A Mother's Ramblings

I was hoping that this last week would give me a time to relax and recharge and I would be full of life and vigour by the time this weekend rolled round, and ready to be the most amazing whatever it is I am at work. I have had time off this week, I have relaxed and attempted to recharge, but I'm mostly feeling down about whatever injury it is I have done to my right leg and the fact that the nightly walks have turned into a torture session. It's not fair! On top of that, with our Trunk N Treat cancelled, I'm feeling very sorry for myself as I'm missing my annual "It's okay to dress up, as everyone else is!" session. I'll have to go back to cleaning the house in my ballgown or Elsa from Frozen costume!

Flyfour and I love going for an evening walk. We get to be out in the err, dark starlight and see cats foxes and comment on the weather like true British people love to do and occasionally jump out the way as Robots come trundling down the hill intent on killing us whilst we were looking up at the sky to see if it is bats flying above us or some weird birds. There have been a couple of issues though.

We hadn't really talked much about Halloween this year, I mean I'd decided that we'd be doing a few fun things, such as watching a film together, eating a spooky-themed meal and probably going for some kind of spooky walk, but that's normal for Halloween in our house. With the Trunk n' Treat cancelled, I figured we weren't going to be doing anything Halloween wise, no costumes, no trick or treating (although I have purchased plenty of treats for the four of us to split!) the most we were planning really was when Top Ender and I purchased tickets to go to a Drive-in Cinema the night before Halloween to see Beetlejuice.  Then Top Ender asked if I could buy her a couple of items of clothing if I went near Primark during Half Term. A white tank top and a black pleated skirt were all she was after because she needed them for her Halloween costume. Despite a global pandemic, it seems it is business as normal with regards to costume planning. Roughly a week before Hall...

Last week, I took Dan Jon to the hospital for his tri-monthly Diabetic Check-up. Everything is fine, it's just a normal check-in and check-up to make sure that Dan Jon is okay, that we are coping well, to make changes that we need to make to his basal and bolus rates and just making sure that his hbac is going in the right direction! Dan Jon and I had a nice chat on the way. We masked up, headed into the hospital and then we had a good chat with the nurses we knew whilst we were going through the normal check-up items of hbac blood test, blood pressure, height, weight and downloading our data from our handset which we can't do at home because all our PC's are too "new" and so don't work with the downloading programme.

It is finally half term week and I'm super pleased! It isn't because I want to have a week off, mainly because this week I'm going to work a little on a few projects I have planned at work, but because this week I plan on relaxing with my family, I plan on doing a fair bit of tidying in the garden and I have a huge pile of books I want to read! So, here's what we're eating this week.

When we go away, which as you know isn't often, the one thing that always sticks out to Flyfour and I is how much family time we get. The trip to the Lake District, saw us eating at a dining table every mealtime and even though we do eat together at weekends, we realised that there would be much more opportunity to be together at mealtimes if we had a proper dining table area and if we had more seating in the living room, we could all sit comfortably to watch a movie or a TV show together. The only issues are the dining table is in the way of where we would put more seating and the one other place we could put a dining table is an area we refer to as the den.

When we were in the Lake District, we explained to both children that we wanted to make more of our weekends and our time together as a family and that we'd like to further our time together by ensuring that each weekend we went for at least one walk as a family and maybe give us a chance to spot some hidden sights that we wouldn't normally see, like this mural of a Bluetit on the side of a home we saw at the weekend. The children were accepting of our plans, I think mostly because they thought that they would be able to blow off going with us, but Flyfour and I had a plan and nothing was going to stop us, so just before we went to bed we sent a family group whatsapp message informing everyone that a family walk would be taking place the next day and that attendance was mandatory. Flyfour followed this up with a message explaining that there would be a treat halfway though the walk, which did lead the children to think it was a trip to IKEA, but our plan was far more cunning t...

You know that one daydream you have? The one that you return to again and again and each time you build upon it a little more and develop it because you know one day, one day it is going to happen? Well for Flyfour and I that little daydream is building our own home. It's something we've talked about, dreamed about and researched for probably as long as we've been married, but we've never been as close as we might be right now. Several years ago, we did look at plots in Milton Keynes. Every time we drive past them, my heart does a little flutter at the thought of "We could have lived there" until I remember the plots were too expensive and too close to a main road. The ideas didn't stop there. If we couldn't buy an empty plot, why not rebuild our home? Well, for a start it's attached to the one next door and my idea of finding a way to get our next-door neighbours to give us their home and then knocking them down so we could build a house was deeme...

Flyfour and I were talking on our walk the other night about things we had been doing at work that day. We both use the walk, not only as a way to exercise but as a time to use each other as a sounding board, to problem solve and to reassure ourselves that the decisions we made that day were the right choices. As we were discussing the various problems and successes of the day we both came to a sudden realisation. We're grown ups and very mature and adult like. So, with that, it's going to be only serious grown up meals from now on... Okay, you got me there is no way I could ever always be a mature grown up!

