Covid Chronicles: Isolation Day 1

My catch-up sleep is interrupted by jet lag at 2am. I’m not sure what time zone my body is on, but I manage to get back to sleep about 3:30 until 6:45. I haven’t had caffeine for days, and even limited sugar intake. I’m just wired from doing nothing. 

My 40 minute exercise session is scheduled for 7:50 am, and I am the first one there. I am so early that the previous group is still walking around. The army officer is a little taken aback as he walks past me heading to the lifts to gather the rest of my group and brief them. He tells me I can go now, but that I should wait by the lifts in future. 

Clockwise or anticlockwise? My decision will determine 15 other people’s only outdoor session of the day. I decide upon anticlockwise because I’m a rebel like that. I set the pace as people dribble in, but I am quickly surpassed by other people who are walking at run speed and making everyone else look categorically glacial. 6000 steps in 45 minutes seems like a good start to the day. 

I show my friends videos of people walking around in circles – from the lofty heights of the twelfth floor they look ant-like – and everyone jokes that it looks like a prison yard. Yes, but 4-star prison, I retort. Fluffier towels. 

I return to the room after booking in my next outdoor session and acquiring coffee (thank God for decaf), and complete my ten minute HIIT workout. Breakfast has arrived in my absence. A small packet of ricies, a yoghurt, berry compote and a banana. It should be loads, but my midday I’m restlessly moving from place to place around the room, wondering where lunch is. I check the lunch delivery times. 12:30-2. Still ages. Lack of sleep always makes me ravenous. I eat yesterday’s lunch – devour it – then today’s lunch arrives, and it disappears just as fast. 

I spend the afternoon restlessly pacing around the room. I decide being snackless is a terrible way to be and I put in an order for a few favourites from Countdown – feijoa smoothie, Vogels, yoghurt, cucumber, washing powder, camomile tea, Oyster Bay Sav, and the essentials – Copper Kettles chips, onion soup and reduced cream. I choose my delivery slot and try to distract myself from the boredom/hunger/general rattiness. 

Thankfully, I’m blessed with an amazing husband that suggested to all our friends that I’m free and available for calls at all times. I get several phone calls from happy friends who are excited to ‘see’ me again. A welcome distraction. It is nice to be in the same time zone, at least. I am very much looking forward to seeing them in the flesh in 288 hour’s (plus a week in Auckland) time. 

Jared can’t sleep either, and he calls me at 4am Irish time (5pm NZT). Maybe there’s something about being back in lockdown and working from home that’s keeping him awake. He is about the most chillaxed person you will ever meet – so laid back he’s practically horizontal – so it’s unlikely to be anxiety, but he doesn’t seem to sleep all that well when we’re apart. He hardly slept a wink when I went on school camp with my class in 2017. It seems to be a couple thing – but is it cute or co-dependent? Maybe it’s as simple as the routine being broken, and I’m reading far too much into it. 

There’s a call from the nurse, checking in on me, that I have no Covid symptoms but also that I am doing ok, and if I have good support, in case I’m feeling down. Reassured me that if I ever needed to talk, I could call the nurses station. Another nurse comes by half an hour later to take my temperature. A healthy 36.3.

I get a text from Countdown to say that my order is on its way. I go down to the lobby to the second 24/7 exercise area and look out carefully for the Countdown truck and Countdown emblazoned bags. After 30 mins of walking in circles past the delivery gate, I go to investigate. Turns out it was delivered but in plain paper bags instead. I had seen the guy arrived and hand over my swathe of food-treasure, but had not seen the truck and so hadn’t made the connection. I thought they were our meal bags cos they look identical. For fuck’s sake! I make two trips to my room to carry all my goodies up, and obviously start with making good ole Kiwi dip. 

Dinner was also delivered while I was walking so I enjoy a mini-feast! 

I try to write and can’t focus. I see what’s on TV. Nothing worth watching. I try to do some things off my ambitious to do list I made this morning while still high on my post-exercise buzz. I can’t settle to anything. I try to read. I manage to make it to 8pm, before I crash out. 

PS. Someone commented on my initial blog post that they really liked my writing, and that they didn’t want to be patronising as I was probably a writer. This is possibly the best compliment that I have ever received in my life, and I can tell all of my imposter syndrome to go fuck itself, because I have successfully duped other people into thinking that I am a *real* writer. 

I mean, I am, in the sense that when you go to the beach in a bikini, you have a bikini body. I am a writer, in a ‘I think I’m a writer, therefore I write, therefore I am a writer’ kind of a way. 

So thank you kind stranger, whoever you are. I’m positively tickled. You have buoyed my spirits and emboldened me to post again.