A Wednesday Waffle in lieu of Hodgepodge

Well apart from Book Reviews and regular memes like the Hodgepodge and Friday’s Fave Five, my blog still seems a little bit neglected lately.  Today being Wednesday usually means a Hodgepodge post but as Joyce is taking a break this week I was determined the day wouldn’t go by without a post of some sort.

Hopefully Joyce will have some exciting news to share with us soon as she is waiting to become a Grandmother any day now.  

Having become a Grandmother myself back at the end of March I can relate to that.  I’m slightly surprised at how doting I am on Nathan.  Maybe that’s because I was there at his birth, or because of the bumpy ride he’s had or maybe I’ll be this soppy about all my grandchildren.  Time will tell but I’m loving every minute of it down to changing stinky nappies!

The blanket I promised for him is almost finished.  Just the edging to complete.  I’ve already bought wool and have a pattern lined up for the next one.  Nathan’s early arrival ruined my schedule for completing this one but hopefully if I get started on the next one soon it’ll be ready for the next arrival.  None expected at the moment but I’m always open to baby surprises especially now that all the kids are married and (apart from one) settled in their homes.

The couple who live with us are away for 2 weeks at the moment visiting her parents in the US so I’m taking advantage of not having to worry about their meals and re-doing the South Beach Diet.  The first two weeks are pretty strict but after that it should be fairly easy to fit in with meals for all of us.

I prepared in advance for this – working out a 2 week meal plan and shopping for the food we’d need as you can see:

Of course nothing goes to plan!  The first day had to be switched as I’d mistakenly put chicken in the freezer instead of the fridge and on day 2 we visited with Nathan and our daughter and went out for lunch.  I was fairly good though and just had a chicken salad.  (We’ll pretend I didn’t touch the streaky bacon or croutons!)

Alongside that I’m also trying to get my step count up – or at least back to the target I originally set myself.  So far so good this week.  Fortunately, although my knee is not great on stairs and I can’t do anything weight bearing on it at the moment walking is fine.

A friend commented that I didn’t need to diet but when your scales keep telling you your weight is increasing it’s time to call a halt. My problem is that I have such a sweet tooth so I’ll always choose sweet over savoury but not for the time being. 

Anyway plenty going on to keep me busy – I’ve even managed to get more reading done the past couple of weeks.  Trouble is once I get stuck into a book that I find hard to put down everything else gets put on the back burner.  I’m going to try restricting reading until I get to bed but that will mean going to bed earlier otherwise I’ll be reading a few pages and falling asleep!  But that will mean less time for watching TV and catching up on all the programmes I’ve recorded!

I used to say that for every child you had the day seemed to shorten by an hour.  Well none of my kids are children anymore but the days still seem short.  How did I ever manage to work full time?