March 30, 2020, by Issy

My life #WorkingFromHome, in 65 parts.

1) Woken up by my very confused body clock at 8am, with a book on my face.
2) Remove book and then spend way too much time scrolling through TikTok, or Twitter
3) Fall back asleep as my bed is very cosy
4) Get woken up at 11.30 by my parents, normally with something along the lines of ‘it’s the afternoon!’
5) Remind parents that 11.30 is not the afternoon
6) Get a news notification that ‘if you hold your phone away from you with your arm straight, and double that distance, that is the 2m we should be social distancing by’
7) Try this out
8) Realise that that would make my arm 1 metre long.
9) Consider that if we have 2x1m arms, plus our shoulder width, that would mean that they are assuming we are all at least 2.3m tall, which is definitely not the case.
10) Look up people who are over 2.3m tall – 82 men have ever been verified to be over this height, and 6 women. I would say that the entire UK population definitely is not made of these 88 people.
11) Consider that my lecturers would be very proud of this critical appraisal of a source.
12) Medical student brain switches on in an attempt to work out the possible pathological causes of this height (acromegaly seems the most likely – excessive production of growth hormone, usually due to a pituitary adenoma, a type of benign brain tumour)
13) Realise with a start I should probably be working through the lectures set for me for the week
14) Panic about this for a bit, but still do not get out of bed.
15) Finally tempted out of bed by the prospect of food
16) Bargain with my mum that 12pm is not too late to have breakfast
17) Lose the argument
18) Start asking when lunch is
19) Get told to ‘do something productive’
20) Realise that doing my uni work is probably the most productive thing to do right now.
21) Naturally, try to do everything except my uni work, such as:
22) Clean my room for the seventh time in as many days
23) Offer to clean my brothers room (I must be bored)
24) Take the dog on a walk, keeping 2m away from others (actually 2m, not 2 arm lengths, as, as we worked out before, is definitely not 2m)
25) Decide it is probably socially acceptable to have lunch now
26) Explode baked beans in the microwave
27) Explore the potential of putting a grape in the microwave to see what happens
28) Decide this is probably a very bad idea
29) Begin to feel like I should really do some work
30) Sit on the sofa to do said work as my dad is using my desk as he works from home instead of going into the city and I was obviously meant to be at university at this time and not moping around the house
31) Actually get a solid few hours of work done, with minimal procrastination
32) Decide to brave the evening press conference
33) Two minutes in, decide it is definitely not a good idea for my anxiety
34) Decide that now is the prime time to see if I can annoy my siblings at all
35) Succeed in recruiting my brother to strategically start hiding my sisters things
36) Realise I am not as ninja-worthy as I thought I was as I get foiled straight away as I forgot to check she wasnt in her room first before breaking and entering
37) Thank my lucky stars I am a medical student and not a strategic planner
38) Get a text from my friend who, at 5.37pm, has “just woken up” and show it to my parents to prove that 11.30 was, in comparison, a very early rise.
39) Remove the dog from the garden as she appears to have set off every other dog barking within a mile radius
40) Try and work out what the constant crashing and bumping noise is above my head in the kitchen
41) After thorough investigation, discover my brother has taken up an intensive indoor workout class, and the construction-site-like sounds were him doing 5 minutes of burpees
42) Begin to feel guilty about not doing exercise myself
43) Find a 30 day workout challenge online, where day one is ’10 starjumps’
44) Decide that that is perfectly adequate for one day, and feel very satisfied with myself for making the effort
45) Accidentally get in the background of one of my dad’s video conference calls trying to force my dog to give up whatever it was that she seems very proud of herself for getting in her mouth
46) Realise it was actually her own food that my sister had given her
47) Give the dog another biscuit because I feel awful
48) Decide now is as good a time as ever to group call my friends from uni
49) Give up on the call after an hour of broken video because the wifi is not cooperating
50) Realise the wifi if not cooperating because my brother is trying to download a massive file onto his laptop for apparently ‘essential’ video game purposes
51) Offer to cook dinner
52) Get met with a horrified stare by my mum, who knows cooking is not my strong point (to say the least)
53) Sit down to enjoy a lovely dinner with my family, thankfully minus either burnt or undercooked food courtesy of myself.
54) Decide to watch a film together as a family
55) Spend half an hour arguing about what to watch
56) Settle on rewatching the same sitcom we watch every single time we decide to watch a film
57) Promise each other that next time it will be a film (we all know it won’t, but it’s the thought that counts)
58) Call my grandparents to check on them
59) Talk my grandparents through the logistics of ordering shopping to their house online, which first includes locating the internet browser on their desktop in the first place.
60) After an hour of adding things to their basket, I realise that I am so exhausted that I decide to get an early night
61) Lie in bed and immediately spend an hour scrolling aimlessly through social media feeds.
62) Remember that I shouldn’t be on my phone before bed.
63) Find the book I was reading last night, and must have fallen asleep reading as I honestly don’t remember where I left off.
64) Settle down with the book
65) Fall asleep, with the book on my face

*repeat from 1)*

Posted in Issy