Tuesday
Today I was thinking about all the things we can control in this crazy unexpected Corona Virus season. I was looking through photos of about a year ago and thinking how simple things were then! In fact, you just need to cast your mind back a month when Brexit and Load Shedding dominated international and national headlines. Now, no one is talking about Brexit and Load Shedding is a one line headline saying there won’t be any this week.
It’s all about the Virus.
And it’s so disruptive.
It’s very disruptive mentally. If I get a runny nose, I’m wondering if I’ve not got the virus. The other night I woke up at 1:30am with a massive headache. That had me Googling “Corona and headaches”. If I’m around people (even if they are 2m away), I’m imagining a bazillion tiny germs crawling on my hands. The worst is at the building site where loads of hands have touched loads of scaffolding and then I touch them too.😨😱🙄 Then I put my hands behind my back and try not to touch my face. Then I get a runny nose and wipe it on the inside of my shirt. Please don’t come near me! As soon as I get in the car, I pour sanitizer all over my hands, but I can still feel those germs on the places I think I’ve missed!😂
It’s very disruptive physically. From Friday morning, I have to stay home. I guess we could go to Echo and call it a second house, but we don’t want to defeat the purpose for which this is done. Today Mike went shopping and had to queue outside Pick n Pay as they only allowed a few people in at a time. For half an hour he waited, but when he got inside it was plain sailing. So many people need to shop and so many things are sold out. Gym is now officially closed. Very disruptive physically.
All of these things you can’t control.
But there are also a bunch of things we can control.
- We can still control our thoughts. We can dwell on all the misery and things we have lost. We can dwell on the uncertainty of actually catching the virus. We can dwell on the possibility of dire illness if we do. Or we can control our thoughts and remind ourselves ‘this too will pass.’ It may take three weeks or (hopefully not) longer, but there will come a time when we look back and say, ‘remember Corona virus.’ Or even more likely, we’ll say ‘remember the virus’ and not be able to remember Corona! Time passes. It’s one of the joys I have of this daily scrawling: I can look back. And looking back gives me such a great perspective of how quickly time passes.
- We can control our time. Here we have three unique weeks. What to do? I’ve got to continue working – I’m in the blessed position of working from home in the healthiest of times so nothing will change. What will change is what I do when the days are quiet and my work is done. I’ve been thinking about it. This is an opportunity to do all the things I have to do in the months ahead. I can start sorting and packing. I can make three piles of stuff that goes to charity, stuff that goes to the bin and stuff that stays. I can read more. I could get stuck into the garden.
- We can control what we eat. So easy to eat out; to snack out; to buy ready prepared food. Now we have opportunity to cook from scratch. I think this is something I have to seriously focus on. Not exercising usually for me, means gaining weight so two meals a day – late breakfast at 10am and dinner at 5pm – that would work for me. Can I do it for three weeks? I’m not sure!
- We can control our expenditure. This is a time we can save! There’s a challenge.
- We can control the spread of the virus. If I stay home, I have a far greater chance of staying healthy. If I don’t get it, I can’t spread it.
I think for three weeks, life has the potential to become simpler and kinder. I hope so.
For me today, I was up at 7am and Mike and I were at the site at about 7:30am. We did a bit of measuring up before coming home.
Early morning views…
After Mike had shopped and done some building prep, he went back to the site for the rest of the day. I did several hours work and then at about 3:30pm, I went down and joined him for about an hour and a half. He had some tricky stuff to do…
Tomorrow at 6:30am, Courage comes and the three of us will head to the site to lay the conduits for the final floor. It’ll probably take most of the day so I’ll come back after a couple of hours as I have work to do and an orthodontist appointment in the afternoon. This is the final time we’ll have to lay conduits in all the right places and cable tie them down. So grateful that we get to do this before lockdown on Thursday night. Concrete comes Thursday.
Psalm 37:11
The meek will inherit the land and enjoy peace and prosperity.
These are the days.
Keep the smile going.
God bless you.
In His Grip,
Helga xx 🙂
Braces:
1 year and 132 days.