QP#14 (15) Quarantine, Day 14 (15)

Getting out won’t feel surreal. It may feel hyper-real. Brown Owl says that for the first time she’s feeling a little reluctant to leave. We’ve all felt like prisoners at one time or another. What is astonishing to me is that Jack and Wizard have accepted the situation meekly, all this time. 

We play a lot of ball today, but the children are unfocused, continually collapsing any structure into wrestling and silliness. I sense their tension. I share their tension. Our nerves are stretched, as we wait. 

Wizard and I manage to complete a Beyblade tournament, only because I look into his eyes a few times and remind him that I’m not the one who is making him angry right now, and that I really do want to be able to finish the tournament for once. He declares a draw between the final two beys and I creakily pull myself off the floor, feeling satisfied. All this yoga and PE with Joe has been amazing, but I’m feeling stiff and a little sore this afternoon. 

Throughout the day, I potter around putting things slyly into garbage bags and sorting stuff. I have bags of stuff to pass onto 3 different families in the hotel, all labelled. I hope this goes smoothly, as I am required to leave the hotel before returning with the bags. 

We have so many masks it seems ludicrous, and we wonder what it’s going to be like to wear shoes for the first time in 2 weeks. Gradually, the room retracts into its emptiness. It’s not sad, or stressful, as it was in leaving Red Deer. We are all excited. We chatter continuously about how it’s going to be, what we are going to do, where we want to go… but none of it seems quite real yet. 

We come first in the hotel quiz today. There were several questions we got wrong, and a couple that we guessed. Jack supplies us with Gordon’s number: 4 (Thomas the Tank Engine). Wiz has picked up on some of the political and social goings on in the USA, and brightly enquires what it was all about. Brown Owl tells him that T#^%p has finally accepted that he lost the election. 

I hear from Guitar Hero that although he won’t come to pick us up in the morning, he will visit us soon. I am so happy to hear that, because I miss him very much. It will be wonderful to see people and hug them. My mother and my brother will collect us and all of our burgeoning belongings. 

We have a long chat with Brown Owl's folks, trying not to make too many travel plans, but unable to avoid wistfully wondering whether we will be able to go to some of the places we want to. 

We sit around watching TV for what seems like a very long time until the dinner knock. We have pizza for dinner, and bags of popcorn. Unfortunately, there’s no vegetarian pizza, although there are 3 chicken pizzas and one gluten free pizza. Brown Owl calls the kitchen staff, who deliver her a vegetarian pizza within 10 minutes. 

We adults select a movie that we’d like to watch with the children, but in the end we get them showered and hair-washed and just watch the usual two programs before reading and putting them to sleep. 

I have a hard time getting to sleep after finishing Pachinko. I lie awake for three hours, then get up and take some melatonin and water. I still can’t fall asleep. Wizard has come into our bed, sleepily complaining that he wasn’t able to sleep all this time, as well. I doubt that, but retreat to his bed where I finally fall asleep. 

I dream that I’m about to go swimming in ice water. I am with Laurie, whom I met in Red Deer, and a few kids. To reach the place to get into the water, there are two options. One seems too difficult for me, but everyone else manages it. I opt to climb up an icy incline which has been created for beginners (like me) and, apparently, the Royals. I struggle to the top, to find there’s a lip that bends the wrong way, and I am unable to climb over it. I slide back down, feeling stupid, but try it two more times before the others return to find out what’s happened to me. For the expedition I am kitted out with a hand saw. There’s some talk about needing to attack before being attacked (by fish?). I’m not sure I ever made it to the icy water. 

I slowly and reluctantly rise out of sleep, eventually hearing Brown Owl announce to the children that she is about to get in the shower. I’m confused, because the sound of the cooler and the sound of the shower are very similar, but I’m also relieved that it’s not too late in the morning. Brown Owl tells me that Jack and Wizard woke up at 5am, crowing that we all get to go home today!

