Thursday 2 April - lockdown Day 9

In some ways the week has gone fast, a bit of anxiety is starting to creep in - I haven't been past the gate except to walk the dog but there is a lot of faith and trust needed, as the kids came back for two nights and will be back tomorrow for four nights. Jonathan and Amy need to feed the animals every day so they drive out to Feilding and are managing to get quite productive work done out there. JOnathan continues to spend considerable time liaising with everyone possible to ensure the Blind Citizens community is getting as much help as they need.

I dont lack for things to do - and try to stay connected with friends and family as often as possible. I had my first two Zoom meetings yesterday - a Sanskrit lesson and my Philosophy group. Both went well for a first go - gratitude for the use of technology is immense. Great sense of reconnecting with people who care about each other. Lots of activity back in the community where my house is - they always had a strong community spirit and it is really helping them, particularly those with young families and the older people.

The children were back for two nights and I tried to get them to do some schoolwork - we did get some done - the first day I just had the girls and we did sewing practice - they did a join the dots exercise and then a spiral using the fancy stitches on my machine - they liked that bit! Hopefully we will extend to making some doll clothes next weekend. We made a video of them doing the Crazy Santa dance and singing along to a Frozen video... Reading and spelling was also on the agenda. Callum was a bit harder to get going - but we did an experiment which demonstrated the water cycle and how to purify dirty water - and he made Cheese muffins as well as using Khan academy to practice some fractions. Oh, and Annabelle's ball handling skills and Callums flips on the trampoline also got lots of practice. Cordelia's reading is coming on well but they all rush their writing and their spelling goes haywire when they do creative writing although on the spelling lists it is good. Annabelle is

Annabelle testing her ability to sew straight and turn corners

Cordelia joining the dots to make a picture

Callum watching a sea water distillation camping set up

I am not having any difficulty filling the days, and I am also doing a lot of the database admin for the School of Philosophy as we move to an online platform for all classes. The Zoom software is being used all over the world and it is very well designed and robust. There were 34 of us in a meeting last night and there was discussion and it was great!

My Travel sketching class obviously couldnt go ahead, so the teacher has suggested we do a sketch a day forthe month of April - no masterpieces, just practice and dont fret. I brought my favourite  beautiful mug down with me. It was Karen's mothers and I always loved it when I was at their place. I tried to sketch it but since we are encouraged to go straight to ink pen, no rubbing out, I tried to cover up the bottom where I had made it too long, hence the brown mucky bit at the bottom --- but today is a button... so need to find one worth drawing....

I am also practicing drawing various bits of the back garden, hopefully I will get better!  I can always do still life - and draw bananas, feijoas and apples!

It is very quiet today and good washing drying weather, so soon will take Tui for a little walk - we are only supposed to go local - around the block. I might get out to the farm at the weekend ( the farm is part of our bubble as no one else is able to go there). Hopefully Jonathan will be working today on getting a little toilet house built to house his Christmas present - the composting toilet).