update in this year of plague
Jul. 13th, 2020 02:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
llywelaI haven't posted in a while - is anyone still reading here? How are we all coping in this time of plague? Lockdown has been a weird experience, no? Almost weirder still now that it is lifting slightly, so that we find ourselves living in this strange sort of half-and-half world.
As of one week ago today, I am now 'bubbled up' with my parents as an extended household, which means we are allowed to visit each other inside our houses and I can have Layla-May for sleepovers once more, which means my 69-year-old mum finally gets some much-needed respite from the full time care of an active 4-year-old. Layla has found our prolonged separation very hard, video calls and, more lately, picnics in the garden just weren't enough; until mid-March she had been with me every single weekend for two full years, and semi-regularly before that. Weekends with Aunty Jo have been her routine for as far back as she can remember, so the sudden loss of them was a huge break in the routine of a child who struggles with separation anxiety at the best of times, thanks to her hopeless parents. She was utterly ecstatic to be back, spent the weekend trying to reclaim every activity she ever remembers us doing together, and kept getting emotional about how lovely it was to spend time together again. My poor baby. I have a week off work at the end of July so will probably have her for most of that, to make up for lost time.
My brother has also got that same week off, so my older sister and her husband have booked an Air B'n'B in Cardiff for a few days that week, now that such accommodation has re-opened, so we can have at least some kind of holiday together, as a family, since our planned week together in West Wales at Easter got cancelled. It remains to be seen how well their children cope with the journey, mind - they've never travelled so far before!
We are still waiting on the adoption. Everything was on hold for a while, thanks to lockdown, then as the courts were still handling some cases remotely, D&R managed to submit the adoption paperwork and waited for it to go through...only for it to be returned because the social worker had completed her section incorrectly! So they had to start again from scratch and resubmit. Yet another delay in a process fraught with complication. The children have been with D&R for 10 months now and are doing well, in general. The pandemic lockdown hasn't been easy for them, since it followed on from an extended adoption bubble followed by an informal semi-lockdown caused by a stalker - they thought for a while the children's location had been uncovered by the birth family and were on the point of organising an impromptu move out of area, but in the end it turned out to be a local woman with dementia who thought Miss E was her granddaughter. So with pandemic lockdown coming hard on the heels of that experience, they have all been slightly stir crazy, locked up in the house together for so many months without a break! Then, ridiculously, D&R got harassed by the children's social worker over Miss E not having started nursery - this during a nationwide lockdown with all the schools closed! The social worker hen demanded evidence of home schooling, which was easily provided since D is a highly qualified teacher with 25 years of experience behind her, the children are receiving an excellent home education, but she shouldn't have to prove it - 'regular' families aren't being asked to prove that they are educating their children at home. E&G are still in the 'looked after children' system, sure, but only because their adoption hasn't yet gone through - they have been placed for adoption and are no longer at risk, so why are the adoptive parents being scrutinised as if they were no better than the birth family? Are all foster placements treated in this way? Miss E was even all signed up for a place at nursery, she just couldn't take it up until the nursery re-opened - and then the experience of starting nursery unsettled her all over again, just another upheaval in her troubled young life. Little G, meanwhile, has hit the terrible twos and wants everyone to know it!
But these hurdles aside, the children have bonded well with D&R as a family and are growing up fast, three and two years old now, their previously delayed development coming on in leaps and bounds.
What else is going on? My cousin with terminal cancer is still with us and is doing better than was first feared. We have an extended family Zoom session every week, an ever-fluctuating mix of aunts, uncles and cousins, and he comes along to that most weeks. The cancer is spreading, they found new tumours in his brain and pleural cavity just the other week, and he is finding it increasingly difficult to string a sentence together, but he continues to make the effort - and manages to win the quiz most weeks, as well. I just wish he and his partner had been able to have their planned wedding before everything shut down. In theory they could try to schedule a replacement wedding now, even if with no guests, but I'm not sure they have the heart for it anymore, after everything.
Meanwhile, my very frail aunt L is back in hospital. Again. She has been deteriorating steadily this year - she had a fall and broke her hip early into lockdown, so spent a good couple of months in hospital, with the family unable to visit while she has been increasingly unable to cope with the phone that is now her sole means of communication. She finally came home from hospital two weeks ago, with a full care package in place, and within a week had fallen and had to be taken back in. When my uncle spoke to her the next day, she told him she was surprised when the ambulance reached the hospital because she'd thought the paramedics were just taking her for a nice little ride as a treat. Today she told me that being in hospital is like a nice little holiday. She is increasingly confused - and she's had scar tissue in her brain for years, ever since contracting a rare bacterial infection almost a decade ago, hasn't really been right ever since, but seems to be declining into full blown dementia just lately. Her only daughter, who has power of attorney, lives in London and is neurotic about her mother's health yet only rarely actually visits to monitor how well she is or isn't coping, living alone. It is all very worrying - especially with the pandemic, to which my aunt is exceptionally vulnerable, given the fragility of her health.