QP#13 Quarantine, Day 13

Tomorrow is our last day. When Brown Owl talked to the cop last night, she said we had only one more day, and he corrected her, saying that it’s actually two more days. Brown Owl replied laughing, – yes two nights, but only one more full day! The medical staff have commenced asking us again about whether we are still maintaining quarantine. As if we would now start getting silly about it. Not bloody likely. 

The boys are happy when they get coco pops and toast for breakfast. Brown Owl is delighted when there’s marmalade for her toast. It’s funny that we enjoy having the same foods over and over. 

We have a conversation during the day about what our first dinner should be when we get home. Wizard suggests all the bough food he’s familiar with – Lulu’s Pizza, Beyond India and the Ghan Kebab House. Brown Owl and I groan, and suggest homemade sushi. 

I overhear Brown Owl’s side of a conversation with my Mum, where Brown Owl asserts that she doesn’t like shopping as much as I love it. I feel it’s necessary to clarify this – I actually hate the kind of shopping where one goes from store to store, seeing what’s there, trying things on, comparing attributes and finally making a purchase. However, I do love being at the tiller of our household ship, considering what’s there and what’s needed, making a list and going to get it all from familiar establishments. I love organizing and sorting and putting it all away. 

And yes, I am laughing at myself – just a little, today! 

I suggest a game of Cluedo after breakfast. In the time it takes to get the game set up, Wizard has selected the who, where and what cards and wants to put them into the envelope. Brown Owl coaxes him down, citing fairness, and Wizard takes the face-saving route of refusing to play at all. But he wants to play, so (ever the innovator), he invents another rule to suit himself. He will play the remaining 3 characters left and roll the dice three times each round. No. We don’t bow to his will. This time. Yes, he may use all three characters, but he doesn’t get three turns to our one. This kind of rigmarole is familiar to us, but Wizard isn’t all that riled up just at the moment, and we end up having a good game, won by Brown Owl, whose lucky guess at who where and what turns out to be correct! 

These are the birds I’ve seen from our windows: sparrows, swallows, one pelican, pigeons, an ibex and the boys say they have seen a magpie. 

Daddy Flippy spends a long time chatting with Wizard and Jack, while I write and colour. They love playing with the backgrounds and filters. Brown Owl and I reflect on how good it is, that our boys have other adults in their lives who aren’t so tired of being with them. 

The bouncing on the beds continues. Jack challenges himself to jump from bed to bed. The throwing of the balls continues. The piggy in the middle and bey blade tournaments continue. Wizard invents a new move where he stands on the bed with the jellyfish ball in his hands, jumps up, drops the ball and kicks out with both legs, landing on his back. This is tricky to coordinate. He doesn’t always manage it, but it’s spectacular when he does. 

We embark on a new 30 day yoga journey with Adriene. We’re going to take it even more slowly than she suggests, and do each day twice, over the next two months. We talk about getting up early to do yoga when school goes back. We talk about doing yoga in The Big Room. With such intention we have a good chance of success. PE with Joe is invigorating, rather than exhausting. I find sitting cross-legged for a long period of time just breathing is painful. It’s all a bit intense and mixed up. When we finally get a dog, I’m going to enjoy walking it. I think walking will remain my favourite kind of exercise. 

We settle down mid-afternoon on the children’s beds to watch The Queen’s Corgi. I’m not too impressed by its depiction of toxic femininity and toxic masculinity. I shouldn’t be too surprised, I suppose, as it’s a mainstream animation attempting to appeal to the lowest common denominator. There are a lot of sly digs at Prince Philip as well. Is it about the relationship between the UK and the USA? 

When I pit in my mind, the President and Prince Philip, neither of them comes across terribly well. Yet it’s not satisfying to compare the fates of those two top dogs (the British Prince with the American President) with Charlie and Rex (the canine top dogs), when one gets everything he wants, (i.e. the restoration of his position as the Queen’s favourite, his own chosen mate, life in Buckingham Palace with all his friends), but the other gets shipped without consent to be mated with the American bitch, thus losing his own self-respect, dignity and the camaraderie he’d been willing to sacrifice in order to gain power over his former best friend. 

