#Covid19 Experiences; My #Coronavirus Diaries: May 2020 Check-In

We spent most of a day and night without water a few weeks ago, because there was an "incident" near the local reservoir.  I don't know for sure what happened, but it resulted in the entire town either being without water or having such low water pressure they might as well have been.  It took them most of the day to fix it, and half the night to get the system up and running properly again.  I only know as much as I do about it from social media.

There was no warning, so we had no time to fill things with water before it happened. The first I knew there was a problem was when we tried to do something with water and couldn't.  Then, when I called the water company to find out why my water wasn't running, I was told there was an incident in my area (though not what kind of incident it was) and that bottled water was being sent out.  I was not, however, told you had to request said bottles of water, and only learned later you had to call a special number and ask for some.  Luckily, as it happened, we had a couple of big bottles of water on hand, "Just in case," so we managed OK.  I really think, "If you need the water, please call this number," should have been part of the information given to those who called the company, since I happen to know many of my neighbours also assumed water was automatically being sent out, and not all of them were lucky enough to have bottles of water on hand as we did.

Anyway, we're doing OK.  No health issues but the usual ones.  Although I cut my hand a couple of weeks ago, and was worried for a bit it was infected.  I managed to clear it up though, and it's healing nicely now.
As for mentally/emotionally... Well, I'm doing a bit better, though still having sleeping issues because of anxiety and stress causing nightmares and making it difficult to switch off properly at bed time.  I'm functioning better in general though, and actually have the desire to do more than hide away in a corner with the petkids, so that's a step in the right direction.

In local virus related news:
Despite the fact the death toll is more than 35,000 in the UK, though with thankfully only a very small number of those cases in my area (I haven't checked the exact numbers in the past several days, so can't give you them, but I do know my area is one of the ones with the least number of cases in the country) lockdown has been eased in England, with plans for it to ease further in stages over the next couple of months.
I specify "England" because it hasn't in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, which are officially part of the UK, but have their own people in charge of them, and whether or not those people do what the Prime Minister (currently Borris Johnson, if you don't know) tells them to do, generally depends how they feel about it.
So, if you're a UK resident, depending on where you live in the UK, you can either go out as much as you like as long as you social distance, wash your hands while singing, "Happy birthday," etc.  Or can still only go out for essential trips and a short bit of exercise each day.  Because, despite being known as the "United" Kingdom, we currently aren't united, even if we only look at the government.
Other sites and blogs cover everything better than I could, whether you want to check in on official news sites, or on blogs - these pandemic updates are usually good ways to keep reasonably up to date in a way that allows you to keep some of your sanity, for example - so I'll leave it there.  Especially since I've been attempting to keep what remains of my own sanity by not checking the news every day.  It helps with the anxiety somewhat.

Regardless of what's going on that I either know about and wish I didn't, or missed hearing about, I live in a place where the lockdown has been eased.  Although, other than this past Tuesday, when a certain situation that couldn't wait for the pandemic to be over before it was dealt with - which I'll talk about another day, when I understand it all myself - caused me to need to spend over an hour on the seafront by myself with Lilie and Logan, since it was the only way we could deal with it and still observe social distancing, I still haven't been going out much.  Mind you, I never went out an awful lot even before the virus showed up, so... *shrugs*

Lockdown or no, we also would have had to have someone come in last Friday, because our toilet broke.  The flusher button thingy broke.  Yeah, I know, real technical sounding, I don't think.  Hey, I'm not a plumber.  Though with our luck with bathrooms maybe I should consider becoming one.  Anyway, when it was being fixed a crack in the toilet itself was noticed, so we ended up with a completely new toilet being installed.  Lucky the flusher part went first, since a cracked toilet wouldn't have been pleasant.  At least the guy doing that only needed access to the bathroom, so I could stay home and still observe social distancing for that one.
In other news:
We still have to line up to go in the shops where we are, since social distancing means only a certain number of people can go in at once.  Most people in our area are being good about it, lining up nicely, waiting patiently for their turn, only grabbing what they need, etc.  But there are still those who get annoyed at not being able to just walk right in regardless of how many others have been waiting, or how many people are already in there, make return trips to buy up as much as possible of certain things (or shop in groups, while pretending to be individual shoppers, so they can get more than they should that way) and so on.  We just keep out of it, line up patiently, only buy what we need, and so on.  Well, I say, "We," but it's still just Kelly fetching things from the shops.
By the way, I was still getting my fruit and vegetables box, but as of this week we've decided to just have Kelly go fetch what I need from the local fruit and veg shop every few days, because I was having some bits left at the end of each box, and it's now reached the point where I didn't have one come this week, but still have enough stuff to feed me for most of this week, plus some extra bits of fruit and such I put in the freezer to stop it going bad.  If I was on my own, I'd still continue the box, but maybe change the frequency or amount, but Kelly wants to go fetch the stuff for me, and the fresh air and vitamin D will do him good, so I agreed he could.

Anyway, in other food news: after several experiments with coconut flour, I decided I'll go without flour rather than buy that again, since we were never happy with the results, regardless of what we did with it.  So I was relieved when Kelly was able to find me some proper flour during one of his trips to the local shops.  I celebrated by having my first attempt at making cinnamon buns.  My veganization of the recipe needs a bit of work, and they were a bit flat due to a lack of yeast, but here's a photo of my first attempt at making them anyhow:

Despite needing some work, they were still better than most of what I tried to do with the coconut flour, and they did taste pretty good.  But, when I can get some yeast, I'll try again, making the adjustments Kelly and I discussed I need to make to my veganized version of the recipe, which I'm sure will be an improvement.

Our anniversary meal was perfect though.

It was our 17th wedding anniversary last Friday (May 22nd) and Kelly went and picked up food for us from Oscars, which he brought home for us to eat here, since we still aren't allowed to eat at cafes yet, and anyway think it's too soon to start doing so, whatever the government says.  I always love food from Oscars, and this time was no exception.  We were both happy to have that be our anniversary meal of choice.
That's all we really did for our anniversary, to be honest: had a meal neither of us had to cook or wash the dishes after.  Oh, and we also gave each other money to spend on whatever we wanted.  But that was good enough for us.

I mean, that's all we've done most years anyhow, so we probably wouldn't have done much more than that even if it wasn't for the current circumstances.  We do things for and with each other all the time, so - though we do like to acknowledge our anniversary - we don't feel the need to make a big fuss over it.  We missed having the option to go out for the meal, but beyond that were happy with how we acknowledged and celebrated having been married for 17 years.  Even if I'm still baffled as to why he's not sick of me yet.
Mind you, I have to admit, not spending a large chunk of our wedding anniversary dealing with the replacement of our toilet would have been nice, regardless of what else we may or may not have done instead.  Just saying.

Anyway, there's not really much else to say, so I'm going to let this do.  Before I end this post though, here are a couple of recent puppy photos, just to make sure I'm ending on a positive note.  Enjoy!


So, how are things were you are? And how are you doing yourself? Happy and healthy, I hope?