teabreaktuesday

[teabreaktuesday]

I can’t believe just how quickly “half term” has gone and that on Monday we will be back to the drama of distance learning. One week break has been two things.

1. Exactly what my children needed to help process the current situation and just actually be children for a bit rather than being stuck on a computer all blooming day long!

2. One week was just not enough time for children to chill out. I had hoped a week would have helped slow the emotional rollercoaster, the floods of tears, the restless bedtimes and the general feeling of loss.

Can our children just have a little time to adjust... please?

[teabreaktuesday]

I’m trying to think of things to plan, things to look forward to, things to keep my children going.

Tomorrow is pancake day and although we aren’t particularly religious, everyone is super excited at the prospect of eating as many pancakes as they can!

Trying to think of other things you can do in lockdown and saw someone had created a “full moon” party with their children and it’s making me think of a plan!

[teabreaktuesday]

I hate Valentine’s Day ... there, I’ve said it!

Never in my life have I received a genuine “secret admirer” card, I feel like all of it is so over the top, so much pressure to take part, spend on stuff nobody needs or express your feelings because it’s a certain day.

I believe in love and I do accept some moments of romance but overall I’m definitely the “Baaa Humbug” to Valentine’s!

[teabreaktuesday]

Finding my inner craftiness - I don’t know if it’s because of the pandemic and being so brutally confronted with our mortality but I’ve recently had this simmering urge to make things - I feel like it’s important to create things for those around me to treasure.

I’ve always had a love and interest for crafts and I often try to learn things. But the thing is I’m actually just a bit shit at it.

I learnt to knit when I was about 8years old - I’ve never in my life actually completed any thing I tried to make and I can just about manage plain knitting but would have no idea what to do with a pattern!

About 4 years ago I attempted to get back into knitting and set my sights on a basic scarf for my daughter. I started it, and as with everything I do, I misplaced it and forgot about it ... I recently redescovered that tiny bit of knitting and have picked it up and I’m determined to make my daughter a scarf ... or at least a snood!

I have this obsession that I will be making something for those around me for Christmas gifts - I used to love cross stitch so after the scarf/snood I plan to make bookmarks for my children, nieces and nephews.

[teabreaktuesday]

Not sleeping well at all ... I feel like the weight of living through a pandemic, distance learning two children, training a puppy and having both husband and I work from home is exhausting but then we’ve also had the excitement of a new family member - a niece that lives at the other end of the country that we can’t yet meet and an elderly relative in their 90’s in hospital - probably facing the end stage of their life all alone and it makes me so sad.

I have tears daily from my little girl who just wants to hug everyone and is missing her friends but mostly enjoying distance learning at home.

Where my little boy is just full of frustrations, with a large dollop of distance learning set from his school everyday meaning he spends 9am till 5pm in front of a computer (with a few breaks) which is not a childhood at all.

About to face another school holiday where we can’t actually do anything, now it’s a freezing cold winter, how exactly am I meant to keep them entertained and quiet (so husband can still work) it’s not like we can play in the garden or meet up with friends in the park.

My sleep is a broken 6 hours a night if I’m lucky, my days are intense where I struggle to fit everything in, it’s hard to keep the children (and puppy) quiet whilst my husband tries to conduct serious meetings from home. I feel beyond lucky to be alive.

But I also feel like right now it’s all about Just Survive Somehow - if I’m brutally honest, at the moment it doesn’t feel like life, it just feels like surviving.

I want to scream into my pillow. Coffee is not enough to pull me through the next day anymore.

[teabreaktuesday]

Overheard an online lesson with 9year olds today - for literacy they were drafting protest letters to send to the PM to ban the killing of whales for food. Their main argument seemed to be that it was unfair to kill them, that as creatures of the planet they had every right to be here as we do and that there are other things to eat ... little bunch of Hippocrates are happy to munch away on chickens, cows, lambs, fish and pigs - really felt like a potential lesson in ethical Veganism was missed 🤦‍♀️