In 2020, I grew lots of tomato plants and salad leaves and was so incredibly fortunate to have Sonshine and Tartarus at home with me and a big garden with a ladycave we could escape into.
Now it's June 2021 and Tartarus and I have both had our two vaccinations with Sonshine due to get his second jab in a few weeks - what kind of miracle is that?! And yet we are STILL not free of this damned situation.
What did I do with my year of being confined to barracks? Did I learn Spanish? Paint masterful watercolours? Write that book?
Nope.
Although I DID keep my Gaelic up and am sitting at 560 days of an unbroken streak. But I still don't think I could order two pints of beer in The Park Bar in Glasgow though!
I have watched a LOT of youtube, listened to gazillions of podcasts, bought lots of online courses (and then never completed the courses, of course!), watched the entire six seasons of Bosch on Amazon, the French 'Spiral' series (note to self: never ever get on the wrong side of the Parisian flics!) discovered a lot of Scandi crime ... and took up skipping.
Have also injured myself on a regular basis with the skipping too - it's not the same effortless fun at 58 as it was when I was 10!
First of all I skipped too much and developed such sore calves that I couldn't walk properly and had to waddle like a portly penguin. That lasted about 5 days and provided a lot of hilarity for hubby and son as I hopped up and down the stairs.
The next thing that happened was knee pain that just would not go away. Fortunately a lovely crime-writing physiotherapist suggested some exercises for my IT band which did the trick, but it took WEEKS before I had the confidence to launch my body skywards without my knee singing an urgent protest.
My most recent war wound through skipping is somehow hurting my back between my shoulder blades. At first I thought my sports bra was just too tight, but heck-almighty no. I ended up on my hands and knees on the lawn, desperately catting and cowing (proper yoga parlance - not!) so that I could stand up and hobble into the kitchen.
I am rapidly approaching the stage of just giving up fighting the flab and sinking gracefully into a vat of cheese and crackers.
And that's where I am just now - sore back, no skipping, unfit, eating kitkats by the packet, drinking gin and tonic by the pint. Other than that - life in the time of coronavirus is marvellous.
How about you? Are you still out there reading this? Are you still blogging? Did YOU write that novel? Tell me everything :)