My 88 year old Nan, meanwhile, hasn't left her first floor flat since Christmas and we're worried that she might not be able to manage the stairs now, if and when she ever does agree to attempt any kind of outing, lockdown shielding permitting.
So many things to worry about, eh?
Meanwhile, I am still working from home and am likely to continue to do so indefinitely, until after Christmas at least - for now, the university is focusing on researchers and any teaching that can't be done remotely; administrative staff will be the last to return to campus. Since lockdown, I've been working on our very elderly team laptop which is still running Windows 8 and is beginning to creak (but is still in better health than my personal laptop, which is truly on its last legs), but have had a shiny new device procured for me, which should be arriving tomorrow. Sometime over the summer, I will be allowed to visit the office for one day only (actually, more like for one half hour only) to collect some bits and pieces like my chair and monitor, to help with home office set up, now that we are digging in for the long haul.
I remain in such two minds over working from home. On the one hand, I really love my new 10-second commute, I've gained about 2 hours a day just from that. I love the flexibility of working from home and I love being able to take tea breaks in my garden, either just to sit and read or to do some maintenance and planting out, etc. I've identified at least 13 different species of bee and five or six different kinds of butterfly in the garden this summer, which I would never have had the chance to see before, because I was so rarely in my garden during the day and there was always so much to get done in the evenings. So in that sense, working from home is great. But on the other hand, I find it really disconnected, it can be really hard to focus, and the isolation is quite hard, after working in a building with 200 other people for 11 years. I miss the casual social interactions each day used to bring and the general awareness of what was going on around the department, which occasional virtual meetings simply can't replace.
So, there are pros and cons, I guess.
I've rambled on long enough. How is everyone else coping with it all?
As of one week ago today, I am now 'bubbled up' with my parents as an extended household, which means we are allowed to visit each other inside our houses and I can have Layla-May for sleepovers once more, which means my 69-year-old mum finally gets some much-needed respite from the full time care of an active 4-year-old. Layla has found our prolonged separation very hard, video calls and, more lately, picnics in the garden just weren't enough; until mid-March she had been with me every single weekend for two full years, and semi-regularly before that. Weekends with Aunty Jo have been her routine for as far back as she can remember, so the sudden loss of them was a huge break in the routine of a child who struggles with separation anxiety at the best of times, thanks to her hopeless parents. She was utterly ecstatic to be back, spent the weekend trying to reclaim every activity she ever remembers us doing together, and kept getting emotional about how lovely it was to spend time together again. My poor baby. I have a week off work at the end of July so will probably have her for most of that, to make up for lost time.
My brother has also got that same week off, so my older sister and her husband have booked an Air B'n'B in Cardiff for a few days that week, now that such accommodation has re-opened, so we can have at least some kind of holiday together, as a family, since our planned week together in West Wales at Easter got cancelled. It remains to be seen how well their children cope with the journey, mind - they've never travelled so far before!
We are still waiting on the adoption. Everything was on hold for a while, thanks to lockdown, then as the courts were still handling some cases remotely, D&R managed to submit the adoption paperwork and waited for it to go through...only for it to be returned because the social worker had completed her section incorrectly! So they had to start again from scratch and resubmit. Yet another delay in a process fraught with complication. The children have been with D&R for 10 months now and are doing well, in general. The pandemic lockdown hasn't been easy for them, since it followed on from an extended adoption bubble followed by an informal semi-lockdown caused by a stalker - they thought for a while the children's location had been uncovered by the birth family and were on the point of organising an impromptu move out of area, but in the end it turned out to be a local woman with dementia who thought Miss E was her granddaughter. So with pandemic lockdown coming hard on the heels of that experience, they have all been slightly stir crazy, locked up in the house together for so many months without a break! Then, ridiculously, D&R got harassed by the children's social worker over Miss E not having started nursery - this during a nationwide lockdown with all the schools closed! The social worker hen demanded evidence of home schooling, which was easily provided since D is a highly qualified teacher with 25 years of experience behind her, the children are receiving an excellent home education, but she shouldn't have to prove it - 'regular' families aren't being asked to prove that they are educating their children at home. E&G are still in the 'looked after children' system, sure, but only because their adoption hasn't yet gone through - they have been placed for adoption and are no longer at risk, so why are the adoptive parents being scrutinised as if they were no better than the birth family? Are all foster placements treated in this way? Miss E was even all signed up for a place at nursery, she just couldn't take it up until the nursery re-opened - and then the experience of starting nursery unsettled her all over again, just another upheaval in her troubled young life. Little G, meanwhile, has hit the terrible twos and wants everyone to know it!
But these hurdles aside, the children have bonded well with D&R as a family and are growing up fast, three and two years old now, their previously delayed development coming on in leaps and bounds.
