SoCS 22/10/16 - Holiday time!

This week's prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “ho.” Find a word with the two letters–“ho”–in that order, and use it in your post. Enjoy!


If you want to join the fun link your post  HERE at this week’s prompt page either by pingback or posting your link in the comments so others can find it and see your awesome Stream of Consciousness post. Anyone can join in!
Full rules are listed at the bottom of this post.
Thanks to Linda G. Hill for hosting.

It’s holiday time.  Well a school holiday anyway –it’s half term break here in the UK.  I used to live my life around school holidays, wanting them to come and then sad they were over and already looking forward to the next one.

I don’t have to do that anymore but having a teacher in the house (my daughter-in-law) I still know when it’s holiday time.  Her mood lifts for starters (although she’s usually quite an upbeat person anyway), we get offers of cooking, (we had a lovely big cooked breakfast this morning) and there’s usually a frantic clean up of their bedroom. (The dust has been flying today too.)

It’s sad in a way that we seem to wish our lives away especially as it’s not like she doesn’t enjoy her job.  I enjoyed mine too but we did seem to cram at least a week and a half into every week so by the time the holidays come around you feel exhausted and ready for the break. 

What’s really scary though is the next holiday will be the Christmas break.  I’m feeling more in control of that now I’m not working but it’s still coming around faster than I would like.  I’m not prepared enough yet to be in Ho Ho Ho mood.



Thanks for reading.  If you want join in  here are the rules:
1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.
2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.
3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” “Begin with the word ‘The’,” or simply a single word to get your started.
4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people can come and read your post! For example, in your post you can write “This post is part of SoCS:” and then copy and paste the URL found in your address bar at the top of this post into yours.  Your link will show up in my comments for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top. NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, such as Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.
5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.
6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!
7. As a suggestion, tag your post “SoCS” and/or “#SoCS” for more exposure and more views.
8. Have fun!

Friday's Fave Five 21/10/16

It's Friday so it's time to join in with Suzanne's Friday's Fave Five. 
 
It's a place to come on Fridays and think back over your week and just post about 5 favourite things from your week. It can be anything that tickled your fancy over the week. Favourite quotes, posts, happenings, scriptures, recipes, pictures, great internet finds, etc., etc.

If you want to take part or visit other Fave Five posts, click on the picture above to go to host Suzanne's site and check out the linky list.

Here are mine for this week:

1.  Moving forward with decorating our spare room.  It's still a work in progress but we're moving in the right direction.

2.  Catch up TV - I love being able to catch up on things I've missed. (And having the time to do it.)

3.  Parking zone.  Our street is soon to be part of a parking zone - they started painting the lines on the road and erecting signs this week.  Since another zone was introduced near our station we've had lots of extra cars parking in our street.  Making our area a parking zone should make it easier to find a space to park.  We will need a permit for our car but the first permit per household is free so there will be no cost to us.  We will have to buy visitor permits for when we have visitors but I think overall it will be better.

4.  Lunch with friends.  It was Ana's turn to host today and she provided a lovely lunch - winter soup to start, followed by a pasta dish with salad and then a lemon drizzle cake with blueberries, raspberries and a salted caramel sauce.  It was all delicious and washed down nicely with a glass (or 2) of wine.

5.  Some lovely family news - our niece's baby, Poppy, who has had a nasal feeding tube for a while now, will get a permanent tube fitted directly into her stomach next week.  This will make things so much easier for them, especially as Poppy is becoming an expert at pulling the tube out and that means a trip to the hospital every time to get it reinserted.

Have a good weekend all.

Time for Me! 20/10/16

Well I did eventually put my underwear on today, and top clothes, (I needed to get out and shop for dinner) but I decided that today was going to be a "Me" day.
We've been decorating on and off since Saturday, 2 coats of paint on the ceiling, 2 coats on the walls plus popping out for more supplies and ordering the carpet.  Tiring work when you've not done it for a while so today was designated as a day of rest and just pleasing myself.