I am so tired of crass and boring movies for children. I am so tired of settling for mediocre and needing to battle against media depictions of gender that are tired, dangerous, and violent. 

After dinner, I have a conversation with my sister. We talk about exercise, melatonin, parenting, anti-depressants and being the daughters of our mother. We have each other’s backs. There’s plenty of love to go around. 

Jack and I read the rollicking closing scenes of a John Flanagan novel. I’m listening to Wizard and Brown Owl, and find a stopping place at the same time, which Jack is not too happy about. Brown Owl and I then read for some time, marvelling at how easily the boys have gone to sleep. 

We are so fortunate that none of us got sick. This experience would have been so much worse, if we had. The day after tomorrow, we get to go home at 9:15 in the morning. I feel so excited about this. I know though, that no matter how quickly and efficiently we pack everything up tomorrow, the time for departure is set, and will not be affected. So I just keep breathing and try to stay calm.

QP#12 Quarantine Post, Day 12

It was LabCat who put me onto Instagram last year, when I wanted an audience for all the beautiful things I was crafting. I don’t spend a lot of time there, but love looking at her artworks. Today I decide to use one of her friends’ prompts and join Brown Owl in doing some drawing. 

The prompts are:  

 #1 must be wearing a ball and chain;

 #2 must be half-fish;

 #3 must be sweeping. 

Mine is not manga, and it’s not a replica of the original. I draw a fish-person in a green gingham apron, ball and chain around one of two feet, tail jutting out behind, in a warrior stance, brandishing a broom over its head, poised to bring it down HARD and break that chain (rendered in coloured pencil on scrapbook paper). A fun diversion. I also work on my colouring pages. 

After breakfast, we play Horseopoly. Wizard loses it before anyone except him has managed to have a turn, and retreats to the other room. We encourage Jack to play a decent game with us. I see him becoming restless 40 minutes into the game and call a halt. We add up our cash and the mortgage value of our properties and Brown Owl beats us both, hands down. 

I play a long bey blade tournament with Wizard. It’s going well, and I’m feeling good about my patience, when on the spur of the moment I launch from up high. Wizard doesn’t like this. He goes to his bed to be sad for a while, and when I start packing all the bey blades and launchers into the arena, he gets mad at me all over again. (There’s a fair bit of déjà vu during day 12.) 

We do a yoga session with Adriene that finishes so quicky we aren’t sure whether it’s because we have become stronger, or whether it was just a short session, so Brown Owl scrolls up and finds another. In total I think we do about 50 minutes of yoga. I’m connecting with my “core” in a way that never made sense to me way back when we did pilates. I’m still incredibly frustrated with the shortness of my limbs and the lumpiness of my breasts and belly, because in certain positions it is really hard to breathe. I can’t reach my hands to the ground on either side of my foot when I’m in a lunge position, which feels ridiculous. Grounding through my feet has really helped my balance. 

Brown Owl promises not to play savagely, so I agree on a couple of rounds of Song Birds. I explain to her after two rounds that it would be more fun for me, if we turned the berry tokens over at the end, rather than at the start, because then we wouldn’t know which row or column was adding up to fifteen or twelve (the birds with the most points in these rows or columns always win!) She looks at me quizzically, not getting it at all, and says “So then it’s completely about luck?” Oh well, one can but try. I like winning as much as others, but prefer to play for playing’s sake, rather than to overpower my opponents. 

Our third COVID tests come back, all negative. All clear for re-entering the world on Saturday morning. Hooray! 

I spend ages on the floor playing with Lego today. I manage to engage Jack for five minutes, requesting that he help me take some of the stuck on pieces off a base board. He manages this. I mentally pat myself on the back for finding a way of getting him to increase his finger muscle strength without triggering his “I hate making things” button. Everyone else is waiting for me to finish what I’m doing so Brown Owl and I can do PE with Joe and the others can go on the screens. I signal that need a bit of help with picking up the last pieces. Wizard happily joins me in pouring the tiny pieces into the boxes I’ve made. 

