Lazing on a Sunday afternoon!

Well I am definitely having a lazy day today.  I started to write the title thinking well it's almost afternoon only to notice it already was!

We were babysitting Nathan last night.  He was quite good for us considering he is being very clingy to his Mummies at the moment, especially my daughter.  I think he is picking up on the vibes re moving house.  It's a stressful time for them.  Added to that my daughter cannot pick him up and carry him as much at the moment because of her ankle injury so that isn't helping.

However he didn't cry too much when they left (for an anniversary party) and he let us bath him.  Then Grandpa read him some stories and then Nanny lay with him while he went to sleep.  That took quite a LONG time.  He doesn't put himself to sleep very quickly but we got there eventually.

He slept for several hours but then stirred and realised Mummy wasn't there.  He was happy to accept Nanny as a substitute but he slept very lightly after that and everytime I tried to ease myself away his hand would reach out or he'd lift his head and cry so I just gave in and stayed put until his Mummies came home.

Sooo it was a late night for us (early morning actually) so today is going to be very lazy.  Need to recharge the batteries ready for Rory tomorrow.  He is almost walking.  He can stand up from the floor now without holding on to anything so it won't be long before those first steps.  You might think I'll have my work cut out keeping up with him then but actually he can crawl REALLY FAST! Keeping up with him is already a challenge.

This was him standing up while we were away last weekend.  He was very pleased with himself before he fell over.

It's much cooler here today which is nice and it rained overnight so that saved me worrying about watering the garden.  I'm trying to keep the garden watered to keep it looking good, especially the new plants and window boxes but when overnight rain does the job for me I'm not complaining.

I've been trying to plan out the week ahead, particularly meals.  We're back to a Hello Fresh delivery this week so that takes care of a 3 dinners but I still have to think about today and one other meal during the week.  I've also got a supermarket shop being delivered tomorrow so I need to tweak that order a bit but I'm feeling very organised!  It probably won't last but it feels good right now.

Now I'm off to catch up on some TV!

Ups, Ups and downs

Don't you just love it when things go to plan or are easier than you think they're going to be?

Today I chased (again) the company that supplied our fridge.  We've only had the fridge since the end of March but already we have had 4 engineer visits and were waiting on a call back to fit a part.  This has been an ongoing saga and I will admit to not being very prompt at chasing things.  But this was getting ridiculous.

I was supposed to have received a call back yesterday but having heard nothing today I began by asking to speak to a Manager.  I was duly connected to a very reasonable man who eventually agreed with me that the fridge does not actually seem fit for purpose and should be exchanged.  I was expecting to have to fight my corner and I hate confrontation, even over the phone, so I was pleased that the matter has finally (hopefully) been resolved.  I just have to contact the orginal retailer to arrange the replacement.

Next I decided to return the recent items I bought for Nathan to the store.  We realised that they will still be too big for him when we go to Australia so it would be better to have a smaller size.  Well I hunted high and low for the receipt.  I don't know what I did with it as I know I had it recently and I'm usually very organised with them but today it seemed to have vanished into thin air.  I spent ages looking and in the end decided to hope it wouldn't be a problem, especially as all the tags were still on the clothes.  Well it was absolutely fine and they had all the 4 items in the smaller size so another job done.

I did a few more bits of shopping, including buying the latest John Grisham book out in paperback.  I don't buy many books these days but I needed to buy one for a book swap I'm doing and it was buy one get one half price.  Would be silly not to wouldn't it? 

I finished up by picking up something for dinner and then headed home.  That was when it went downhill.   The drive home was slow and frustrating, mainly because I forgot about the temporary traffic lights near our house that caused a hold up and potential road rage when some drivers were really impatient and irresponsible. Note to self  "Avoid that route when possible!"

A busy few days....

It’s been a busy few days since I last blogged.  

On Saturday I got up early to get my hair done.  Just as well I did as I’d planned to get the train there and when I went online to check the train times I discovered I would have to go by bus as the trains weren’t stopping at my local station due to engineering works!  That meant a quick hike down to the bus stop to avoid being late.