Of course it's hard to completely rest when you realise the laundry basket is rather full, and the dishwasher needs emptying and oh there's some rubbish to be cleared up.  But there were breaks in between for blogging, reading etc.

We'll resume painting at the weekend.  I'm aiming to get it finished at the weekend so the paint has plenty of time to dry before the carpet is fitted.

I'm fortunate that I have a hubby who likes shopping.  I don't have to drag him to the shops.  In fact he'll often go off to do shopping on his own.  We even managed to agree on some carpet fairly quickly.  Just curtains and bedding and accessories to go!

The carpet is due to be fitted on 31st October and our first guests arrive on 4th November.  Sounds like I'm opening for business but of course this is just for friends and family but these first guests are actually friends of our son and daughter-in-law so I do want things to be as nice as possible.  We will also be welcoming DIL's Aunt and Uncle from America here in April next year so no pressure!

I spent part of today trying to find an anniversary gift for my daughter and her wife.  It's their first anniversary next week.  Their first year seems to have flown by.  Finding a suitable gift proved difficult.  I found a lovely record book for anniversaries that I thought would be a nice thing to keep but, fortunately, I spotted that on the page for recording things like where they met etc. there was a reference to "her" version of how they met and then "his" version.  Hmm, perhaps not such a good idea.

Thankfully I did find a site that had quite a few gifts suitable for same sex couples and hopefully the gift I've chosen will be delivered in time.  I also got a few ideas for Christmas presents so not totally a me day after all.  Actually, once you're married and have a family I think it's hard, but definitely not impossible, to have a totally "me" day.  It just takes a bit of planning and probably works best when away from home.

Wednesday Hodgepodge 19/10/16

Wednesday's Hodgepodge is brought to us courtesy of Joyce at 

 From this side of the pond

 Pop over there to see other posts and if you want to join in add the link to your Hodgepodge blog post to the Linky List at the end of Joyce's post and don’t forget to visit at least your neighbours on the list.

Have fun!

1. What would you say is your strongest sense?
I think I would have to say sight.  My husband will claim I don’t listen, my sense of smell is pretty average, I’m definitely not a food connoisseur and I’m not particularly touchy feely.  But I am quite observant and having 2 close relatives who are blind has made me realise how much we take for granted sometimes.

2. Do you believe in the idea of a 'sixth sense'? Why or why not?
Not particularly.
3. When do you most feel like a slave to time? Explain.
Mainly if I’m working against a deadline.  Fortunately, as a non worker, most deadlines these days are self imposed so they are easier to adjust!
4. Have you ever worked in a restaurant? How would you rate the experience? If you could own a restaurant what kind would it be?
The nearest I’ve come to working in a restaurant was working on a food stall at a major football ground.  I don’t think I’d want to own a restaurant – the hours can be pretty hard.  I’d prefer a tea shop with lots of yummy cakes on hand.
5. Ever traced your family tree? Share something interesting you learned there.
The family tree on my Dad’s side is a bit complicated.  When his parents split up he went with his Father to Yorkshire, his Mother stayed in Wales.  His father subsequently remarried and there were step-siblings and half-siblings brought into the equation.  We knew his half-siblings but his step-sister had a rather chequered past and contacts were severed with the welsh side of the family.

Unfortunately I was only 22 when my Dad died so we never spent much time discussing it.  Part of me would like to research this, but part of me feels that maybe it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie as this early part of Dad’s life was not particularly happy – he was working in a coal mine at 14 with his Dad and joined the army as soon as he could to escape that.  Then WW2 broke out and he was one of the soldiers rescued from Dunkirk.

6. What did your childhood bedroom look like?
I had a thing about purple and Donny Osmond.  I’m sure you can conjure up a picture of it!
7. Anyone who knows me knows I love chocolate.

8. Insert your own random thought here.

Well I’m a slave to time at the moment – we are continuing with the redecoration of one of the spare bedrooms.  It has to be ready for 4^th November when we have guests coming to stay.  I should be putting a second coat of paint on the walls today but I seem to be blogging procrastinating! (I'm good at that.)