Lockdown Diaries #1: Eating Blondies In Damp Slippers

I keep shaking my fists in front of me as though there is someone stood right there who is pissing me off. There is no one there. Except, occasionally, my husband. But he is not pissing me off. (No really, by some miracle given that we have spent every day of the last year together, he’s not). You know that meme of the little girl angrily shaking her hairbrush? That is me. My pent-up frustration at the state of everything is turning me into the angry-girl-meme. 

My moods are unpredictable. It could be PMT, could be lockdown; hard to tell these days. I’m either shaking my fists and making the kind of noises kittens make when they think they are roaring or over enthusiastically dancing around the kitchen whilst snacking on hummus. In those moments, I sort of prod and poke and hug Gary whilst he’s trying to make his beans on toast, whilst he looks completely bemused. 

“Do you think I’m a lunatic?” I say, usually after a particularly weird dance move. 

“You have lunatic tendencies,” he replies. 

I have never experienced a period of life where my moods have been so contradictory; I am both restless and lethargic, creative and unmotivated, a homebird with itchy feet, exhausted and an insomniac. I lie awake for hours unable to shut my brain up; it whizzes around at 100mph. I can think of memories of my Grandma, have a new idea for a story and wonder what’s it like to be in hospital with Covid all in the space of 30 seconds. It continues for hours. When I’m awake, I talk about my Grandma’s funeral with my mum, Trump supporters storm the Capitol and a major incident is declared in London, and so my inability to sleep feels inevitable. 

There is nothing very weekendy about weekends at the moment but I’m glad wine and lie-ins are still around. I decide to make whiskey and rye blondies because I saw the recipe and immediately thought that baked goods with alcohol in them sounded like an excellent idea on a foggy Saturday morning in January. Meanwhile, Gary decides to crack on with the utility room renovation which involves things with pipes and u-bends that I do not understand. I occasionally get roped in to help lift things or give my opinion on the location of the tap. At one point, my job is to check if the pipework leaks whilst Gary turns the mains water back on. The first time I do this, I just look at the pipe, nothing happens and I go back to browning the butter. The second time I do this, water comes spraying out of the pipe. I am unprepared for this turn of events despite the fact that I am crouched in front of the pipes for this very reason. I react calmly by shrieking and jumping whilst the water sprays across the washing machine.  

“TURN IT OFF. GARY TURN IT OFF!!” I yell whilst trying to catch the water with a washing up bowl as it sprays in all directions. Turns out he forgot to turn the valve off, which effectively means he told me to crouch in front of the pipes, left the room and flicked a switch which guaranteed water was going to spray in my face. I reckon he just wanted a laugh. 

I eat my blondies with damp slippers. When they dry, I realise that getting sprayed with water has really shaken up the monotony. I sleep much better that night.