PE with Joe is strenuous today. My left calf twinges. I’m careful of my knees. He loves to make us do spiderman lunges and twisty turny things… I have enough alternative exercises in my repertoire now that I can substitute when necessary. Brown Owl and I laugh at the way we easily sustain jumping and running and shuffling for the full 30 seconds now. We couldn’t manage this a week and a half ago. Jack continues to refuse to join in with this. 

I feel kind of dreamy and withdrawn for part of the day, and find it difficult to engage with the boys. I’m not bothered by their antics and conflicts, feeling content to let them work it out for themselves. They throw balls, pillow fight, jump over the beds and wrestle to their heart’s content. Brown Owl, bless her, structures some exercises and ball games with them while I lounge on Wizard’s bed, playing Merge Dragons. 

We don’t watch our usual programs last night, because Wizard and Jack decide to watch Maleficent on the big screen in their bedroom. They both watched this movie at least once on one of the plane trips. 

Wiz puts the TV on in our room afterwards and finds a children’s restaurant show we’ve seen an episode of once upon a time. Brown Owl decides that since it was halfway over anyway, we might as well watch the rest, which segues into another show about a child learning to budget. Then the boys have showers, I make up all the beds all over again and we put them to bed. 

I read Pachinko into the night, stopping when I think I need to go to sleep. Sleep eludes me for several hours. I wish now that I’d just kept reading…

QP#11 Quarantine Post, Day 11

This morning, Brown Owl gives me her thoughts from overnight. She says that that just as people here in Adelaide firmly but kindly place boundaries against our whinges regarding the Tormented’s treatment of us, she hopes people in Red Deer are giving us the same benefits in the face of putative complaints and stories about us. 

Since all of this is in our heads, and we torment ourselves wondering about it, Brown Owl’s suggestion that we limit our negative remarks to one another, and not expect those who had the chance to experience and build a relationship the Tormented to back us up on our comparative lack of experience, makes a lot of sense. It’s wise, even. 

The less wise part of me, the daughter who longs for her mother’s sympathy and support, still finds this a bitter pill to swallow. But I’m trying. I know when we get there, to our home, all these fantasies in my mind will just fall away, displaced by the realities of dealing with what’s in front of me. I am fifty years old, after all. Surely by now I can separate from those apron strings and stand on my own two feet? 

The Spinoza Problem was an engaging read, but it left me feeling washed out. There is no reasoning with people who cling to their hate with such rigid passion. Rosenberg went to his death believing in his hatred. He was never able to shift his views that “the Jews of Europe” should simply go find someplace else to live, to answer the corresponding question of where they were supposed to go. 

I am triggered, as usual, with the melancholy sense of having no home, no place to belong. This is particularly poignant in light of the asylum seekers imprisoned in quarantine hotels.    

The characterization of Bento Spinoza as a being who kept himself so separate from Nature that he failed to maintain relationships with other human beings is simply sad. I’ve known people so inside their heads that they fail to spark any connection between their hearts and their gut. 

If I think about Spinoza as a self-sacrificing victim, a man with too much integrity to pander to the demands of the Jewish community that rejected his views as they excommunicated the person, I neglect the respect I feel towards his insistence that religiosity gets too much in the way of human beings connecting and living as part of the world. It seems he is very much ahead of his time. I suppose the Chasidic ideal presented in other novels, where the joy and connection and music are depicted as the channels for connecting people with the Divine is more appealing. Maybe if Spinoza sang, or danced, he would feel more real to me; less robotic. 

Spinoza’s idea of God as Nature, as everything that exists, is not far from my own ideas about God. Certainly, the idea of an individual having a personal connection with God has never made sense to me. I feel impatient at the expectation that my words, my feelings, my prayers will reach God in any specific way. For me, God is more the energy, the spirit, and the impulse towards life and connection with everything and certainly not just humankind. 

In the marginalia of the novel, an earlier reader posited “ennui” as analogous to the word “anomie” which appeared in the text. To my way of thinking, these are two very different states, which lead to very different approaches to the world. 

