Escaping the rat race

There’s a lot of pressure involved in keeping a child’s sick pet alive while they’re on holidays.

The youngest still hasn’t let me forget that I killed her Siamese Fighting Fish many years ago.

I’ve been giving the eldest’s pet rat antibiotics and liquid Ventolin twice a day, as opposed to my normal practice of feeding undomesticated rats little blue pellets of death.

The pet rat gets very excited when it’s time for its medicine and jumps out of the cage onto my arm to lick up a little bowl of drugs mixed with Heinz Lamb & Vegetables baby food.

Fortunately the sick rat didn’t die on my watch and went safely back into the eldest’s hands yesterday afternoon.

Sadly, I am not safely back in DD’s hands. I watch the NSW Health press conference at 11am each day, hoping for a reprieve from this awful limbo.

We’re both on holidays and it’s a very frustrating way to spend them. There won’t be time off for ages if I get a permanent job.

I know we’re not in a Gallipoli trench in World War 1, but I’m still feeling very mournful about the separation.

DD got his third negative COVID-19 test result last night and the number of positive test results in Greater Sydney each day have been amazingly low. But I don’t see the top end of the Northern Beaches coming out of lockdown any time soon.

I am pretty sure that people are sneaking in and out of the lockdown zone all the time. Technically, I could too. But I feel panicked at the thought of doing the wrong thing.

So I’m marooned 26km away from my beloved, dreaming of escaping the rat race and buying an apartment in the middle of COVID central so I can see my bloke whenever I like. I was gazing longingly at realestate.com.au last night.

In my more selfish moments, I almost wish that the whole of Sydney was in lockdown because that would mean I could visit DD. But I don’t really want that – being in lockdown is no fun at all.

A friend is in hotel quarantine for the next 14 days. She posted this picture of her view: