Kellyable

Today I felt kind of anxious and stressed. I don’t remember any reason in particular for it. Stress was considered by the World Health Organization (WHO) the health epidemic of this century. They define it as a real, or perceived, unbalance between a circumstances’ demand and the ability of adaptation of the person. Weather we like it or not, stress is a part of our lives and if on the one hand it can be useful as it makes us take action, on the other hand it can physically and mentally impair us. How to deal with stress The times of nail biting and hair pulling are over! Check out 5 ways of dealing with stress: 1.     Writing – No, journaling is not just for hormonal teenagers. Writing is a personal and safe way to release all the feelings and thoughts that haunt you throughout the day. I’ve went into a bit more detail about it, here . 2.     Cooking – A delicious carrot cake with chocolate frosting, some ginger cookies, a cheesec...

Today, me and group of friends gathered in our respective living-rooms for a video-chat. It was one of those friends’ birthday and we all wanted to brighten her day a bit, since she (like all of us) is stuck at home during her special day. One of my friends, said she was going to take a specific Microbiology course next week, through a website called Coursera . It is a platform that provides many different online courses, at competitive prices. All courses are given by many worldwide Universities and I was certainly interested. I love learning and right now it seems like an amazing moment to learn something new. I just didn’t know what. But now I’m looking into taking a course, in order to add to my curriculum, in fields of Genetics . Maybe something like Next Generation Sequencing, or Microbiology... But there are many other fields there! From Maths, to Art, to Business, to Languages... It’s amazing! If you are anything like me and love learning about new stuff all th...

Today, was my first day away from home. As I mentioned yesterday , my boyfriend picked me up early this morning and we came over to his house. He lives ~37 km (~23 miles) away from me and I hadn’t seen him in 2 weeks, so, it was an amazing feeling being able to hold him again. We made it home safe but as soon as we got here, we realized we had less food in stock than we thought we had. So, we had to make a list and head out to the nearest supermarket. It was closed. Our only other option was to go to the one in the closest County. That specific County has one of the highest counts of infected/deaths at the moment. Because of that we had our first encounter with the police. Yesterday, or even two days ago, Portugal entered the Red Phase or Mitigation Phase of the disease, where doctors aren’t even trying to discover where the infection came from (as in who were the infected people in contact with), they are just focused in treating as many patients as possible. Therefore, ...

It’s been a week since quarantine started and, tomorrow, I’ll be taking a risk, for love . Two days ago , I mentioned how much I missed my boyfriend and the feelings just got worse for both of us. So, since then we’ve been planning a way to spend some days together, in our own quarantine. We came up with something. We’ve both been in self-quarantine for, at least, a week and none of us has had any symptoms so far. He’s going to have the house for himself for a few days. So, in order to avoid any social contact, besides between the 2 of us, he’s coming to pick me up early in the morning, while my parents are at work and then we’ll go straight home. He has food in the house and I’m also going to take a few things with me to contribute. I’m also bringing gloves and disinfectant just in case we need to get something from the grocery store. I’m not sure how long I’ll be with him there but I honestly can’t wait. He is my everything . We’ve been together for a year and almos...

Writing last month’s Book Club post inspired me to take a look at all the books I gathered to read this year (and I didn’t even remember some of them!). These are all of them. They are very different from one another and that perfectly describes my literary taste: EVERYTHING . Bellow, is the book that I’m reading at the moment. I don’t want to get into much detail (I have another Book Club entry for this month) but basically it narrates the story of humankind, offering points of view that make us really think. If there’s anything I really appreciate in a book is that it makes me think and re-evaluate my opinions. I’m also really excited to read another book by this author called “Homo Deus”, which serves as a continuation for this book, in which the author gives us his opinion on the future of our species . If I had to choose, the next 3 books are the ones I am most excited to read. The first one is about the story and art of a man that has always fascinated ...

Today I decided to bring you last month’s book (a bit late, I know, but it’s better later than never!). The book I chose is The Tattooist of Auschwitz , by Heather Morris. As I was researching for this post, I actually found out that this book has won the Portuguese Bertrand’s Foreign Fiction Book of the Year 2018 Award ! Heather Morris was born in New Zealand and lived a pretty normal life (went to school, got married, had kids...). She was already in her adult years when she decided to pursuit her passion of storytelling. Heather started studying and writing screenplays, and that’s how she met Lale Sokolov . Through the several interviews she made with him, the Tattooist of Auschwitz was born. Lale is, indeed, the protagonist of this story, which narrates his life as a victim of the Holocaust , a tattooist in Auschwitz-Birkenau and as a man in love in a time of such fear, pain and suffering. This book made me feel all kinds of emotions : worry, anticipation, sadness, a...

It’s day six of quarantine and today I was really struggling with missing my boyfriend a lot, and just missing physical contact in general. I have a very physical language sometimes and I really like hugging the people I love. Don’t know if that’s weird or not, but that’s how I act. I feel that there is something very soothing in receiving and giving hugs. Anyways, journaling was a big relief for me today. I have the habit of journaling often but today it was really necessary. I started drifting to a place where I don’t really like to go in my head where sadness turns into apathy that turns into not having the strength to do absolutely nothing for days. I hate it. So, I grabbed my notebook and I forced myself to let go of everything. Writing is my way of reflecting on my feelings. I can deconstruct my problems on my own, most of the times, to the point of starting an entry with an issue and ending it with a solution. I love that about writing. It allows my mind to flow in...