What else is going on? My cousin with terminal cancer is still with us and is doing better than was first feared. We have an extended family Zoom session every week, an ever-fluctuating mix of aunts, uncles and cousins, and he comes along to that most weeks. The cancer is spreading, they found new tumours in his brain and pleural cavity just the other week, and he is finding it increasingly difficult to string a sentence together, but he continues to make the effort - and manages to win the quiz most weeks, as well. I just wish he and his partner had been able to have their planned wedding before everything shut down. In theory they could try to schedule a replacement wedding now, even if with no guests, but I'm not sure they have the heart for it anymore, after everything.
Meanwhile, my very frail aunt L is back in hospital. Again. She has been deteriorating steadily this year - she had a fall and broke her hip early into lockdown, so spent a good couple of months in hospital, with the family unable to visit while she has been increasingly unable to cope with the phone that is now her sole means of communication. She finally came home from hospital two weeks ago, with a full care package in place, and within a week had fallen and had to be taken back in. When my uncle spoke to her the next day, she told him she was surprised when the ambulance reached the hospital because she'd thought the paramedics were just taking her for a nice little ride as a treat. Today she told me that being in hospital is like a nice little holiday. She is increasingly confused - and she's had scar tissue in her brain for years, ever since contracting a rare bacterial infection almost a decade ago, hasn't really been right ever since, but seems to be declining into full blown dementia just lately. Her only daughter, who has power of attorney, lives in London and is neurotic about her mother's health yet only rarely actually visits to monitor how well she is or isn't coping, living alone. It is all very worrying - especially with the pandemic, to which my aunt is exceptionally vulnerable, given the fragility of her health.
My 88 year old Nan, meanwhile, hasn't left her first floor flat since Christmas and we're worried that she might not be able to manage the stairs now, if and when she ever does agree to attempt any kind of outing, lockdown shielding permitting.
So many things to worry about, eh?
Meanwhile, I am still working from home and am likely to continue to do so indefinitely, until after Christmas at least - for now, the university is focusing on researchers and any teaching that can't be done remotely; administrative staff will be the last to return to campus. Since lockdown, I've been working on our very elderly team laptop which is still running Windows 8 and is beginning to creak (but is still in better health than my personal laptop, which is truly on its last legs), but have had a shiny new device procured for me, which should be arriving tomorrow. Sometime over the summer, I will be allowed to visit the office for one day only (actually, more like for one half hour only) to collect some bits and pieces like my chair and monitor, to help with home office set up, now that we are digging in for the long haul.
I remain in such two minds over working from home. On the one hand, I really love my new 10-second commute, I've gained about 2 hours a day just from that. I love the flexibility of working from home and I love being able to take tea breaks in my garden, either just to sit and read or to do some maintenance and planting out, etc. I've identified at least 13 different species of bee and five or six different kinds of butterfly in the garden this summer, which I would never have had the chance to see before, because I was so rarely in my garden during the day and there was always so much to get done in the evenings. So in that sense, working from home is great. But on the other hand, I find it really disconnected, it can be really hard to focus, and the isolation is quite hard, after working in a building with 200 other people for 11 years. I miss the casual social interactions each day used to bring and the general awareness of what was going on around the department, which occasional virtual meetings simply can't replace.
So, there are pros and cons, I guess.
I've rambled on long enough. How is everyone else coping with it all?
oh, where to start...?
Date: 2020-07-15 03:05 pm (UTC)It's good to hear Layla-May is able to bubble with you now. Our neighbour has a little one about 2 (she's single) and has struggled.
It must be hard for D&R not to feel victimised but I hope having the children is making up for all the stress. Officialdom has slow wheels at the best of times and the pandemic has made everything so much worse in all sorts of areas.
I've continued to work through the whole thing and been absolutely fine but have seen the impact on some of our elderly customers - those who either didn't lockdown as they had no assistance, those who didn't want to lockdown and persisted in shopping daily, to those in-between who locked down for the early part but have then been completely thrown by the 'new norm' of screens, masks and contactless payment when they do come back. Quite a few are struggling with it.
It's great that you can continue to work from home - it's got to be best in the circumstances - but I know what you mean about missing the social interaction. I was actually glad to be able to continue working for that very reason.
Carol
Re: oh, where to start...?
Date: 2020-07-15 03:34 pm (UTC)Re: oh, where to start...?
Date: 2020-07-16 05:36 pm (UTC)The upshift in facilitating online sales has been massive - I think the numbers are something like a 2/3rds increase on the same period last year, and that's here to stay. Which means the shop is now quieter overall - I can only speak for the early morning shifts I do, but the last month has been much quieter than this time last year.
While we all appreciate the reasoning behind mandatory face masks, none of my colleagues or I feel that it will reassure or encourage the public to go shopping. Personally it will put me off - already I've only gone to shops I absolutely need to go to, and if there's a queue and face masks then I won't be going shopping to browse at all.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-16 08:23 am (UTC)Yeah, I feel that too! Always good to see a post from you. ♥
no subject
Date: 2020-07-17 10:27 am (UTC)It's exciting that you've seen so many species in your garden! I really appreciate having the time to sit in my garden too and see various different species on the flowers. I've really enjoyed the tranquility over the last few months.