I just need to let you know that my final Covid test has come back NEGATIVE! Freedom in T-54 hours!
To celebrate, I ordered some Hell’s Pizza – Jaime’s looked so good the other night.
Since the new strain of COVID has emerged from the UK and South Africa, New Zealand has been tightening up its border security even more than it already has.
This has manifested in no more fun trips to the lobby for myriad things such as fetching deliveries, to ‘please give me the wine that I tried to sneak in but you found’, to booking exercise sessions, (which I’m frankly surprised are not done online somehow) to getting barista made coffee, and of course, just escaping the confines of one’s room for some exercise in the car port.
This was initially curtailed for people from the UK/US by having a Day 0 test and them needing to stay in their rooms until the results come back, but this has been extended to everyone. Our hotel was packed last week, but seems to have really emptied out in the last few days. There was someone who had an outdoor exercise session ALONE today, and then another time I looked out, only three people. We had a session with four people two days ago and it was bliss!
In fact… given that they’re doing it with pen and paper, I reckon they’ve no way of knowing if book *multiple* outdoor sessions! I’ll have to test this theory. For science.
So the most grievous of these changes comes in the form of no longer having barista-made coffee available. Why they can’t add that to room service, I do not know. If I was here longer than 48 hours I’d be really annoyed about that. I’m currently off caffiene, but my decaf pretend coffees are very comforting.
The general sit-around-and-do-nothingness of 2020 highlighted my fraught relationship with coffee, and also how many injuries my body has actually sustained and how, through constant movement and outright denial, I have largely kept them at bay. I pulled a muscle in April 2019 doing butterfly for the first time in an age, and it has never come fully right. I have been trying to fix it with physio, chiro, stretches, exercises and the like, but actually – much to my chagrin – the best thing for it seems to be cleaning. (The worst thing for it seems to be sitting down and writing for extended periods of time.)
I must say because I’ve been doing so much more consistent exercise since being in lockdown, shoulder injury has actually been loads better, highlighting once again the idea of small consistent efforts to achieve incremental improvement. This is a lesson I am determined to not learn due to its consequences for sensible decision making going forward. The idea of having to do the same thing every day for the rest of my life seems unachievable, insurmountable. I suppose the feeling of being pain-free and general health and well-bring could be strong counter arguments though.
What lessons is the universe trying to teach you at the moment? Leave your answer in the comments below.