Today I left the house for a while after being inside for the entire weekend (besides occasionally coming outside to look at the view or check out my flowers or even to watch my cat playing, chasing out butterflies and bees). I got in my car and went to pick up my mom from work, in order for her to avoid public transportation. While I was waiting for her in the car, I got to thinking about the simple things I used to take for granted. Things like going out for coffee with my friends, getting on a train every Friday to go stay with my boyfriend for the weekend, going to birthday parties, going to the movies, going out for dinner... I mean, sometimes I even declined some invitations just because I “didn’t feel like it”. It’s common to hear people tell us to enjoy life as we have it, because things can change very quickly and right now that sentence has never made more sense. We really only appreciate certain things when we lose them. We appreciate breathing normally when we hav...

Taking advantage of the inspiration from yesterday’s Carrot Cake , this morning I wanted to have some amazing healthy pancakes , I had been missing for a while, so I got to it and my day is already 100 times better! So, if you are home in quarantine, in your pajamas, without anything to do and wondering about what to eat, this easy recipe is for you! Check it out: Ingredients : 1 whole egg 1 egg white 1 ripe banana 2 tbsp (soup spoons) of oat flakes Cinnamon Preparation : Put all the ingredients in a blender and mix well until you get a homogenous paste; Pour each serving into a non-stick frying pan and cook both sides; Serve with honey, jam, fresh fruit or whatever you like. And there it is! Super quick and easy , I had mine simple accompanied by my coffee and almond milk almost an hour ago and I am still full! Hope you enjoy!

As I mentioned earlier , my interesting activity for the day was baking a cake with my mom! It turned out to be a very quick and easy (and super tasty) recipe, so I decided that it would be a good idea to share it. I know I have some viewers from the USA so I’ll try to mention the different measures used in a way most people can understand. Here we go! Ingredients : 2 cups of flower 1 cup of sugar 1 tea spoon of ferment 1 tbsp (soup spoon) of corn starch 3 whole eggs 1 cup of oil 3 medium-size carrots Preparation : Pre-heat your oven to 180ºC (356ºF); Put the eggs, oil and carrots in a blender and pulp it; Mix the pulp with the rest of the ingredients in a bowl; Add a pinch of salt and some cinnamon; Bake for ~25 minutes. This was the result! The cake came out very fluffy and tasty and it was a success here at home (it’s almost gone!).

In order to maintain some sort sanity, an important aspect of quarantine is keeping a routine . If you’re one of those people at home with “nothing to do” it can be easy to fall into that bed-couch-bed pattern, with some food brakes in between, which is not healthy for your mind nor your body and eventually you’ll end up feeling bored and frustrated. A planner can be a great ally for this. At the moment, I’m writing in my planner things like “Have breakfast”, “Brush teeth”, “Take a shower”, “Tidy up bedroom”. It might seem silly but since we are at home it’s easy to sometimes let go of those little things we do every day to take care of ourselves, so the planner is always there to keep you accountable . And the act of ticking every single one of your plans for the day, no matter how silly or simple they sound, we’ll give you a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day. You won’t have the feeling of “I did nothing today”. Don’t get me wrong, doing nothing is absolutely neces...

Staying away from loved ones is probably the hardest part of this quarantine. You might be lucky if you live with family or friends, but some people are completely on their own. Of course, today people are just a click away, but nothing can replace that physical, personal contact. I live with my parents. Sometimes I think I would rather live alone, at the moment, because I’m scared of going out and bringing the virus home with me and infecting my parents. Specially my dad, since he is in the risk group because of chronic disease. However, I think that at the end of the day, having someone to talk to in person and just hang out keeps me sane and makes me feel safer for some reason. Loneliness is something that many people might be experiencing right now, and even though people can stay in contact, at night, when there’s nothing there to do but think, is hard not to think about your friends, your family, your significant other... I miss my boyfriend, a lot. We live separately...

Yesterday, the Portuguese government presented the measures that are to be in effect during this emergency state. They created different rules for 3 groups of people: Infected people or people that suspect being infected, 70+ year old people and the rest of the population . I fit in the latter category, therefore I can circulate outside if I’m going to work, to assist a family member, to buy essential things or medicine or to exercise. Of course, all of these activities must be done with care and concern for ourselves and others. In general, I think the measures that were presented to us are not very strict and are feasible for now. Depending on future developments, these rules might need to be revised. All I hope for is that people respect what is being asked of them and to take in consideration everyone around them. That’s the only way we are going to be able to overcome these darker times. Now more than ever, we have to be united . Yesterday I was also able to ch...

It’s technically day 2 for me but yesterday I did absolutely nothing. Today I felt like it would be a good idea to start writing down what’s going on in my life and country with this pandemic. Yesterday, here in Portugal , the government decided to implement the State of Emergency . This means that we lose some of our rights as citizens, but it is ultimately for a good cause. We won’t be able to walk around freely as we wish, we’ll need good, documented reason to leave our houses (unless we need to buy essential goods or medicine) and I think that this was a necessary measure to take. I mean, even with everything we see on the news, they were refusing to shut down shopping centers, airports and other things that allowed crowds and gatherings. On the day they announced that we could go on voluntary quarantine , loads and loads of people went to the beach. Now there is not whats, ifs and buts. Everyone stays home, everything shuts down. This is the only way to get rid of th...