Category: dEAr diary

a chat about my day

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dear diary ~ a more productive week

If you don’t know what to say…talk about the weather.

It is wintery – that’s all I can say!

I have found a gap in my time to write this post and now I can’t actually put thoughts onto paper. It has been one of those weeks, where instead of being busy and achieving little, I have done little and surprisingly, achieved a lot.

As I said a few posts back I had planned to look at our finances and paperwork during January and move on to reshaping our health and diet during February.

But February came rather too quickly.

And the paper mountain still resembles a mountain.

I thought I would have to abandon the paperwork task and all I had planned to do in terms of overhauling our finances and decluttering the paperwork to move on and keep up with the original plan, then I read somewhere the other day that there really is no rush to accomplish everything in January and this is the main reason that those well intended new year’s resolutions fail.

This advice has stuck with me and an alternative approach is just what I needed. So the paperwork clearout will continue before I switch to looking at our health and diet.

In the meantime, I can read up on ways to make our diet simpler and healthier. I am sure we will not expire before March through lack of a better diet, and my recent blood test results were good, so I have no reason to rush.

With this updated plan in mind I set about decluttering the files. Not an easy job. I didn’t do them last year and maybe not the year before either. I had accumulated a stack of papers beside my desk and another on the craft table, added to which we brought down a box full of old papers from the loft. The very sight of them each day has done nothing for my peace of mind and other than a kind overnight fairy coming and waving her magic wand I knew they would haunt me until I dealt with them.

So while DH and I have been recuperating from the virus, and the weather has been dreary I made a start on the mound.

Paper clutter is one of those tedious tasks; endless decisions about each piece of paper – toss or file?

Will I need it in future, would I know it was there and could I get the information online if needed?

I know all the advice is to get rid of papers and receipts, but I have been saved many a time because I have kept hold of documents and receipts and could subsequently get a refund or compensation.

So now all the paperwork is suitably sorted and filed away and all the files re-ordered and labelled and the filing drawer is a joy to behold when I open it. The old receipts are shredded and have gone onto the compost heap and last years are packed away neatly in a little box that will be stored in the loft ‘just in case’.

I have a little more packing to do for our week away. The weather has not been good here but it will be nice to have a change of scene and be besides the sea.

I am hoping to do a fair amount of sketching and take my watercolour paints with me. It will feel odd not to have any gardening to do like we had at the cottage. I will miss that and need to get used to a whole different kind of holiday going forward – one that is a holiday and not more work.

We will only be half an hour’s drive away from mum. We will see her on Sunday, but we will not tell her we are staying close by as she will expect us to ‘call in’ every day and that is not what this holiday is about. In fact I have not mentioned we are away because she cannot retain new information now so best not to have that conversation in the first place…for my sanity. Her mind is going sharply downhill now. Everyday she rings as soon as the carer has gone to ask when they will be back. They have a set routine of times but she seems to have lost the ability to understand time now. Five minutes to her is a very long time, so when the next visit is 3 hours away I get numerous calls asking when they are coming.

Once the 3 o’clock visit is over she rings to see who is doing the 6pm one and after they have got her to bed then the calls begin about what is on TV. It is like being in a loop I cannot escape from. I know the holiday will be continually interupted by phone calls but there is little I can do about that – dementia affects everyone around them as much as the person themselves.

DH has made a curry to take with us and some celery soup. We have some slices of nut roast in the freezer that we will pack as well, and I bought a quiche with my Nectar offer. We rarely have anything that is a ready made meal from the supermarket and we hardly eat anything with pastry but I do like a quiche every now and then – it is a shame I couldn’t fit in the time to rustle up a homemade one.

So by the time you read this we might be fully packed, in the car and headed north. I do hope so.

Goodness, I have just realised we will be coming home on Valentine’s day and I haven’t made a card for DH. Oops!

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dear diary ~ resurfacing in February

Saying goodbye to January and a welcome to February.

