Flattening the curve

Juma Lake Inn, Amazonia, April 2019

What with work only being two days a week, I have a lot of time confined to Lola Towers except for my one exercise break a day. I signed up to the zombie-based Couch to 5K programme and it's going pretty well, as it's quite easy to find time for a run three times a week, and on the zombie-free days I usually go for a walk somewhere local, especially in this lovely weather. That was fine for three weeks, then I unexpectedly discovered that you have to pay to continue so I have reverted to a different app. I do miss my zombies, though.

Shopping for fresh goods is no more than once a week, and for two weeks I had a HelloFresh food delivery. The first one was because they offered a hefty discount, and the second was because I forgot to cancel after the first. I'm still on the calorie-restricted diet, which has been quite tricky with the HelloFresh meals because they are pretty rich. I've had to divide their recipes for two meals into three and in one case into four to get them to fit into my daily calorie budget, but it is getting slightly easier to manage and I'm not feeling hungry absolutely all of the time, which I was at the start. Weight loss is only a paltry 1 kg in three weeks, but at least it's going in the right direction and I think it is sustainable.

Along with cooking and running there's been quite a lot of online activity with this great communication tool, Zoom, which nobody seemed to know about a month ago but now we are all experts. I've had Zoom meetings for dinner, three times for games, for several sessions of Buddhist meditation and discussion and team meetings, and for a tour of four paintings in the National Gallery led by Lola II. At one point I actually felt I'd had enough of this social activity and was longing for the old days when I could be properly anti-social. Now everyone knows where you are: at home.

Sometimes there's extra online time with mum now that our remote control system is working nicely. I'm still grappling with the task of changing my email address and passwords with about a hundred different people and organisations - alphabetically I've reached the letter M so still some way to go. I've got my DVD subscription and I'm also ploughing through all the episodes of Friends and ER, although I don't like sitting watching the TV for too long. And, due to my pestering mum about the food in her kitchen cupboards I found myself in possession of nearly a kilogram of out-of-date ground almonds, so I've made a couple of cakes and taken them to work.

But I'd say the Buddhism has taken up the most time, all via Zoom or YouTube. On Mondays our study group continues, on Tuesdays it's the local group and on Thursdays I can join a meeting with the Birmingham group if I want to. One weekend there was a day-long online retreat (we weren't online all day - that would have been exhausting). Another weekend there was a seminar for people like me who are involved in the organisation of groups, all about the different ways to take our groups online. And I also watched a public ordination, where an individual became a member of the Triratna Order and took on a new name, all within the confines of the current social distancing restrictions. And I'm meditating regularly, which helps with the confinement.

For the first time in ages my list of Things To Do is getting shorter rather than longer, and I've got out some old jigsaws. Of course what I ought to be doing is going through the stuff I put in the loft to get it out of my line of sight, which worked so well that I've hardly thought about it until now. Maybe next week. And there's the garden, which I thought would be so manageable with the help of a gardener, but I'm back on my own again and it just keeps growing.