Another adjustment

Daylight savings has thrown another spanner in my works.

I’m finding it harder to adjust than usual. How about you? Is it because life has become so much smaller during home isolation?

The pointless worrying isn’t helping either. When I woke at 4.45am this morning, my head immediately filled with too many thoughts to fall back asleep.

I couldn’t get into the daylight savings groove on Sunday – I was ready to drag my weary body to bed at 8pm, but DD insisted on keeping me up until a slightly more respectable hour.

It made no difference, I was still awake at sparrow’s fart yesterday morning to watch the sunrise.

Mind you, it was a lovely sunrise.

And then I ate lunch at 11.30am because I was starving. It was pretty delicious – leftover Malaysian chicken curry from Saturday night.

And everything went downhill from there, with me desperate to go to bed again last night at 8pm.

I don’t recall the end of daylight savings being such a challenge when I had more personal freedom. Back then, I kept myself busy and slipped into the new routine more easily.

Speaking of new routines … I am quaking slightly at the thought of Easter school holidays looming. At least home schooling kept the kids occupied during the day. From Thursday that will be gone for weeks, with nothing but walks and jigsaw puzzles (unlikely) and tellie to replace it.

I am hoping to rearrange my house by the end of the first week of the holidays so both kids have new bedrooms to decorate as projects. Key to the project is tarting up the garage.

A builder is (hopefully) coming this morning to quote on installing my new garage doors, which means I can get the eldest’s art studio up and running. Then the eldest will move to the bedroom that has access to the garage. The garage also opens onto to a side courtyard, which the eldest can convert into an outdoor space, filled with plants and art.

Then the youngest will move into the eldest’s room, air out the rat stench and paint the scruffy walls, build her new IKEA bed and generally jazz the room up.

Please let Bunnings remain open, as I’m hoping the project helps pass the achingly slow passage of time a little.

It’s been interesting to see some journalists and commentators question the strict isolation measures that are currently in place.

Undeterred by the United States losing 1300 people to the coronavirus in a single day, Steve Waterson at The Australian said: “Our reckless, hysterical governments tumble over each other to impose ever more ridiculous constraints on our liberty, supported by police forces that interpret their authority in a fashion sinister and absurd at the same time.”

He added: “John Ioannidis, professor of medicine and epidemiology at Stanford University in the US, believes if we hadn’t counted and tested this new COVID-19 separately from ordinary colds and flu (and the scary sci-fi name doesn’t help), ‘we might have casually noted that flu this season seems to be a bit worse than average’.

“He may be wrong, but what is certain is that for many of our fellow citizens, this will be the year everything they’ve worked so hard for — their businesses, their savings, their jobs and dignity, their marriages, their sanity, their hopes and dreams and joy — evaporated.”

Australian National University infectious diseases physician Peter Collignon also believes the restrictions in NSW and Victoria have gone too far.

“Not letting people go outside and sit on a park bench, for instance; how will that stop transmission?” he told the ABC yesterday morning.

Over at news.com.au Joe Hildebrand noted: “Victoria thought it acceptable to ban people in a relationship from seeing each other if they did not live in the same house. It is hard to think of a creepier government overreach into people’s personal lives.

“And the fact that the ban was quickly lifted only makes it more troubling: Was this deadly practice for five minutes and totally fine a few hours later?

“Obviously not, which raises the question of how any public leader in a liberal democracy could think this level of control over people’s private lives was ever acceptable.

“It is disturbing – no, disgraceful – that a state could even contemplate let alone enact a rule whose only conceivable precedent is the criminalisation of homosexuality.”

I am nervous about catching COVID-19, but far more scared about giving it to others, especially those who are immuno-compromised. I am terrified by the damage that’s being done to our economy and to the financial future of our children.

I have no answers. Dropping social distancing definitely doesn’t seem sensible, but society is paying a high price for our isolation.

The panic inside me is intense and difficult to control at times. I find myself needing to take long, deep breaths to try and ease the anxiety.

Is it getting to you?

Song of the day: Divinyls “Boys in town”