After a day or two of feeling considerably yuck, and just when I thought I had shaken off the worst, the virus decided it would linger a little longer. So I had to linger a little longer with it, sometimes on the sofa and sometimes I just gave in went back to bed and slept…the clock round in one instance.

I fully expect this was a reaction to not eating properly or getting to bed at a decent hour for a number of weeks on and off. My body was not going to wait any longer and decided an enforced rest was necessary.

I was disappointed though. At the start of the week, I had planned to embrace my patiently waiting task list, and suddenly and abruptly my plans were cut short as the cold rapidly took hold. At least I managed to go for my blood tests on Friday morning, so not all was lost.

The weather is pretty dismal here; blanket grey skies with an enveloping fog that is always lurking in the background. Drizzle competing with snow, and cold – always cold, so anything bright really stands out like the little red berries on our cotoneaster horizontalis outside the window.

There are other small flashes of colour too – the pretty pale yellow petals of the primulas poking over the tops of the terracotta pots dotted about the garden.

Still I have nothing against January, or February. I welcome the slowing down after Christmas, and like a crab scurrying away into its shell (I am a Cancerian), I love to retreat into my snug, warm home for a few weeks getting ready to emerge when the brighter weather beckons.

In my more lucid moments I have been reading and watching. Reading the Persephone book DH bought me for Christmas‘They were sisters’ by Dorothy Whipple – an engaging read but never expect an absolute happy or conclusive ending with her books, they often leave you with hope that situations might improve for the characters, but nothing more. She tells a good story though.

There is a film too from (1945) I might browse the Talking Pictures channel just in case they have it listed. We are not sufficiently in this century to have a paid TV subscription like Netflix – it would not be a good use of our money. We never had a TV at the cottage in Scotland and I actually preferred not to have one. On our earlier visits we didn’t have a phone or the internet either and were sufficiently cut off from the world to just absorb the peace and quiet. But then the longest we stayed there was only 3 weeks and most often it was only a week or weekend.

I will soon be starting the epic ‘How to End a Story‘ the collected diaries of Helen Garner but not before I have a browse through some of my recent library requests, ‘Unprocess Your Life’ by Rob Hobson, ‘Just One Thing’ by Michael Mosley and ‘The Doctor’s Kitchen’ by Rupy Aujla all in preparation to begin my next project of restoring our diet and health this month.

On the watching side, we have been viewing The Great Pottery Throwdown, Landscape Artist of the Year and the Agatha Christie adaptations on BBC iPlayer. I am also a fan of Art of the Garden on the Freeview Sky channel. I suppose anything with art in the title will always catch my attention.

We are pondering another art workshop, this one being held at a cheese and wine tasting venue in a neighbouring small town of Brighouse. An odd place for a painting and craft workshop (and there is no wine or cheese included) but they are making use of their room whilst it is not been used for tasting sessions. There is a social session and an artist led session to choose from.

Our idea is to jump in the car one day soon and check the place out before committing….and I will sneak in a visit to one of my favourite places – the large independent Boyes department store for a mooch around. You can always count on them to have something that you never knew you wanted and all at affordable prices. And yes, I do keep telling myself I shouldn’t even cross the threshold to avoid any temptation.

So how did my financial review last month go?

I spent as much time as I could in January addressing our financial position and fashioning a new budget for the year using last years figures, increasing them by a 10 or 20% margin to allow for the continually rising prices.

Once all the interest payments from our ISA savings have been accounted for we will be a few pounds richer. It always feels good to see the pounds increase when normally, all we experience, is the monthly decrease of our pension income.

I received the Vinted sales report for last year – a tidy £171 acquired on clothing items sold. Most of this is actually going to my daughter for the clothes she had accumulated but didn’t have time to sell herself. It is unfortunate she has not yet regained her pre-pregnancy size and these lovely clothes were languishing unworn in her wardrobe. Not all the clothes were advertised on Vinted as I took a lot to the charity shop as well so they didn’t miss out.

But we have yet to have the boiler service (next week), a probably large dental bill (postponed for 2 weeks), and we have a holiday upon us for a week on the North Yorkshire coast. A whole week looking out over the sea…I can’t wait.

Having a quick review of the housekeeping we managed to keep it down to just over £290 for the month, so I am pleased with that. It would be amazing to keep it at that figure every month, but I have to be realistic and I was starting January with a lot of stock in the pantry. Ideally, I would prefer to keep only ‘one in hand’, or ‘replace one as I use one’ but I have to be realistic and being ill, together with the bad weather, I realise I do need to keep the pantry well stocked for the first 3 months of the year at least as it gave us something to fall back on when we couldn’t get to town.

But yes, the coffers are definitely looking good so far this year.

Not being well enough for a trip to town, I did as maybe we should all do (and I know many of you already do) shop local. But really, a tin of non-organic Heinz baked beans £1.77 from the Co-op (I had to read the price label twice), I didn’t even look at the price of the loaf, courgettes and mushrooms, just offered them up at the till and paid by card.

I desparately needed a small present for my friend’s birthday too. The present box is currently empty, so after leaving the doctor’s surgery on Friday I had to find something in the village amongst the beauty parlours, dog parlours and turkish barbers (like everywhere we are short on proper shops now).

I completely forgot about the gift shop along the main street and had decided on a cyclamen from our lovely florist. But when we got there the cyclamens were on display outside and decidedly limp from the drizzle. It is the tiniest shop but she has one or two gifts inside and I spotted just the thing, these tiny mice. I bought an extra one while I was there to keep in the present box. I know my friend will love it as it is the sort of thing she would gift to me.

I delivered it to her doorstep and declined to go inside – so as not to spread my germs.

Of course just lying down not being able to participate in real life for a few days left time for thinking and daydreaming….. and thinking and daydreaming of organising and running our home. Some readers will know that I am very much a fan of Lean and using Lean methods to run my house. It is a system developed by Toyota in Japan many moons ago, and in my mind there are many good things practiced by the Japanese and Lean is one of them. It is a system I used at work with my team to good effect, but it works just as well for running an efficient home.

There are many strands to the whole concept. I will briefly explain:

Streaming, the idea that everything is progressed as a stream that is followed through from beginning to end – cooking, laundry, shopping;

Kaizen or continuous improvement where you look for ways to be more efficient and create solutions to any problem areas;

Muda, meaning waste and this encompasses anything from money, time or ingredients and especially the environment. Reducing this waste is particularly beneficial;

Seiri and 5S; Sort, set in order, shine or clean, standardise and sustain. This speaks for itself – wouldn’t we all love a home that ran itself efficiently by just following a few simple rules;

And lastly, you manage all this with the help of a simple Kanban board a home’s central dashboard if you like.

It is a while since I have really used these principles and I am eager to get back to streaming the management of our home again. Last year and 2024 were ususual years for us with a lot of coming and going with plenty of house selling and buying within the family and, as is quite the case, things move on and my systems and streams need an overhaul.

I have a few more areas of our finances to improve on and streamline before I move onto this months topic – our diet. You cannot have missed the number of TV programs, magazine articles and books all talking about the disadvantages of eating ultra-processed foods and the many advantages of eating well. It is something I researched last year and also signed up to the Zoe programme, started a few years ago by Tim Spector (who is also running the TV programme What Not to Eat). So no doubt I might have a few posts talking about my health journey.

But that is another day another post.

Have a good week everyone, back soon x

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dear diary ~ dismantling Christmas

You will all have heard of the saying ‘it will get worse before it gets better‘ – well that is the state of my house at the moment…in the getting worse part.

So far, DH helped with removing the baubles from the Christmas tree, dismantling it and returning it to the box and bit by bit all the decorations were taken down and repacked in their boxes ready to go back into the loft. It is always a little sad….there are many memories in our decorations and we only see them for a few days a year.

I sorted through the unused rolls of wrapping paper, replaced them in the special long ‘wrapping paper box’ and this too will have to go in the loft as there isn’t another place to keep it in the house.

