No more dreaded Mondays

It’s the end of a long and tiring week for me. I consider Mondays my ‘end of week’ now rather than Sunday and thank goodness I have it free today. 

Last week I covered someone at work while she was on holiday as well as doing my own job. Thursday and Friday I was visiting a client in Durham so had to work on trains and in a hotel room, although I managed to squeeze a trip to Durham cathedral in so I could light a candle in memory of my mother. 

The next day, Saturday, I drove to Thame to scatter her ashes with my father and sister on her birthday (and discovered the most beautiful damask rose bush to pop her under). Sunday I went with Martin to look after his stall at a model aircraft swap meet. 

I’m shattered frankly. I’ve been awake before 6am every morning, and when I’ve eventually got to sleep I’ve tossed and turned and not stayed asleep. My sleep pattern is dreadful at the moment because I am stressed.

But thank goodness for Mondays. I had a nice lie in this morning until 8am and now I have lots of energy to get done the things I want to accomplish. I've changed MIL's bed and washed the sheets, then cooked up a batch of egg shells to grind up in the chicken feed for extra calcium. 

Shortly, I'll be tackling a job that's been annoying me - I am drowning in blankets, throws, duvets, fleeces, patchwork quilts, bedspreads, eiderdowns and curtains. There are piles in every room. I’ve taken in a lot from Martin’s aunt’s house and some of my mother’s items and now I’m inundated. I need to sort out the ones to be washed, get those done and then fold up the rest and get them away in the airing cupboard. That is in a dreadful state as well so I have to sort that out before anything can go in. I’ll hopefully end up releasing more stuff for the charity shop and making some room. 

Later on this afternoon I am potting up a load of tomato plants and cucumbers for the greenhouse. Martin found a greenhouse for £50. Bless him, he spent all week clearing the space for it, painting the wall and putting it up. It’s a bit rough and ready but as long as it protects the plants and keeps them a bit warm it doesn’t matter. 

Because I feel more rested with three days off I'm now spending the time doing more cooking, rather than throwing quick meals at people. Dinner tonight is a nice pork joint, but previous weeks I've done lamb shanks and a vegetable lasagne. 

After that I'm doing some studying for my herbal course and reading some of my new books. Last week I decided to add some vintage books on frugality/simple living to my collection. Every now and then I get a £25 voucher from work for something I’ve done well so that's been burning a hole in my pocket for a few weeks.

I was particularly pleased to find good copies of books by enthusiastic and penny-pinching cook Shirley Goode written in the 80's. Although she is no longer with us, she left behind a great legacy  - she had a blog where she talked about all sorts of ways to reduce household spending on food (among other topics). I've read it all before but will be going back through again. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. I also have The Farmhouse Kitchen Cookbook after finding a couple of vintage episodes of The Farmhouse Kitchen on YouTube. It only dawned on me recently that the woman who hosted it was Scottish and not from Yorkshire at all. 

I’ve also discovered a wonderful YouTube channel, courtesy of Rhonda over at Down to Earth, featuring a lovely Turkish couple cooking outdoors in all weathers. There’s no talk, it’s just the sights and sounds of their activities, which is amazingly soothing and fascinating. Her chopping blade is something else! 

So tonight I will round off my day and relax watching an episode.

I used to dread Mondays. Now I look forward to them 😊

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Steel Kitten

Time flies....

Three months. A whole three months since I updated. In fact it's three and a half months. Wow. What happened there?

Well, what happened was my work took off and I've been doing early mornings and late nights since about March 5. This is the first year of the new job and I knew it got busy in March, April and May but had never experienced it from this perspective before. It's all come to a screeching halt and now everyone rests and there are gaps in the day to sit on patio and drink tea, maybe even read a book. 

Unsurprisingly, there's been a lot of other stuff happening here. 

Martin turned 60 and decided to throw a birthday party. We hired a marquee and port-a-loos, had a hog roast, bit of music and Martin's close family and friends came. We could only have 30 people due to lockdown rules, which was a shame as he had to do a priority list, which was horribly difficult to do and some people took offence at. It couldn't be helped. Martin is part of lots of hobby clubs and has friends stretching back 45 years so didn't want to choose far flung family we only see at weddings and funerals in preference to people he sees daily/weekly. Lockdown has really changed friendships and relationships, although I believe it is for the best. If they have broken down during the worst times they're probably not good strong connections anyway.

And, in typical fashion around here, at the same time as turning 60 Martin suddenly decided to retire! All of our biggest decisions usually happen suddenly. The thing is, I'd already done the sums and knew he could, even without the possibility of early voluntary retirement or inheritances, but he was adamant he could do another couple of years on the basis of 'every little helps' and all that. That was until he found out one of his oldest friends has terminal liver cancer at 62 and was given 3-6 months to live.  That brought things into sharp relief.  Life is too short. The time between finding out abut his friend and writing his resignation letter was a mere 24hs. So, Martin finished work - forever - on Saturday 29th May and then I had a week off so we could spend it together. Sadly, his friend died a few days ago, just six weeks after diagnosis and before he and Martin could do a lot of the things they had planned together for the summer. 

At work I was promoted out of my trainee status to fully-trained. Because of everything around the reasons for Martin retiring, I have compressed my working week into four longer days and now no longer work Mondays. That extra day is mine to embrace more frugal occupations to help us get me retired earlier, such as making items we usually buy (bread, cakes, biscuits), growing more of our own food, reading and doing courses I'm interested in. At the moment I'm part of the way through a herbalism course. 

MIL is still with us has and just had her second hip replacement. Because of COVID she wasn't able to start the NHS process for getting one done so she was almost incapacitated, and the waiting list was a year. If you can't walk unaided to the bathroom you're flirting close to the point of no return. We persuaded her to raid her savings and go private, which she didn't want to do but that's what her savings are for - to help her live comfortably in retirement. She's 87 so there's no point leaving it sitting in her bank account. Also, it helps reduce the NHS list by one more person so those who can't afford to go private will get there a little bit sooner. 

In April we hired a van and drive to Southend to clear Martin's late aunt's house. She was a keen gardener so we inherited an entire Luton van of garden stuff, including a sweet little potting shed, which we put up in place of most of the strawberry boxes. I love pottering in there...

Most of the strawberries in the beds were reaching the end of their useful life anyway so I potted up some younger ones and dotted them around the place, which will give us some nice fruit this year, and we will get some new plants off them later this year. I'm hoping to get another six troughs attached to the pergola next year with the new plantlets that will be put out by the runners. 

Lots more has happened but it will be too long a post so I'll split it down and tackle some topics every week. I will try and make Mondays my day to update the blog from now on. Part of the reason for having a blog is to keep a diary of sorts and I need to pick that habit back up.

Time seems to be passing so fast I'm losing track of how we're spending it.

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Steel Kitten