Having been restored to my unnatural colour I headed off to my daughter’s to feed her cat.  I can’t have cuddle time with her cat as she’s not that friendly but she will sit next to me on the sofa and let me fuss her so I made do with that while I had my lunch there.  I miss my cat around the house.  Once home it was a quick meal and change before heading out to our local social club for a friend’s 60^th birthday.  It was a lively evening.  Hubby played guitar with a few others and then there was a DJ session which involved some dancing and we finally left to walk home at about 1 am.

It would have been nice to have just relaxed on Sunday but my youngest son had invited himself and his wife for Sunday lunch, which was fine as we hadn’t seen them since they’d both got back from the US (visiting her family) but we also offered to have Nick’s Mum for lunch as his sister had been invited out for the day so that meant a trip to Brentwood to get her and then a trip to take her back again.  At least our diesel fuelled car is getting a few longs runs lately.

On Monday my daughter wanted to go shopping for wedding shoes but she also wanted to visit her aunt and grandma so that ended up taking up most of my day and she didn’t get any shoes!

Yesterday I met my “lunch ladies” plus a former work colleague who now works in New York but who’s over here visiting family members.  That was really nice.  Lots to catch up on over a nice lunch at a Greek restaurant.

Today I had a former work colleague here for breakfast, which ended up being more like brunch as she was running late.

Tomorrow I’m off to my sister-on-law’s to help her pack for our family holiday and then hopefully I’ll be home in time to get my own packing done.

In between all this I have been working on my scrapbook WIP.   Which I’m pleased to say is almost finished!  It took a lot longer than I anticipated but I am pleased with it.  I’ve stuck in all the 60 memories that were collected and there’s still some space for photos that were taken on the day.  I need to get them printed but I wanted to have the book ready for our family gathering as so many people have said they want to read the memories.  Some are quite funny and some are just such accurate observations of hubby’s habits and mannerisms.  The picture above shows the WIP.  Note the cup of tea but also the empty wine glass!  I'll try and get some photos of the finished project later.

Now I’m catching up on blogs and off to look at the Hodgepodge.

Successful shopping

Well I braved Westfield today and managed to get the paper cutter I wanted.  I also got gold and silver inked pens to use in the scrapbook - it has black pages so they should contrast nicely on those.  I've become quite a savvy shopper since we've come down to one income.  I noticed a coupon in our Saturday paper for £5 off if you spent £12 in W H Smiths so guess where I got the paper cutter from?

I expected the shopping centre to be more manic than it was as it's school holidays and I didn't get there very early.  Rain was forecast for this afternoon so I wanted to get the washing done before I set off which meant it was almost lunchtime when I got to the shops.  It wasn't actually that bad and it helped that I knew exactly what I wanted and where to get it.

Paper cutter and pens - tick

Birthday present for D-I-L - tick

Watering can  - tick

Milk, onions and marmalade - tick

I had tick symbols next to those when I typed this in word but they didn't translate when I posted here. :(

I took the bus there and back as parking is quite expensive so I did what felt like quite a bit of walking, especially as the watering can had to be bought from a shop in the old Stratford shopping centre.  I was pleased to see quite a lot of people there though as, when Westfield was built just across the way, I did worry that the old centre would decline.  But they are two quite different shopping centres and both seem to be thriving.  I was disappointed to find though, that despite trekking there and back by bus and walking between the centres I only managed to clock up about 2 miles of walking.  But that’s 2 more than I would have done had I stayed home.

I have been quite lazy this afternoon though, just getting the washing dry and looking at properties online.  My daughter is flat hunting at the moment and she sent me details of a flat she was going to view.  Well that flat led to another …..and another…..it’s scary how easy it is to fritter away time looking at things on the internet.  But being lazy means I don’t get so hungry which is good when you’re trying to diet.  I lost 3 pounds last week so that’s a good incentive to keep trying to be good!