Why, I am wondering, did my mum never have such a box, nor my gran – were they able to estimate to the very last sheet the amount they would use so there was none left over to deal with? I am left with yards still on a roll…and there is more than one roll and it is difficult to store in a small house. I did have the bright idea this time to take a photo of what is in the box before it disappears away so I don’t buy more unecessarily next year – I can’t think why I didn’t think of this before. I took a photo of all the decorations as I repacked the boxes.

When that task was completed, I turned my attentions back to my new planner notebook – that is always a much more pleasing job. DH reckons my love for stationery and anything admin is due to having a post office set at a very early age.

I have ready made calendars and checklists for birthdays, household tasks and such like, stored on my computer that I print off and stick in the front of the book. Other lists are written in as I go along. Each month I start with a list of intentions, a note of appointments, events etc and then the list of tasks – some I have to do, others I would like to do. It is a catch-all for anything of interest or anything I need to remember as well as a place to plan for wekly menus, birthdays and parties, holidays and Christmas. I also make a note of anything I need to buy this month, gardening notes and tasks and to keep tabs on our monthly financial and administrative tasks.

Each month I try to do a review. It reminds me how much I have done and what is still to do and going forward this year I will also make a note of what worked and what didn’t. I am determined to only repeat things that enhance my life not make it more difficult.

I have for many years made notes about Christmas so that I don’t repeat mistakes the following year – so below is a review of what worked well for us and what didn’t.

I thoroughly enjoyed the visit to Mrs Gaskell’s house and this will certainly be on the do again list, it may not be this same house but something similar.

I also enjoyed the lino cutting workshop, the result of which I turned into our Christmas card. I would certainly enroll on one again, but next time even earlier in November would be better. I have yet to overview my Christmas card list and revise it ready for next year.

Even though I made it myself, I have loved my Advent calendar and will be sad to take it down. I have a couple of sheets of black card already cut out with the windows so I might make them up ready to send as a little gift next year with a card.

The tiny outdoor flower lights that I bought, reduced at Argos, have looked so pretty at night in the wooden planters, the batteries are still working and they were very little trouble being on a timer. I am undecided whether to keep them out for a while or remove them and pack them away.

The little desk calendars that I made as gifts for my friends took a large part of my time so if I do them again another year I must start them earlier so I am not burning the midnight oil.

The gingerbread stars were well received and I am told were very good, though I would add even more ginger to the mixture next time. They were a bit fiddly with the different chocolates, but they did look Christmassy and quite effective. I would make them again and I will add the recipe to the menu below the header.

The children loved the session we had decorating the gingerbread too and this will certainly be something we will do again, and I would buy the ready roll again for them, and maybe, I will ask them if they want to make a gingerbread house.

The Santa visit to Portland Basin at Ashton-under-Lyne (our second year there) was good too because the venue is geared up for children; it was a really lovely family day out, but whether the children might want a change next year we shall see. They do like repeating things they get to know, like our yearly holiday to Scarborough. I shall have to make a diary note though to check for the booking form early as there are very few slots available and they sell out quickly.

The gift from Santa’s Elves that we put on the doorstep on Christmas Eve is still a magical mystery to the grandchildren, so I will probably keep that going next year, the difficulty is thinking of some game they can all join in with across the age range.

I think (touch wood) I managed to bake my cake for the right length of time this year in the oven – it turned out perfect for once …not under or overcooked. So I have made a note of the times and temperatures for next year.

There are always things that don’t go well or to plan, I was disappointed to miss both the Carol singing events and the Christingle service. Every weekend was taken in December and so conflicted with the Carols and there was so much Christmas ‘stuff’ to pack into the car on Christmas Eve for our trip up north that we set off later than intended and it meant something had to give…. and it was the Christingle service.

