A Busy Week - W/E 2nd March 2024

This week started off a little busier. I was working on Sunday afternoon from 1pm, so I had to get up and walk the dog, then have an early lunch before heading into work. It was a tough shift, partly because I'd not been there for 5 days and felt a bit rusty and partly because the department I was working in was quite messy and I struggled to get it finished on time. I came home feeling quite frazzled.

I then spent the evening watching TV and sewing my star patchwork.  We watched the final episode of Expats on Prime, which has been an interesting series and then we watched a movie on Netflix starring Julia Roberts called Leave The World Behind, which was really good.

I slept well, which I haven't been doing lately, so that was good. My weight finally dropped a little the next morning, after a 10 day plateau, which I was very grateful for.

Monday, as always, is weekly shop day. I headed out of town this week, even though I was working in the evening. I needed to pick up some medication I'd ordered from the pharmacy en route. I took some lunch with me, as I always get hungry and it stops me spending extra money on convenience food while I'm out. I did the main part of the shop at Lidl as usual, and have now spent enough this month to qualify for a 10% off voucher on next week's shop.

I couldn't help myself and decided to visit my new favourite charity shop. I found some really lovely and useful things this visit, so I've made a separate post about them. I really enjoyed myself.

Anyway, I then had to head home, as I was due at work for 5pm and needed a shower. Work was okay. I was on a calmer job this shift. 

A parcel came for me today, which was exciting, containing something that I'd ordered for another scrappy project. I can't wait to give it a go. I'll make a post about it once I've made progress with it.

On Tuesday, I was booked into my usual class at the gym. After l'd had lunch, I decided to go into the garden and do a bit of clearing up. It's in a big mess at the moment, as our neighbours are replacing the fence on one side and OH has removed our grass type panels from the fence and removed any vegetation growing up them and this was left in piles in the borders.  

I raked it all off and put it in bags ready to take to the tip and then cleared another fence panel down at the end of the garden, of a climber growing up it, so that it's now clear and can easily be removed and replaced. I enjoyed being out there with the dog and just tidying things up. It's still a total mess, with lots more work to do, but at least I made a start and it was good exercise too.

On Wednesday, I decided to head out into the garden again. This time to wash all of the dirty pots that were kicking around. I don't always get around to this in the autumn, so it was long overdue and it was good to get it done before the new growing season starts. It took a couple of hours, but led to me tidying up the greenhouse and things now look a lot better outside the back door.

Later on Wednesday, I was heading out to meet some friends. We used to go to gym classes together for years, but now we're all doing different things, so we meet up every few months and keep in touch, which we enjoy. It was good to catch up with everyone's news and I had a lovely Persian lamb dish which I really enjoyed.

OH headed off out of the country on Thursday for a few days with some cycling friends, for a cycling holiday in Sicily. I could have gone over and met him, but I didn't have my new passport in time. However, I did get notification that my passport would be delivered on Friday, which is just over a week since I applied for it. I was very impressed with the speed of the service and they email you at every point in the application, i.e. when the application has been received, your old passport has been received, your application has been approved, your passport printed and then with expected delivery.

I was working on Thursday night, but managed to get quite a few jobs done during the day before I went. I wrote myself a long list of things I wanted to do whilst OH was away and I'm slowly ticking them off the list. Work was OK, but I was glad to get back home to the dog.

I was out as early as I could with the dog on Friday, as I was expecting the delivery of my passport between 11 am and 3pm. We had to have a short walk so that I could get back in time. It rained intermittently, so finding a break in the rain to go out in took a while.

Whilst waiting for my passport to be delivered, I did some blogging, made some more small egg muffins. I really love these and ended up eating three as soon as they were ready. They are so moreish. I called it part of my lunch.

After lunch, I decided to do a bit of patchwork sewing. I couldn't really get started on anything else, as I wanted to head straight to the gym once my passport had been delivered. Annoyingly, it wasn't delivered, so I had a bit of a wasted afternoon, which was very frustrating. I made progress on my patchwork, but not much else. I hate waiting for deliveries, but sometimes it is unavoidable.

On Saturday, I got a message to say my passport was being delivered between 10.40am and 2.40pm, so I got straight out of bed, did some weights (because I was missing the gym again this morning) and got ready to take the dog out before my delivery came. It then started to rain, of course, so I had breakfast until it stopped and the sun came out (momentarily) and then we headed out. I needed to be back for 10.15am at the latest, as with hindsight, I think I missed the delivery the day before because they came 10 minutes early. (I saw the postman's van as I was returning from the dog walk, albeit on another street).

We got home about 10.15am and I decided to make more use of waiting in for my passport, by getting on with another job on my to do list. This was to declutter the baking drawer. I'm not really a baker. I very rarely bake anything, so many of the ingredients in this drawer were out of date by 18 months or even 4 years in some cases. I decided to get ruthless and threw most of it out. I will replace vanilla extract, baking powder and buy a small bag of self raising flour, but that's it. I will just have to buy anything I need if I do decide to make something.

It's not perfect or particularly aesthetically pleasing, but it looks a lot better. For someone who doesn't bake, it's a very full drawer, but some things do get used for other purposes, such as preserving, etc. Here's a picture:

I then decided to clean out the drawers above, namely the crockery drawer and cutlery drawer and then followed this with cleaning all the cupboard and drawer fronts, which desperately needed it. It felt satisfying to do this.  Not a total deep clean, but a good start in the time that I had available.

My passport finally arrived around 1pm whilst I was eating lunch. YAY!!!  I only had a couple of hours free after lunch, as I was due at work and needed a shower, so I sat at the kitchen table and did a bit more work on my star quilt.

Work on Saturday night was busy, but more enjoyable than it had been earlier in the week. I bought a few things at work today, as our staff discount was doubled this weekend, so I made the most of it. I bought three bowls for the kitchen, a coconut wax candle, some coffee beans for OH's birthday in a couple of months and a 10kg kettle bell for me in the hope that I will progress to working with this size eventually. It's a big enough weight for OH to use occasionally too.

It was nice to get home to the dog. I'd pre-made some chilli to eat for supper and just heated it up when I got in. It's been cold the last couple of nights, so I was very happy to get wrapped up and jump into bed later.

So, here ends a busy week, with quite a lot of things going on aside from work. When OH is away, I find I have a lot more things to do with regard to caring for the dog. The exercise I get walking her every day is good though and she's lovely company when I'm home alone.