Quarantine Day 43. It's official...

I passed with flying colours, I have a wristband and paperwork to prove it. Three policeman, including a sheriff ((I didn't know we had sheriffs here thought they only existed in Texas) and three nurses in masks, gloves and gowns knocked on the door. I was jogging whilst watching the final episodes of The Big Bang Theory and was worried when they approached me with a thermometer that my temperature would be up and I'd have to stay in for another 14 days! Strangely my temperature was slightly below but luckily I was still cleared for takeoff any time after midnight. Had there been a bar open that made Italian style Negronis, I would have been gone. Sadly that was not the case.

My mind wanders around the thoughts of going home. I have been happily homeless since I left for Europe last year. Even when I returned for a month, I didn't unpack anything but the necessities. My suitcase lay open on the floor ready for immediate leavetaking, as it was on my travels. There are two travelling types I've discovered - those who don't unpack in hotels and those that do. I'm the former (I'm sure it has some psychological meaning that one day I should go into but not now). I'm not looking forward to unpacking and storing my suitcase as it means reality has closed the door firmly on my travelling anytime soon. Maybe I'll leave it open for a while, I can't imagine settling down again. I feel I am a gypsy at heart. Maybe it was because, after the age of 8, we moved almost every year. I've learnt I can live with very few possessions and a limited amount of clothes plus, I've always fancied living in a gypsy caravan; definitely Romany blood in me I'm sure.

I was escaping from reality for another year by travelling. I admit it. I am widowed, the daughter is well on her way towards her own life so it's time I decided what to do with the rest of my own. Trouble is, I don't really know yet. Another year would have brought me a bit more time, now I'm going to have to really try and work it out. To be honest, I'm a bit scared of a return to normalcy because that's where decisions have to be made. Unless of course, I become a travel writer. Now that's an idea. Watch this space.

Ps. The pigeons and I will miss each other. They have been my source of interest for 14 days. If I'd stayed any longer, I fear I would have asked them why they stand on the edge of high rise buildings. I feel they would have answered.

Quarantine day 42. Crumbs on the Carpet.

It's officially 6 weeks since I've been in self isolation that began 13 days after I arrived to embrace another year of travelling abroad. Luckily I'm a person who doesn't mind change and even though I was initially saddened, I feel like I stepped up to the challenge - up to now. I've stopped painting and dancing for a couple of reasons. After a while, in what for me is basically solitary confinement, you lose interest in a routine when you're nearing the end. Painting and dancing I stopped because I was worried they would become forever linked with quarantine 'feels'. It's like music albums, there was one that I listened too when I was 18 and feeling utterly miserable about my life; it was a great album but I can't listen to it without being taken back there (I don't mind jogging because that's something I won't be continuing when I get back!!!).

Only two more days to go and what's getting to me is the crumbs on the carpet. I try hard not to drop them but if you've got no plates and you're eating out of tiny plastic equipment, it happens. I keep sweeping them under the chairs and under the bin with one of the hotel slippers, the only piece of cleaning equipment I have. They're going to get a shock when they move things. But no other complaints. The food has improved greatly, they've been sending us a newsletter with crosswords, horoscopes and helpful anti stress exercises and I haven't had to brave a supermarket for two weeks. I will miss the police and nurse calls to see how I am but in two days, I will be free to shop and clean out the cupboards in my house. Yay! Not.

This year is certainly very different for a lot of us that had other plans about how it was going to pan out but I have coaxed out my creativity (that had gone into a foetal position in the cupboard of my mind ) and I've welcomed it back gently so as not to scare it. I have breathed through panic stations and found bits of me that I'd kept locked up for one reason or another so all in all, I am grateful.

I am still binge watching Big Bang Theory and eating every cake they send up, embracing the carbs so to speak, (they don't particularly like me but maybe that's from the fear of them throughout high school when most girls were eating carrot and celery sticks for lunch), maybe they like me now. I'm letting them in to see.

My headspace is still full of memories from last year. This is in Ortygia, Sicily where I studied Italian for three weeks.

Quarantine Day 41. Quarantino.

I missed the significance of Day 40 yesterday. The daughter reminded me that it was the amount of time people were quarantined during the Black Plague in Italy - quarantino. It may have come from biblical times - the Flood, Jesus's time of fasting in the wilderness. Maybe it's a spiritual marker of survival and that's why I was wandering in the proverbial wilderness on day 40. Because I did. I ended up eating the chocolate I was having one line of everyday (sounds like a drug taking activity); I ate the tiny friand they sent up with lunch; the camembert and biscuits a kind friend had sent; I drank the last of the alcohol watching the late afternoon birds, with a tear in my eye and also a question - why do birds land on the edge of a roof and hover there? Why not in a safe spot further in? Why? No one has asked Google that question so I may never know. But I think you all know what this means - I totally lost it yesterday.

I binge watched The Big Bang Theory and could understand Sheldon more than I would have liked to. I watched a movie and made it through to the end (very unlike me, the restless soul that I am.) They brought us dinner at 5 pm! Luckily I had started drinking at 4.28. I was trying to wait for 4.30 but it couldn't be done, if I had teared up at 'the birds on the edge' situation without a drink, it was time to bring aperitivo time forward. When I first arrived in hotel quarantine I had hopes of starting aperitivo at 6, maybe only drinking on the weekend. I am now starting at 4.28! All days of the week. I have to say eating alone at 5 pm sucks. I don't mind eating on my own in a crowded restaurant but I start to wonder what it's going to be like when the daughter leaves home and I'm not overseas on holiday. I may just have to become an perpetual traveller. With that in mind I log into my free blogging course that assures me I can travel and make money as I go. We shall see.

Ps. Oh, and my faithful Cupcake candle spluttered to an end and sent up it's final plume of smoke.

Photo blend from a pierogi restaurant in Poland with a Van Gogh inspired theme.