The Tail of Covid Wave #1

2020-05-01Uncategorized Standard

[Photos from 01 – 07 May 2020, posted online 07 November 2020. It looks like wave #3 is going down finally, but it could still go either way. The US elections still haven’t been called.]

Icelandic authorities decided to wait until after the long 1 May weekend to start easing off restrictions. That meant more gardening! But on 4 May we all let out a relived sigh and started moving about a bit more, and actually making plans to meet other people.

The school restrictions were also lifted for 10th grade and younger, so Bjarki finally went back to school (Emma never stopped going), but Anna had to tough out the last dregs of her quarter at home. (30-ish images total)

Friday 01 May 2020

It’s impossible to blog about the year without knowledge about the Covid-19 status of Iceland. The blue bars are how many people were in isolation that day (i.e. confirmed infected), and the orange is the cumulative number of isolated people. The different waves are identified, and so is the beginning of May. Source: covid.is/data on 07 November 2020.
Iceland’s labor day, 1 May, is a public holiday. I felt very naughty for going to the next-door-mall, but the kids had grown out of their clothes over the spring and there’s no H&M web-store in Iceland, so to the mall I went. First I had to stand in line, as there were only 20 people allowed inside per floor, and the stairwell between floors was closed.
Bjarki got a new jacket for the summer.
Next job: cutting Emma’s bangs, as the hair was permanently in her eyes. It went about as well as was to be expected.
I probably did a bit of weeding/cutting in the backyard as well, as I ended up in the hot tub at the end of the day, which turned out to be an excellent way to warm up after staying out in the semi-cold for too long. (That’s taken at 21:30 or 9:30 pm.)

Saturday 02 May 2020

Bjarki mid-air on a neighbor’s trampoline.
With no people to meet, all that was left was working in the back-yard. Anna and Finnur began cleaning the wooden frames we’d picked up from a nearby import company.
It was a gorgeous spring day, and not even all that cold.
Taking a quick weeding-break, always nice to watch other people working.
Four brackets, ready for staining when dry.
Next up was prepping the area where the we would put the frames/boxes.
Weeding the top-part of the lot. The earth is very sandy, and low on nutrition, which I keep forgetting to add until it’s way too late in the summer.
Grass line looking cleaner.
Top part looking cleaner as well.

03 May 2020

I needed to buy a few things from the local electronics store, and wanted to browse the physical selection, so I showed up before 10 am on a Sunday morning, but no luck, there was already a line.
That is, until I realized there were TWO lines as the store had been divided into two segments. There was one line for the tech part, and one for the home part. I jumped into the home line, found what I wanted there, and when I came out, the tech line was gone so I could go straight in there!
Then I hung out at a cafe in Hafnarfjörður for a while. When I left, the cafe was getting very busy, so it was fortunate that the weather was quite good!
Back from my mental-battery-charging cafe-trip, I put on the yard-clothes, and was instantly transformed into my maternal grandmother! 😂🤣😂
On the north side, in the shadow, the Easter lilies were finally poking out of the ground, but the crocuses (?) were thankfully livening up the place.
Finnur clearing out pebbles from the future veggie-garden site.
Anna was the main driver behind the veggie-garden project, and she was tasked with staining the frames.
Having weeded pretty much every part of the back-yard, I turned my attention to the outside of the fence for the first time in 9 years! There’s actually a walking path past the house, so plenty of people get to witness this dreary sight daily.
Cleared for the first time ever!
Magic! There’s now a shrub!
Name of the shrub.
I was summoned inside to taste Anna’s newest baking project, a delicious almond cake. Sooo good!
After dinner I went out for a bit and planted these, not really knowing what they were. Only a handful later poked out of the ground later that summer, so it sure looks like I messed up the planting process badly. 🙂

Monday 04 May 2020

We ‘celebrated’ the first day of loosened restrictions by attending a routine dentist appointment. This was the first day dentists were allowed to operate in a while. In wave #3, health services are still open, but salons and other non-health-related personal services are closed.
I took Bjarki to a cafe in the mall…
… which was unnervingly full of people.
We were on the hunt for a new wrist-watch for Bjarki, who also wanted a step-counter, to stop his mother from nagging him about not moving enough. With restrictions loosened, we could enter the electronics store without waiting, and found one that was just a clock and a step-counter, with a battery to last a whole year. Bingo!

Thursday 07 May 2020

The libraries finally reopened, so Anna and I went to replenish book-supplies. We made an obligatory stop at the next-door cafe before heading home. (During wave #3, the libraries are not quite closed: it’s still possible to order, pick-up, and return books, you just can’t browse.)