I’m so glad that today is Friday, and that there are two days of no work ahead. I’ve been feeling tired for a couple of days and it’s been getting harder to get up and go. I’m not the only one, the rest of the family have been later to rise too. We’re all finding it hard, and the lockdown meant that the Easter holidays didn’t feel like time off. Not least of which both Tracy and I worked days on and off rather than taking a week each like we’d originally planned.
Work & School
I started at 0700 this morning, and tried to get my emails under control, there were over 400 unread in the inbox, which I cleared back to almost none at the beginning of the month, and kept it under control for a couple of weeks. Mostly though I was trying to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything important in the last few days. I’m feeling a little out of the loop.
After Tracy went to work, and the kids had woken up, I organised the children to stock the fridge up with fizzy drinks from the coal shed. We were allowed three cans each, one each day of the weekend, starting with Friday night. We picked them from the selection on the shelf and stacked them all into the top shelf of the fridge. We also got some sausages and burgers out of the freezer so we could have barbecue for dinner.
After we’d organised that it was back to school work. Lucy started with some reading, and also did art and computing. Alexander did his best to complete all of his homework, and covered off a computing project, English, RE, and maths. The maths confused him, there were questions that didn’t make sense, and the answer bore no relation to what it looked like it should be. I couldn’t see how it worked either, and so Alexander emailed his maths teacher. It turned out that they hadn’t been taught about something that they needed to be able to do that question effectively.
I spent most of the morning on phone calls or zoom meetings. I set up on the patio for the zoom meetings and enjoyed sitting in the sunshine, but it was a little hard to see the screen. When we got to lunchtime I took an extended break to do things with Lucy. We did some botany and also got things out for the barbecue. I put the shade on the patio table, and we collected sticks for kindling. Lucy helped me to build a fire and put the charcoal on top. It was pretty hot though, and so we went back inside. Lucy did some more reading and Alexander finished off his homework.
I sat on the patio with a computer and sorted out the work planning for the team on trello. I then bribed the kids with two CBGs each if they would tidy away everything in the back part of the living room. I wanted the table cleared so that we could put things for dinner on it, and the floor cleared so that we could move around without worrying about standing on things. They did a really good job at it, and when they realised that they were faster co-operating it was cleared remarkably quickly. This gave me time to write four pages of guidance on using our trello boards for the team. I also got my work inbox down to under 100 unread emails.
With all that complete we finally lit the barbecue and started cooking dinner at about 6pm.
Bingo Cards
Most of my evening, after I’d tidied up, was taken up with pasting pictures over the words on the bingo cards we’ve got for Lucy’s birthday. It was a pretty straightforward process, but it wasn’t that speedy. So it was well after midnight when I finally got to bed. Some of that was down to trying to fix some technical issues with the computer, which I eventually gave up on.