The best thing happened in the last week, and I really wanted to share, but first a little bit of preamble. You see because I have a new role at School, I finish thirty minutes earlier and because I finish thirty minutes earlier, it means I can get to Rainbows before it starts (especially if I leave work on time!). With things happening in other leaders lives, it meant that the Rainbows unit attached to the Brownies unit I'm a Brown Owl at needed an extra pair of hands and somehow I volunteered myself. Firstly, I want to lay the blame on Top Ender as it was her who four years ago who started volunteering as a Young Leader in the Girl Guides and three years ago, was helping out at Rainbows and Brownies and two years ago gave me the puppy dog eyes meaning I felt I should volunteer to stop the Brownies unit from having to close because there weren't enough leaders. I'm so pleased that she got me involved. That she used her pester power for good.

Sometimes I'm amazed at how quickly things come together. Flyfour and I started looking for a place to stay in the lake district just a couple of hours after he had mentioned wanting to walk in the rain in the Lake District. I found a converted Church, with three bedrooms in our price range in Kendal and within a couple of hours, we had it booked and Flyfour had worked out which walks we were going to do. Which mean on Friday just gone, we were found whizzing up the M6 to Kendal so that we could enjoy a weekend in the Lake District.

This last week has been fabulously fun. It was my first full week of my new job, I had Youth night and Brownies as normal and even managed to schedule in some time to video chat with my friends. This week is shaping up to be just as great, with lots of family time, an opportunity for the children and I to do some volunteering and of course plenty of time for us to hang out together and do things which are important to us.

Sometimes I say things to Flyfour that means he looks at me a bit weirdly. Then sometimes Flyfour says things to me that confirm to me how much I love him and remind me that I married the man for more than his looks, but definitely not because of how much I influence him! Recently I've been suffering a bit of a Fernweh like feeling, (It's a German word for far sickness, sort of the opposite of homesickness) and I'm pretty sure it's because we had to cancel our trip to Italy earlier this year and with the summer being spent at home I didn't get a chance to have a little bit of an adventure. All I wanted to do was go for a walk at a shopping centre that the family and I have been to a few times, nothing grand but just something that help positive memories for me, and yet Flyfour looked at me as if I were nuts. Then a couple of Saturdays ago, Flyfour explained that he had a craving to go walking in the rain in the lake district, that he wanted to see views and that fin...

Every year the Church I go to runs a Trunk N' Treat on Halloween, or near Halloween if Halloween itself falls upon a Sunday. As a family, we love this tradition and not just because we love being creative and dressing up, well that is part of it, but mostly it's because of the time we spend together in organising our trunk and costumes and then the time we spend together on Halloween itself. It may seem a bit odd that a Christ-centred Church has a Halloween party each year, but it's a great way for the ward (the parish) to come together and have a bit of fun and to invite those who live around the Church building to come and have some fun with us and for some find out a little about us too.  As a Church, we are all about family and this is most definitely a family event. Plus, we're normal people, we like having fun and we like sweets too!

 At the start of lockdown, like most people in the UK, Flyfour and I would go for a walk each day. Actually, we decided to go for a walk each evening as we figured there was less chance of bumping into people and we could guarantee that we'd be free after our evening meal. As lockdown went on, and we were back at work more frequently we slowly fell out of the habit, but then a few weeks ago we somehow mutually agreed, without talking about it, that we should get back into the habit. That we should walk each day we were home and we agreed that we would spend this time talking together, catching up with one another and telling each other about our day and about things we'd heard or seen or had been thinking about and that we'd go even if it was raining. Only it didn't rain on any of the times or days that we were walking (If Flyfour is staying in Bristol, we don't walk together and it did rain on a couple of those evenings) so we were feeling a little lucky.

Another week, another meal plan and another argument over what we're eating! I had organised for us to have Fish Pie on Sunday, but the family decided that they actually wanted Meatball subs... so the meatballs I had purchased for a meal later in the week have gone to that and I've moved the Fish Pie to later in the week because they aren't getting out of it! The weather has turned a little here this week, so I've got a lot of comfort foods, plus a lot of foods that are easy to prepare or can be cooked in the slow cooker during the day because despite having a new job I still seem to stay later than I'm supposed to. Anyway, here's what we're eating this week.

Being the Receptionist at a senior school meant that I got to see all of the deliveries that were coming into school, and was the one that would sign for the huge bouquets of flowers that had been sent to celebrate various loved one's anniversaries or birthdays or even in the case of some, "just because I thought it would be nice". And, well I was a little jealous. Flyfour knew this and so thought he would surprise me with having some flowers delivered to me at work on our anniversary. It was almost my last day as a receptionist, and so he thought it would also be a bit of fun for me to receive a delivery that was for me too!