Happy Sunday all!

I'm sitting here with my third cup of tea writing the coming week's to do list. I usually have two lists, one for the week and one for the weekend, and the weekly one is split into work and personal tasks. 

There was a time I'd get upset if I couldn't complete everything on every list, now I'm a bit more mature and relaxed and split the list into priorities. It won't hurt if washing the inside door mat is bumped to another day but it could hurt us if I don't check the credit card for errors or scammers' activity. 

If the adverts are to be believed Christmas is almost upon us, which translated from retail speak means it is absolute eons away. Is anyone else fed up that autumn seems to have been completely disregarded, like an inconvenience to be rushed through to get to the glitter and spangles? It's like the message of mindfulness that was started on social media during the first lockdown has been completely forgotten. 

Don't get me wrong I am shopping for Christmas presents, I like to be prepared after all, but I'm not putting up decorations or filling the house up with festive paraphernalia. I'm trying to appreciate the colours and smells of autumn, enjoying toasting my toes in front of the log burner and the clear crisp nights with visible stars. I've switched over the summer textiles to our autumn/winter coloured ones. I'm cutting up logs and stashing kindling. The boiler is serviced, the oil is topped up, the radiators tested and sticky thermostats fixed. My summer clothes are packed away and the autumn ones are out. 

At the same time I'm slowly building my prepping stores, as I have some concerns about what January and Brexit will bring. Any hold ups at the ports will impact on fresh goods coming in from abroad so I have been adding a few bits of frozen, tinned and dried fruit and veg to my shopping for some time now, and making some freezer store meals. I've also been drying some tomatoes and mushrooms, as I've found them nice additions to simple meals. We have a few leeks in the garden and some root veg, which will help plump a few meals out, and of course our freezers are full of meat and veg from our previous livestock and harvests.

With mum gone and COVID and lockdowns making it difficult to see family, Christmas won't be a massively festive affair for me. It will be quiet and reflective, a time to appreciate what I still have.

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Steel Kitten

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

As Christmas Day is almost upon us, I thought I would wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and thank you all for still coming by to visit, even when I haven't been around much to post.

It's not been a great year for me, but I can see light at the end of the tunnel and am looking forward with a new sense of optimism to 2020. It's the start of a new decade, and somehow that fill me full of hope.

Today will be a quiet one, very little work is waiting for me in my inbox so I'll tidy, clean a bit and make some plans for the New Year. I'm quite liking this post on MSE; 20 things to accomplish in 2020 So I'm going to sit here and have a think about what I could do to join this challenge.

So, have a wonderful time everyone and I'll see you again soon.

xxSteelkittenxx

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Steel Kitten

Morning all!

So, I'm back. I'm feeling stronger, a lot wiser and ready to post again with some semblance of regularity. I'm still pretty tired, but that comes and goes in waves and I'm more relaxed than I have been in years.

First order of the day - Fleagle. We're very sad that she is gone and miss her very much: she was a funny cat with very human ways and her loss opened up a gap in our lives. Georgie was obviously missing Fleagle too, much to our surprise as we thought they never really got along but it appears that having another cat in the house made him feel secure. He was very clingy with us, off his food, and kept going round and round the house yowling and looking for her. He stopped going outside for anything more than a sniff of the wind and suddenly started to shadow us from room to room.

We never planned to get another cat so soon, but one thing led to another and we had the opportunity to adopt a three year old Maine Coon called Snowy. Her owner was moving from the Midlands to a small flat in London and wanted to find her somewhere rural so she could have a better life than she would have if she went with him.

We weren't sure how Georgie would take to another cat; with him being deaf and also losing his sense of smell we thought introductions would be tough. However, within a week of having Snowy he is relaxed once more, going outside for longer periods and scoffing food again. They're not 100% relaxed in each other's company but they are able to sit about a foot away from each other without incident and sniff noses occasionally. We have plenty of catnip to hand to make sure every interaction is a positive one so they build up trust.

Snowy is very timid and addicted to tuna in brine, which we are going to have to work hard to replace as it is no good for cats as anything other than an occasional treat. They need a complete food with plenty of taurine. Already after a week her playfulness and loving nature are shining through. She is extremely inquisitive and once she finds her feet, she's going to be a beautiful little terror! She knows that she is on Georgie's territory and he is the boss, which helps with the introductions enormously. When Georgie arrived on our doorstep in 2007 he was the opposite and he tried to take over, only to be repeatedly slapped down by Sophie and Fleagle. He never stopped trying. It's only taken him 12 years to be Head of the Feline Household :)

The pigs and sheep have gone to the abattoir so I now have four freezers full to them brim with meat, which should last us around 18 months.  The sheep went in June and the pigs last Monday. We won't now have any more animals until 2021. The pigs were pedigree Oxford Sandy and Blacks and were tremendous diggers, so much so we feared for the trees, but they produced some great lean meat.

