Weekly Blog - W/E 6th November 2021

This week started very slowly as I got a lovely lie in due to the clocks going back and also due to OH taking the dog for a walk for a change on Sunday.

As a consequence, I had a very chilled day. The only productive things I did were to hang out some laundry and to water all of my houseplants and pot a couple of them on. I also rearranged them and moved some of them around, which I'd been meaning to do for a while.

The rest of the afternoon I spent catching up on YouTube videos and just taking it easy.

I took the dog for an early evening walk at about 4pm, before it got dark and the trick or treaters were out and fireworks set off. We didn't go far.

LB was going out to a Halloween party, so I made a hot pot for OH and I and then we watched a fact based drama called The Trick, about the hacking of selected emails written by climate change scientist Philip Jones. It was really interesting, but also quite thought provoking, bearing in mind where we are today on this issue.

On Monday, I was up and out to the gym. I'd managed to book into the class this week. It was good, but I needed to leave 10 minutes early, as my friend was feeling unwell, so I offered to drive her home. She texted later to say she was feeling better, which was good.

I then went on to do the weekly shop. Prices are rising. I can tell by how much I'm spending each week, even when we don't need a lot of groceries.

In the afternoon, I did a bit of ironing, before taking the dog out for a walk.

Tuesday, I was back at work. The Shop Manager wasn't yet back and wouldn't be until the end of the week, so I couldn't hand over the reins just yet. Anyway, I didn't need to be in until 1pm, so I did a few jobs about the house, one of which had been on my to do list for months and felt very satisfying.

I worked the afternoon only, as I was needed to work two full days later in the week. I had quite a productive afternoon. We don't have many donations of clothes at the moment, so I spent some time finding clothing that had been stored away in different parts of the stockroom, to help replenish the shop.  This also helped to clear some space which was good. 

A former volunteer, who is now managing another shop, dropped in this afternoon, and it was lovely to see her and catch up for a while.  She also brought us a lovely box of chocolates, which was super nice of her. Later, I spent some time pricing hats, scarves and gloves, As the weather has finally turned cold, these things seem to be selling very well now and we have lots of them.

On Wednesday, I was up and out with the dog earlier than I normally am on my days off.  I've been waking very early since the clocks went back. I think my body clock is out of sync. Whilst out, I decided to try to make good use of my time and made a couple of phone calls, to book a dental appointment and some blood tests at the doctors, both of which were long overdue.

I was disappointed to find that I have now been dropped from my dentist's NHS patient list, because I hadn't had a check up in two years. I had no idea that this was the process and had just received my first reminder since Lockdown, that I needed to book a checkup. Typically, this was after the two years were up and I now have to book as a private patient. 

I feel like they have used the Pandemic as an excuse to underhandedly carry out a cull of their NHS patient list, but as it's difficult enough to get any sort of health appointment at the moment, I booked an appointment anyway, making sure to make my disappointment at their behaviour known.

Anyway, this didn't put me in a good mood for the day, so in the afternoon, I decided to try to get myself out of my funk by doing some cleaning. The house has been in a terrible state for months now, as I've just not had the energy on my days off to tackle it, but I needed to make a start sometime or it was never going to get done.

I decided to start in the living room and second reception room, as these are the rooms we relax in at night, so it's nice if they are clean and comfortable, and besides, I'd treated us to a new small rug, but didn't want to put it down until the room was clean. I'd also recently bought some new candles and I motivated myself with the thought of being able to burn one of them once it was done.

I put some records on the record player, to soothe me whilst I worked and off I went. It didn't take too long (2-3 hours) and then I moved out into the hall and vacuumed and mopped there, I cleaned downstairs in the vestibule and the downstairs toilet and I also vacuumed the stairs up to the upstairs landing.  There were quite a few things to relocate to thin things out a bit, but it looked nice and cosy when it was done and I felt much better (although quite tired). 

It feels good to finally give our home a bit of love, as it has been a bit neglected of late and I felt like I'd done something productive on my day off too, which I don't feel has been the case for weeks. I'll try to tackle upstairs and the kitchen later this week or next week, when things have finally got back to normal at work.

On Thursday, I was in work early at 10am, to oversee the collection of unsold stock, which is then distributed to other shops for another chance to be sold.  I had to be there to open the shop and to let the guys in for the sacks. It's not been quite as busy in the shop this week, donations are still low too. To be honest, it gives me a chance to get around to doing other jobs that I never get time to do.  

Today, for example, I took out all the ladies shoes that have been in the shop for more than two weeks and have not sold, and then replaced them with new stock. I also went through the mound of shoes in the stockroom and sent some of it on to other shops and boxed some summer shoes up, to put into storage until the spring. The shoe section now looks much less overwhelming as a consequence.

The Shop Manager is now returning on Saturday, so I was required to work on Friday this week instead of Saturday. Two full working days in a row and cycling to work on both days is tiring, but then I'll get three days off over the weekend.

I set off early to get to work on Friday. The dust bunnies had grown in the week since I had last vacuumed, so I wanted to get in early and run the vacuum cleaner around again. Mornings are cold now when cycling in on my bike and my arms get quite cold. I need to start wearing an extra layer soon.

The day was going okay until I was called up to the shop in the afternoon, as an incident had occurred between two customers. I can't go into detail, but it wasn't a great situation. I just couldn't believe it. I ended up having to call my Area Manager about it and file a report. The rest of the day went okay, but boy was I glad to finally get home and be away from the place for three days.

As it was Fireworks Night, I was able to watch everyone's fireworks displays on the way home. There was a particularly good one at one point, which I think must have been done by professional pyrotechinic technicians. One advantage of riding my bike at least.

It felt really strange not to go to work on Saturday. I've only had Saturdays off when we've gone away or when I've been ill or in Lockdown, for the most part of this year, so I almost didn't know what to do with myself. 

In the end, I decided to continue work on making a chair cover for our old armchair. I'd started it over six months ago, during the last lockdown and had just pinned fabric onto the chair. It had remained like that for the intervening months, so it was great to finally get around to tacking all the pieces of fabric together and removing the pins.  

I can now take it off the chair and try to machine sew the whole thing together. Once I've done that, I need to add velcro to parts of it to secure it to the chair. It felt like I'd made good progress on it anyway. It's far from perfect, but better than the stretch cover I bought and used for a while. It will at least allow us to lengthen the life of a very comfortable but scruffy armchair, which we would probably otherwise throw out.

Mid afternoon on Saturday, OH suggested that we take the electric bike out, so that could I get used to riding it and then I'd be able to use it for work. I've avoided doing this for over 2 months now, as I've been so tired on my days off, so it was a good opportunity. I was very surprised at the speed and power of the bike. It took me by surprise at first, but I got used to it after a while. 

I'm now actually looking forward to taking it to work on Tuesday, as it should cut quite a bit of time off my commute and I'll be able to ride up one particularly steep hill on my route, which I currently walk up on the way home. I'll let you know how it goes and how long the journey takes me using it.

The rest of the day, I just took it very easy, in order to recover from work.  Hopefully, by tomorrow, I'll be feeling much more refreshed and will start the week by getting more jobs ticked off my to do list.

I hope you've had a productive week.