I now officially know people in my neighbourhood with Covid. Ugh. Our lockdown has been extended till April 15 now too. Probably a good thing.

I remembered that I’m supposed to be profiting from this extra time in lockdown/home detention to brush up on all those skills I never had time to do.

Today’s plan was to start the blog site that has just been itching to burst forth. How hard could it be? asked my technologically-illiterate brain. I already had the video course on how to set up a blog site. Just for good measure I bought the video course on how to use WordPress too. That should have been a hint. An entire video course on how to use WordPress.

Of course, all good plans start with procrastination.

So after binge-watching The Good Doctor episodes (really, the episodes are of significant emotional depth, powerfully moving, especially the bit where the autistic doctor tries to find a cure for his father figure’s inoperable brain tumour, and there’s tears and dramatic music, with whiteboards full of algebraic equations with numerous brain scan images pinned next to them, and…oh yeah the blog).

I decided I needed to carve out a creative space. I re-arranged the pantry cupboard neatly. Ditto the recycling cupboard including folding all the shopping bags and stacking them neatly. All paper (and believe me in France there is a lot of it) is now filed neatly. The place has never looked so immaculately minimalistically gorgeous.

One of my friends who will remain nameless is a hoarder. I suggested to them that this might be an ideal time to cull some things. They decided to start with their smurf collection. 850 smurfs. The attempts to organise these appear to have gone a little awry. Apparently it started with one symbolic smurf. Then moved on to a sort of a flashmob Covid19 smurf Live Aid. This seemed to draw crowds of other smurfs. Plus one smurfette who was uncharitably touted as me in my lockdown efforts.

Good to see that I’m not the only one with procrastination issues. However I have finished the day with a sparkling apartment and a name for the blog site. Pretty good effort, really.

I never cease to be amazed by the creativity of people during all this. It almost seems as if we are actually more connected than before, when we took our social outings for granted. I think I’m starting to be more social in my weekends than I was before all this.

Today I had an online girls night out and an online story reading. The girls’ night was just as fun as the real thing and even more so because I didn’t need to leave my bed. The only slightly odd thing about it were the time zone differences. One person was in NZ so it was 8pm Saturday. The other was in Hawaii so it was 9pm Friday. Both socially acceptable times for a girls’ night. Then there was me. 8am Saturday.

The others were horrified that I was only going to join them with a cup of decaf. Well, when life hands you lemons make lemonade I say, so there I sat in my bed with a glass of bubbles at 8am having a lovely, gossipy girls’ night out via video chat. Followed by an online story reading with said glass.

Then later that day I was invited to a 21 day online meditation group. Probably to re-balance my chakras or something.

Finally the day has finished at 8pm with the standard balcony clap alongside my neighbours in support of the healthcare workers.

Honestly, my social calendar has never looked so full as during this lockdown.