I was very strict with weighing their dried food, after the last lot of pigs had kilos of excess fat due to me mismanaging this aspect. They also had all the grass, apples, pears and acorns they could stuff themselves with, plus the odd slice of bread as a treat. I kept my distance and did not get too attached, and the trip to the abattoir was as good as it gets. Everyone was friendly and calm, and they simply walked down the ramp and into their pen without any fear or fuss. I was so grateful to the abattoir staff who were exceptionally kind and professional.

The rest of the smallholding is in a bit of a state. Being so tired I just don't have the energy to do more than the basics but the wildlife will thrive on my neglect so there's a silver lining there.

I've been focusing on my physical and mental health and wellbeing. I've managed to lose 10lbs by walking for a minimum of 45 minutes 5-6 times a week, so I fit better in my clothes, and I'm making sure I spend less time doing chores and more time doing things I enjoy.

I'm knitting Martin a jumper, getting back into baking and cooking, doing some painting by numbers and lots of reading.  And of course, bargain snuffling.

I even managed a trip to Cyprus with my sister. Here's me fishing off the back of a boat near Larnaca. I was up the competitive end with a load of Russian men and I caught a fish. They didn't :) 

So all in all, still ticking along :)

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Steel Kitten

Throwing caution to the wind

So, a big thing is happening in January. Huge. We're going on holiday. Yes, I know. Doesn't sound big really does it? But for us a holiday is always a big thing as it has happened so rarely and this one is huge. Australia. Yep, we're going to Australia in January for three weeks! For the most part we'll be staying in Cairns as we both want to do a lot of adventure stuff and then we have a few days with a friend in Melbourne.

We very rarely take holidays so for this to come about, and so quickly in the last month, is nothing short of a miracle. A few things came together all in one go and we made the decision to throw caution to the wind and go for it.

1. We've thought about visiting Australia for years but there's always been something stopping us. Normally Martin's work. His last office refused all leave for longer than two weeks and anything longer than a week had to be granted special permission by a not-so-nice office manager, who rarely, if ever granted it. We'd given up the idea years ago but never thought to ask after he moved to this new office. The idea came up again, he checked and the new office said "no problem, enjoy yourself". Woohoo!

2. MIL will be 85 next Spring and is relatively healthy, but she will not fly anywhere and cannot sit in a car for longer than a couple of hours. When she starts to decline, decent holidays may not be able to happen for a long time if she needs nursing care.

3. My BIL has temporarily moved to the area, so he can keep an eye on MIL if we go away. She doesn't need a lot of looking after but doesn't like to be left alone at night so BIL can stay and make sure she is ok. The cats won't take to catteries for the first time at the advanced age of 14 so this means they can stay in the house. Come next March BIL may be moving elsewhere and it gets that much harder to achieve a holiday at all.

4. Brexit has had an odd effect on me lately. It occurred to me that if Brexit prompts a recession then my instinct to batten down the hatches may mean we will end up not taking a holiday for a few years to ensure we achieve our retirement goals instead. Therefore ideally we need to do this sooner rather than later.

5. Affording it. We achieved our savings goal for the year, made the last payment into the accounts for 2018 on 1st December ( I make sure we pay ourselves first every month and make do on the rest). Our saving account is healthy and can stand the expense.

However,  all my intentions to pay for it flew out of the window when it actually came to getting the money out of the savings account. I cannot bring myself to see that wad of cash disappear yet. I've scoured the market for a credit card that offered 0% interest for 18 months and put the cost of the holiday onto there for now.

Until the moment when I had to pay for it, I had been delighted to have the money saved and made all preparations to transfer it across, but I suddenly turned into Fraser from Dad's Army in The Miser's Hoard (s9 ep4), where he counts out his gold sovereigns and rubs his hands. I just couldn't do it. I'd rather spread the cost interest-free than see a large chunk of cash disappear in one go. It hurts less!

I'm not sure whether that is a good instinct or a bad one. I suppose it would be a bad one if I was incurring interest payments but no interest for 18 months just seems like a bit of a gift really so we can keep that liquid cash for emergencies and pay off the holiday in regular chunks.

So, I'm finding it a bit difficult to concentrate on Christmas at the moment. I want it to be over so I can go on holiday!

Photo Credits: Reef, Fraser

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If you've commented on my blog recently and haven't had a response I'm not ignoring you. It appears that blogger has decided my replies are not blog worthy and hasn't bothered to publish them. I only realised this morning that my responses over the last month have not been published and have disappeared from my account entirely. I shall go back and redo them all.

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Steel Kitten