whereby they have taken off without me. In a house of five people I find I am sometimes incredibly lonely. I am a crowd vampire, after all.
But then I find I also love the solitude of the steep steps and the familiarity of the curving green sheltered path that bursts into magnificent views like a hundred thousand piece puzzle. Aren't we a contrary lot of bumfaces, we humans.

Evie flutters by and reminds me at best and at worst, all we need to do is just breathe

As Evie says, Just breathe. Just breathe.
A year ago this weekend we were drinking bubbles in the epic sunset on the glorious shores of Lake Taupo. Reveling in the utter joys of simply being together. A year ago. I am still so grateful for your friendship everyday, and cut short as it was by the big bowel CA, I hear your voice in my head everyday, telling me to just breathe. Whatever the question, that's the answer.
'Who's oxygen mask are you going to put on first today?' You would ask me. I am getting closer, I promise, I'm trying. Just breathe.
I remember a conversation we had when you told me about your prognosis. 'You have to promise me,' you said ' If I tell you, that you will not worry about me. Because I cannot waste energy worrying about you worrying about me.'
We tried to make every conversation a quirky joy, after that. A chance to laugh and notice and sometimes hug and make bad puns great again.
These days every butterfly says hello to me, from you. And I am just breathing.

Gratitude is a giant zit, or perhaps a pina colada cake that makes birthday videos and posts them on tiktok

Two weeks in, but I don't want to jinx it by saying halfway!?
I'll leave Jacinda and Dr Ash BF (aka NZ's newest BF) to make such heady proclamations.
We celebrated by making a 21st video tiktok syle contribution (lockdown skill #1), because nothing says I love you birthday boy like a family adorned with the contents of the dress up box busting some tunes these days. Makes the days of yardies and even parties seem so - what was it called, ah yes, february.
We also played Bertie-Botts-Every-disgusting-flavour-left-bean Roulette. After eating the edible ones months ago we now mark the milestones by making everyone pick a dud out of the remnants. Tonight we celebrated lock down week 2 with a combo of earwax grass and vomit.
I sat on the deck and looked at the sky. Which makes a change from lying on the deck and looking at the clouds.
We had Hopkirk zoom time, a extended family catch up and discussed the movie hits of the week. My father bemoaned the amount of dog poo and pee being deposited on the hallowed turfs of Francis Douglas Memorial College during this lockdown. They live next door, but it seems every man or just his dog is making use of these heightened dog walking times. Our dog is so exhausted he refuses to leave the garden most days.
I developed a blind zit the size of Zanzibar. Lock down choc down, no doubt the culprit.
There was some working and some baking. No one liked my pina colada cake despite the inch of cream cheese icing. To be fair it is as stodgy as a small windowless bastard, but, cream cheese icing, people?!
 Eating it will probably reward me with a Mauritius to complement my Zanzibar.
We knocked the old bastard Notre Dame 1000 piece puzzle off. Or 999 pieces in the end, my theory is that the dog probably ate one mistaking it for a gift fromt he dining table gods. I made the same mistake myself once with a block of red lego.
It hasn't got so bad as to anyone actually cleaning the bathrooms.
I haven't had a shower in days so I'm remaining grateful Zoom doesn't have an olfactory mode.
What is happening out there? The death toll rises worldwide. God, what a time to be gratefully alive.

Doing not much continues to take all day

Day something-or-other. Getting to know myself turned out to be a blurry walk in the woods with a bar of chocolate and a box of leaf tea. I had a doona day and watched a series about two middle aged women gardeners who solve murders in beautiful English stately homes. While replanting the medieval pottager. Perfect for calming my raging sympathetic nervous system. Next day I chopped all the heads off my lemon balm. Hah. I continued to drink a lot of wine. And possibly toxic level tannic quantities of Dilmah. I gave up doing anything I felt I should do. I cried for people lost.
I don't think its just a reaction to the virus in the global room. We're all a bit jazzed up, wouldn't you say? Busy has become the new black, the crutch, the way of life. Busy is the life. Until COVID puts the brakes on and we all have to literally stay home for our lives.
I've regained the driving seat of my emotions, I hope, for now. I'm starting to think about what the next bit looks like. Lock down and beyond.  Trying to reconcile the reality when everything is comfortable and familiar and a privilege I am well aware of in our home, but outside looms a new and different reality. For medicine and financial systems, employment and the way we interact.
Meanwhile the middle child continues perfectly happy, requiring nor seeking out the face to face world for interactions, reading, watching, playing. What did you do this afternoon, I asked him at dinner, having not seen him outside the bubble of his top bunk.
'Well, Mum, I cured cancer' he drawls. 
If only. I wonder what will come from this period of enforced pause.

I haven't learned a new language or done a live dance class or baked bread. I have just managed. Just.

I was going to start writing my blog or my Isolation King Lear last night and then I watched the Vicar of Dibley instead. I laughed. I was going to get up and do some exercise but then I watched forty five minutes of Corona virus news updates on my phone instead. I numbed. I was going to be a nice chilled anything goes mother but then I yelled at everyone and kicked them off their devices instead. CILL time 17 minutes. I was going to bake bread but I can just fucking buy it. Or get some out of the freezer. Its not like I ever wanted to bake bread before this shit storm (evidence - have never done it), Yes, I'd like to be the kind of person who bakes bread and I admire those that do, and I certainly will if I have to to eat, but do I really want to? DO I? NO.
Everyday I think about how I am going to 'get into it today', 'get better', get fitter', 'get baking', 'kondo the condo', 'get more done'. Start crossing off the to-dos on my list and engage with brain, heart, lungs, children, husband, dog, garden, friends, vulnerable people. Everything has changed and yet nothing has changed in my head, I'm still whipping myself with my to do list and then rubbing hand sanitiser into the whip marks when I fail to tick them off.
Feeling unbelievably unhappy. Should I have adapted by now? Where's that huge social media stick I am measuring myself by? Oh yes, its the same device I'm using to keep connected and apparently sane. 
Yesterday I did some paid work and other wise, I just managed. I managed some laundry and cooking and puzzle and dishes and a long walk. A lovely long walk.

Because the world has changed and will not ever be the same. There will be a world and we will get back out there. And it will be a world less populated and a lot sadder for the people we will mourn and harder to find and keep a job. We will as a species adapt and survive, and we may even get better at being humans on the planet.
But I will not be okay if I continue to measure myself with the social media stick, or do what I think I should,  rather than what I need to do. What helps me through the day varies.  I manage. I can't do what may work for other people.

While the front line health care workers slog their hearts out looking after the desperately sick and dying, and the government workers slog their hearts out trying to keep it all going and informed and PPE'd and the supermarket heroes stack for us, I am sitting at home healthy and with the luxury of all this time to engage in my latest free online course of Getting to know Gina 101. You poor suckers. Feel free to stop reading right now. Turns out I was the zombie all along in this apocalypse.