I woke up very early… 7am.
Decided to make my coffee and start my artwork.

Brought it to the table and started painting… and painting… and painting… I actually enjoyed the quiet time, and this time, I was concentrated on the painting and not on my thoughts.

I just cleared my head of everything.

So many colours… so many shapes that don’t make any sense at all, when you look at them.

I was painting untill 10am, then my daughter woke up and decided to join me, the quiet time was over, but YouTube music replaced it, so it was good.

We were painting until noon.
Until our hands were in pain.
But it was so much fun, just zone out from the world, for a while.

Everyone else were still asleep.

But then when we looked at the bigger picture we could definitely appreciate the colours and shapes. It’s beautiful.

On our dining table there are 3 puzzles and a Lego.
Two of the puzzles are waiting to be glued. Today, we decided to glue one of them.
We never glued our puzzles because we take them to be framed.
When we bought our 6000pcs puzzle we got a special glue, which you apply above the puzzle rather than underneath it.
But we never tried it before…

Today we tried it on our 3000 pcs puzzle.
It seems like it worked. We’ll make sure that’s the case by tomorrow, and if so, we’ll glue another one.

Hoping that until Yom Tov the table will be cleared from puzzles and we might be able to have people over.

That’s light in the end of the tunnel…

Friday was mainly about prepping for Shabbat for the most of it.

On Friday night I was very tired. Normally I never remember my dreams, but last night I woke up twice, from nightmares.

In both nightmares, I died.

In one of them I was going up the stairs and the stairs were falling apart and falling down with me…

The second one I was falling down in a different way. But again, I ended up dead.

I woke up very disturbed at 2am.
I tried to go back to sleep for a little bit, and eventually got out of bed at 7am.
Luckily I wasn’t doing anything today.
But I was so tired for the whole day.

After Shabbat was out I googled it.
I knew dying in your dream means a long life, well – at least that…

Falling is an indication of insecurities, instabilities and anxieties. You are feeling overwhelmed and out of control in some situation in your waking life.
To die in your dream symbolizes inner changes, transformation, self-discovery and positive development that is happening within you or your life… although such a dream may bring about feelings of fear and anxiety, it is no cause for alarm as it is often considered a positive symbol.

The explanation says it all.

Now, I guess, you can say that after 52 days of lockdownw it gets to me…

Today was a disorganised day…
Instead of a cleaning-cooking day, I had a bit of everything… such a mess.

I went early to pick up my online groceries order, then made sure kids are sitting for online school.

Went for a walk with a friend.

The weather was fantastic, it wasn’t cold, it wasn’t hot, it was just a bit windy.
Sometimes you don’t need more than a good friend, fun exercise and a bit of sun.

Cleaned a bit, cooked a bit, had a parent-teacher interview, and the highlight of the day was making Juchnun, which is a Yemenite food made out of dough. It’s so much work but so worth it…
It takes about an hour to roll the dough, then it slowly cooks on the blech for a whole night.

You wake up in the morning to a fabulous smell.

You grate some tomatoes (I add zhug) and put some boiled eggs that were lying down next to the juchnun over night.

And you eat it for breakfast

Spoiler alert: it might ruin your lunch… so filling, but so yummm.

OMG!

3 weeks left … ahhhhhh…

3 weeks till the end of the second lockdown, 3.5 weeks to Rosh Hashanah.

I don’t know what I want more… this lockdown or a new Jewish year to restart… we deserve a better year… a sweet year, not bitter like we had until now…

Today I got to this realisation that I’m not ready enough, at least for Yom Tov…
But I am VERY READY to finish this lockdown.

Look, we can all agree that we need to learn to live with remote learning and even with a mask, but please bring back the option to see other people, friends, family.

We are social creatures, we need that company.

At least for the holidays…

Another thing that shocked me today was the fact that a lot of countries opened their skies, which means they started letting people to travel in and out of these countries.
Places like Japan, Greece, Germany etc. They do it carefully, they use saliva tests (PCR) in the airport, and people get results within an hour. If they’re covid free, they can fly.

Easy.