Ennui, world-weariness, boredom and apathy is something which one generates from within, whereas Anomie seems to me to be a response to something projected upon one from outside circumstances. It is possible to climb out or be pulled out of Ennui when something or someone external touches and transports us up and away from out limited inner world upon which we have focused our attention.

Anomie, and its associations to anonymity and annihilation, is the state a person reaches when feeling so utterly alienated and unable to make connections with one’s external world, that one takes a further step and dissociates from one’s inner life, as well. Someone who has decided they are not worthy of being considered with value by anyone else, becomes entrenched in bitter defensiveness, and walls themselves in with a ferocity that is almost impossible to resist. It characterises Rosenberg, the poor maligned, misunderstood, unloved and never belonging Hater, very well. 

Wizard and I spend time with the Lego we were given. I build a castle, expecting him to help, but he just lets me do it on my own and then complains, because his Lego knight army is someplace inaccessible in a box or suitcase. I embark upon a new project – to build a grandstand for the Slug Terra slugs to sit in and view a bey blade tournament. Wizard and I then bey blade for what seems like a very long time. 

I try to engage with the hotel staff in terms of regifting some of our things to other guests who have very little, but there’s no room to budge. We are hedged in between government regulation and safety protocols. I suggest we keep some of our stuff in quarantine for a few days, so it can then be passed on, but no. It’s just too hard. I feel disappointed. 

Nevertheless I go through our excess and bag it up. I make 9 parcels, hoping to hear from 9 rooms in the hotel, to whom these might be distributed. Only that initial person from the day before has responded to my offer. Brown Owl comforts me by saying that even if we can’t give them to other quarantine guests, we can still donate the stuff to others who will benefit. 

Brown Owl finds a third layer of coloured pencils in the box we’ve been using. Eureka! There are all the glorious purples and browns I’d been wanting. She is drawing a Manga character, using a guide from a book given to the boys. I am totally impressed by her drawing. Her next task is to draw the same character but give her a “chunkier” body. I continue to colour the pages of the Oy To the World colouring book. 

We watch the final of the first season of The Ultimate Beastmaster. We viewed the second and third seasons whilst in Canada and reserved this one for our quarantine time. 

I remember watching Big Brother and Master Chef and Simpsons with Guitar Hero and Labcat when they were in their teens. As a family activity these were fun and formed a basis for conversations, even though they weren’t shows I would have chosen to watch. 

I am amazed by how Jack and Wizard remember the names of contestants from all of the seasons, earnestly discuss the various permutations of the obstacle course, and compare the results. Jack becomes particularly impassioned when Deutschland, the nation he’s decided to support, loses all its contestants in the finals. He follows the presenters and switches allegiance to Brazil. I speak to him sharply when his invective becomes too full on. It is only a tv show, after all! 

Wizard finds a season of Australian Beastmaster which we will start tomorrow.

Too much watching. 

QP#10 Quarantine, Day 10

Today is a day for meltdowns. I think we all have one, in our own fashion. 

Mine is quiet. I melt into myself and feel miserable and inside out. I cannot bring myself to meet anybody’s eyes, and I feel disinclined to smile. I am grumpy about the usual tedious most ordinary unreasonable things – toilet paper and rubbish bags; dishes being washed but left to drain in the bathroom, blankets and sheets being too big and too small and too uncomfortable, the lack of privacy and the way the children monopolize my devices and my heart. 

Yet we have running water, toilets, showers, comfortable beds, windows, space, cool air, food, healthcare, computers, mobile phones, coloured pencils, paper, scissors, tape, games, toys… I remind myself that two rooms like this are unimaginable luxuries for families squeezed 20 in a three-bedroom house in remote Australia, a tent at Kakuma, cardboard boxes and plastic bags in the slums of other places. 

Brown Owl has several short, sharp meltdowns where she yells “OW!” and tells off one or the other of us for hurting her. Her toes get trodden on and bey blades crash into her knees. She savagely beats me at Song Birds over and over. 

