Wow life and the world has gone through a huge upheavel since the last entry in our blog and is continuing to do so. After the death of my Mum we went, as a country, straight into full lockdown in that we had to stay home unless going out for food, to the doctor, or for exercise (had to stay close to home).
I was very worried about having to spend all day every day at home. I'm a wanderer and hardly ever stop at home for long. I was worried that I would see this as an opportunity to get everything done that has been on the 'To Do' list for years and that Kent might not be on the same page. So I had a big talk with myself and realised that this was going to be a great break time for Kent so I needed to chill and let the days happen and not put pressure on each other. I hoped we would make it through without killing each other or having some huge disagreements but I guess we have had training in that we lived in a VW Passat for 6 months and we're still alive and together.
The period of lockdown was 4 weeks. We didn't get much time to prepare as we were informed by the Govt only about a week prior. We made a few decisions, one of which was that we were going to try to live off our stored food for the period and we actually achieved this only going shopping right at the end of the 4 weeks apart from getting milk at one point. It was great to do this as we cleaned out our freezer and our food drawers and made some awesome meals.
The weather for lockdown was absolutely superb! Each day was sunny, calm and divine, we were so lucky with that, the whole of NZ seemed to drift into a quiet mode of calm. We don't often sit out on our front deck but during lockdown we did most days. The lack of traffic noise from the city and people walking up and down our cul-de-sac and stopping for a chat was just lovely. Everyone seemed to go into a different mode, out walking everyone you passed said hi and stopped to chat if you wanted to. Lots stepped up their exercise regime, venturing out around the nearby blocks.
On the achievement side we managed to strip and plaster and repaint our middle bedroom. Our upstairs flatmate J was working in Auckland and stayed there until almost the end of the 4 week period. Our downstairs flatmate O went out walking each day and was in a 'bubble' (shared connection) with his sister who lives locally so visited her often. We had a few dinners together and after J got back we had some games evenings together which were lots of fun.
After Stage 1 lockdown we worked our way through until we are now back living ordinary lives while we watch the rest of the world, in particular the USA, desimated by Covid 19. All very worrying as half of my family live there. It would seem that travel out of our country will be off the cards for a couple of years so we decided to visit again a dream of ours to buy a campervan. We actually did decide to buy a gorgeous one a couple of years ago but it was a left hand drive and although that didn't bother us others talked us out of it because of possible problems if parts were needed for repairs. So it went on hold until now and we have purchased a small 1997 Toyota campervan that has really low mileage and 6 seatbelts (yay, can take the grandies out) a queen bed and a double bed. It's diesel and really slow on the hills but it has a loo and a shower and we are stoked with it. We have owned it for a couple of weeks and on the weekend took it down to Napier and it all went really well.
Last week my children's other grandmother (their fathers mother) passed away, two grandmothers gone within five months :( , we are now the older generation...