Because this covid is about to stay around for some time.

Why doesn’t Australia do saliva testing and let us all go on holidays?

Why do we insist to refuse to learn how live with it?!

After I released the steam, I can relax again…

I woke up late today, didn’t feel like going out of bed, but since I don’t have much of a choice… I tried to roll the kids out of bed.

My daughter’s school day was very interesting today.
It had a lot of creativity in the assignments.
Each year, school creates a production. But since we’re at home, in lockdown, the production will be showing what isolation is for us.

Last few weeks we created some scripts. Today, she had to create a sound track that reflects isolation. She shared her task with me and it made us think a bit about our feelings ans what sounds we hear that will help the viewers of the production understand how it feels…

We decided to start with lorikeet sounds like we hear every morning.
Then we added the sound of clock ticking, a car driving, and rain.
I think that’s actually self explanatory of the way we feel about isolation.

A very productive session.

After school was over, we realised our new art project has just arrived and was waiting out the door.

I ordered it when we just got into Stage 4 lockdown, suspecting it will help us “kill” some time. It’s called Paint by Numbers Art Kit.

It’s literally art therapy. We ordered 3 kits, 3 beautiful, totally different pictures.

We decided to start working on it straight away… my daughter started with hubby, then he had to go back to work, so I started mine…

We were concentrating so hard that time flew… after about 2 hours we had to stop and stretch up, but it already looks amazing.
Very therapeutic & satisfying.

The picture is big, the numbers are tiny, unlike what we did when she was at kinder, this one is harder. You have to concentrate to fill in the correct spaces with the correct paint using the correct brush.
I found myself concentrating very hard that I couldn’t even sing or talk.
But it means that my mind actually went blank.
Thinking of nothing but the edges of the area I’m painting.

I felt so relaxed after we finished.

I can’t wait to continue it tomorrow.

Today the sun came out for a sneak peek. So I found myself going out to the back yard and enjoying some fruit juice, just a little boost to the immune system in addition to the sun’s vitamin D.

For most of the day I was participating in Italian class, taking notes. I love languages.
My mother toungue is Hebrew, not an easy one.
Then came English at school and a lot of it in Uni.
Well, the byproduct of comparative literature studies…

Then, I learned some Spanish while watching a lot of TV, when I was breastfeeding.
It was a very awkward way to learn, but very useful nevertheless.
But I Never came across Italian. So it’s actually nice to learn a new language.

In order to be a polyglot (=one who speaks many languages) all you need is to listen. If you enjoy the listening you can easily learn.

I watched some fascinating YouTube videos and TED talks about polyglots.
It’s inspiring!

Sunday was another cold day outside but very warm inside.
Decided to be creative with some watercolour art that reflects the need of joy, longing for summer to come back… it came out beautiful.

We wanted to make something different for lunch, something we didn’t make in the last few months… Vegetarian Dumplings!
Yup, it takes so much time to make it. Just preparing the dough before adding the veggies takes 2 hours…

The plates were clean before you managed to say Jack Robinson.
The boys just ate it all without falling off their feet…

My opinion is that it was definitely worth the efforts.

For dinner we made a special edition of pita-pizza with pesto, feta cheese or sun dried tomatoes.
Everyone loved it so much…

Then I realized, Simplicity is the name of the game.

Most of the time when we try to make complicated things, no one appreciates it, but when we make the simple and easy food we get so many compliments you cannot believe it.

So why bother?

Let’s just keep it simple.

Friday was a school day, with a bit of preparation for Shabbat.

After our dinner, we finally sat together to finish the 2000pcs puzzle. A fantastic puzzle.

On Shabbat morning I had a coffee and finished my book. When everyone woke up, we started our gaming session. We played some old magnet games that we used to take to our day-trips and holidays. It brought us good memories, and it was so much fun to play… OMG day trips seem so far away now!

We also played memory games, arcade basketball game, checkers and more.

It was a nice & relaxing day.

After Shabbat was out, we watched a cute family move.

For a minute, we forgot we are ‘stuck’ at home…

Luckily, it will happen again next Shabbat.