Jack has the kind of meltdown where he accuses us of blaming him for stuff that isn’t his responsibility. He slams the door quietly and retreats to his room, appearing twenty-five minutes later with a smile on his face, asking what we are up to, whether he can join in, and whether we have heard him jumping from bed to bed in the other room. We haven’t. 

Paperwork arrives on the stools outside our door: a congratulatory letter from our “Pullman Adelaide Family” about our pending departure on Saturday 9th January 2021 (pending our last negative test result). The nurses are going to come and swab us again any time in the next couple of days, but they are busy, as the hotel has had another influx of guests arriving in the night. Accompanying the letter is a form for us to complete, advising SA Health of who we are and where we are going. 

I feel just a little ambivalent about getting out of here. Yes, I want to get out, but the process of gathering together all of our gear and getting it from up here to down there and into cars driven by my mother and my brother makes me catch my breath a little. 

Every time someone asks me what’s the first thing I’ll do upon arriving home, I lose myself completely. There is so much to do! So many trees to greet, so much uncertainty about where everything will be and how to sort it out. I want to reintroduce myself to our washing machine, hang out clothes to dry in the sunshine. Can you imagine? I haven’t hung clothes outside for a year. It’s OK. 

January 4 is the anniversary of our moving into The Little House of Colours in 2009. That’s such a long time ago! I think of my daughter LabCat, still at school at the time, and her brother Guitar Hero, who stormed off a couple of months into our new altogetherness, angry at our expectations that he wash dishes on a roster. There was no Jack of Hearts yet, nor Wizard. 

There’s fish for lunch. Wizard squeals and heads for the other room. He cannot abide the smell. I make him vegemite sandwiches. Brown Owl attempts to feed him some vegetables. We hope dinner will be more to his taste. 

I post to the quarantine guests group the protocol we followed in Alberta when the schools reopened. Anything brought from home could only be touched by the child who brought it. Nothing could be shared. If something arrived from home for a teacher, it had to be quarantined for 3 days before the teacher could touch it. Might such a protocol be implemented here, to be able to pass on some of our stuff to others with less? 

A recently arrived guest replies. She could do with some sensory supplies for her teenage son who functions on an emotional level of 4-6. I offer her some ideas, not knowing at all whether they are appropriate, but no one else responds. It's been "seen" by 40+ people. 

She messages me later, asking whether I would leave a “care package” for them when we leave the hotel on Saturday. The idea takes hold in my mind. I begin plotting to leave care packages for as many people as I can. I do not want to take all this stuff home and have to deal with it on top of all the stuff I left at home before we headed to Canada. 

Wizard has the most spectacular meltdown of all, late in the day, after dinner and before our night-time viewing. He and Jack are playing bey blades, with Jack commentating rather beautifully. Brown Owl and I are sitting in the other room chatting and enjoying listening to the flow of their play. 

I get up to answer the phone in the other room. It’s my Mum, calling back. Out of the blue, Wizard leaps up, screaming and shouting and attacking Jack. Brown Owl brings him into the other room, where I can still hear him for at least twenty minutes, until Brown Owl settles him in front of the screen, allows Jack to enter the room with them. It takes that long for Wiz to stop wanting to kill his brother. 

Evidently, the commentating had taken a turn. Wizard was incensed at the nasty things Jack had started saying about his (lack of) bey blading skills. 

The four of us settle down in front of the screen. Then I read with Wizard. We read one of his birthday books Hidden Underground. He and Jack go to sleep. 

I read on into the night. As my novel moves from the early twentieth century and the 1940s approach with their unforgivable inexorable foreboding, I grow simultaneously more reluctant to put the book down, and to stop reading on. Spinoza’s life bewilders me. I wonder who he would have been, layered within the intersecting possibilities of our time? How would he have conducted his life?

QP#9 Quarantine, Day 9

Bad night.

I am deeply asleep on Wizard’s bed, sheet-creased, when I become aware of the others moving around. Brown Owl also had a bad night and was awoken out of deep sleep by the breakfast door knock. 

We played musical beds last night. Even Jack seems super tired and grumpy. Wizard must sleep in his bed tonight, and not on the floor in his cubby. In hindsight I am grateful we didn’t try to stay up to see the new year in, as this would have messed with his body clock big time. 

There were noises in the night, that bothered me. The fan was off when I went to bed, leaving the rooms stuffy and still. I know I had a conversation with Brown Owl about this and she seemed to think it was good that the fan was off, but by morning, she is adamant that she turned it on and prefers it on. In any case, it was definitely off during the night when I had transferred myself from our bed to Wizard’s, as he had come into ours again and was elbowing me away. 

The noises sounded industrial. Big booms and metallic things bashing into one another and falling. I was in that hazy state where I couldn’t quite sort out the noise and the environment. I worried the hotel was being knocked down. It took me a long time to fall back to sleep and when I did, my dreams were vivid, confusing, disturbing. 

All of us are grumpy and short-tempered. It’s hard not to look at anyone, in such a confined space. I think of what I read last year about how Inuit parents teach their children to manage their emotions. It really hit home when I imagined several people in the confined space of an igloo with dangerous weather outside. While it helps to jiggle my perspective, this does not particularly assist me in dealing with two boys on edge, at each other, determined each to outdo the other in the shoulder-chip stakes. 

Can we go back to bed now, and start over? 

After several minutes of deliberation, Wizard decides that he will attempt to play Horseopoly with us. We manage for 40 minutes before he upends the board. Calmly, ever so calmly, Brown Owl and I work to sort and put away the pieces. We use this as our therapy and manage a smile or two in amongst the paper money. 

Wizard disappears to hide inside his bedclothes. Oops – now he’s angry again at the “someone” who packed away his cubby, pushed the bed back into the corner and made it all neat. Jack is needling him, throwing balls at him, jumping from bed to bed, making it impossible for him to be alone. 

I've made all the beds nicely this morning. I like making beds. I also like beds that are made. Alas, Wizard has it in for the beds today. Better the beds, I suppose, than us. In a rage, he tears all the covers off from top to bottom. It’s good exercise, and Brown Owl manages to catch him out in a laugh. He has learned to laugh at himself. Good. 

Jack sulks and storms. The tv on the wall beside the doors that adjoin our rooms gets a wobble when he slams the door, and we must not allow this to keep happening. There was a time a couple of years back when the clock we stationed on the wall of our dining room between the doors to the boys’ bedrooms regularly smashed, after being dislodged by the vibrations of a slamming door. No, it can’t continue. 

We play ball. We read with Jack. We let them watch. We play with the beys. Brown Owl suggests a lunch-time movie, to break up the routine. I opt out. I can hear How to Train Your Dragon II from where I’m sitting at the desk in the other room. I love these movies, and their music, but I’d rather colour in, than sit idly on an uncomfortable chair and watch the screen. 

After the movie there’s a knock on the door. Suddenly, another care package arrives. As usual, Brown Owl was in the know. I can’t believe she even exercises with her phone in her pocket, but maybe it’s because it counts her steps. Anyway, our dear friends the Prouds have brought us a gorgeous bag full of goodies, which the children fall upon immediately. It changes the colour of our day, and the rest of the afternoon is spent happily exploring. Thank you, Prouds. 

I pay less attention to the world outside today. There’s little point in pining for air and sun. Then we get a video call from the Kitty Cats 3 and they are at our place and we all crowd around the tiny screen, looking at our home, the one that’s waiting for us in just a few days’ time. I breathe deep. I know there’s going to be lots to do, and I can’t wait to get into it. 

After dinner, which was a terrific success (thanks kitchen people!) we put on Kiboomers again. We dance and move around a lot, throw balls, play floor is lava and work our way into feeling like we’ve used our bodies for something. Brown Owl and I did manage our yoga and PE with Joe, and we need the children to get physically tired out, as well. 

Wizard and Brown Owl start reading a book about dragons. Jack and I are still working through Septimus Heap. They take a while to fall asleep, and we give Wiz some melatonin to help. Tomorrow is another day. We are well over the hump, now.