Having to pack cookware and food to make a dinner for mum and ourselves on Boxing Day in her apartment was a big hassle, partly because we had to keep a lot of the food in a coolbag or my daughter’s fridge over two nights. It worked OK last year but we went to mum’s straight from home on Boxing Day morning. This time we were staying the two nights before in a hotel and didn’t have access to a fridge.

Luckily, the temperatures outside in our car boot were freezing which helped to keep the coolbag cool. We had to go into Yarm to Sainsbury’s on Boxing Day for vegetarian gravy granules. DH had made the gravy at home and I accidentally forgot to take it out of the fridge and put it in the coolbag! I wasn’t sure Sainsbury’s would be open on Boxing Day, but it was and looking back it would have been far easier to have bought some ready meals or something which would have been a lot less trouble.

Blogging everyday leading up to Christmas was another challenge which I may not do again, I might only be repeating myself anyway. Taking the pictures when the light is at its’ worst during December is also a trial. It was fun, but quite time consuming and I admire those bloggers that ran the course.

Tomorrow, we will put the decorations back into our loft for another year and then maybe tackle the overflowing box of Christmas items I have for crafting – ribbons, cracker parts, and embellishments and hope I get some ideas for creating a few bits and pieces for gifts next year. I doubt I will get to do anything with them immediately as we really need to make plans for the mammoth decorating bonanza…long overdue.

So if I haven’t bored you to death with my random thoughts, I will be back soon with even more random thoughts!

I hope anyone reading this who has some brilliant ideas for making Christmas an easier and super simple time, will share them in the comments!

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dear diary ~ a new year, a new day, a new start

Wishing all my readers and blog friends a Wonderful and Happy New Year.

Thank you to everyone who reads my little blog and to those who leave a comment. I always find such pleasure reading them; hearing snippets of your own lives, little words of encouragement and advice – I welcome it all, it builds connection and we certainly need more of that in today’s world.

Many of you, both bloggers and readers, will no doubt be thinking of the year stretching ahead and what it might bring, what you wish for, what changes you would like to make, places you want to go and people you want to see and not forgetting those dear to us, but sadly, not with us anymore.

I love this day, more than any other.

That marvellous feeling of ‘the blank page’ with an air of excitement and an expectation that perhaps a dream you have had for so long might come true. Or perhaps, like me, you are hoping for a year where you can get to grips with your life and if you feel like you are just bobbing about like a boat on the water, going nowhere fast, set yourself on a new course and break free from any accumulated bad habits and that feeling of being in a rut.

Of course, just as bad habits accumulate over time, inching their way into your life unintentionally, it takes time to establish new ones and often slow and steady wins the race; not being one to rush into anything, this will certainly be a year of slow change.

And hopefully change that will last.

Did you all have a good New Year’s Eve? – whether celebrating with family, friends or even your own company; staying up or going to bed at the usual time.

We spend Christmas with our family and always New Year’s Eve with friends. For us it is a good balance and another of those ‘it works for me’ moments, so this is one thing in my life that will continue.

We had a different take on our get together this year which would normally be during the evening and well past midnight, always tuning into Jools Holland for the countdown. This year our hosts decided their year had been hard and they were tired, so they hosted an afternoon get together until just after 6pm.

On the morning I asked if I could bring something and the reply came… ‘something sweet’. I hurriedly checked in the fridge and found fresh raspberries, we had nuts too from making the nutroast and cake and DH dashed down to our friendly Co-op for a tub of cream.

So out of nowhere, and after a seriously long phone call with my Sis-in -law that delayed production of my hasty effort, I managed to produce this Raspberry and Hazelnut Roulade within the hour. It is a recipe I have done so many times before, basically a swiss roll mix with ground hazelnuts and you crush a heap of raspberries into the cream (or you can use creme fraiche) then spread it onto the cake base and roll – I threw on a few festive sprinkles this time for good measure and just to glam it up a bit.

It was well received and vanished within minutes. I will put the recipe in the Menu section on my header strip and I can vouch for the fact it is relatively quick and easy – and quite an impressive dessert, though mine did crack a bit in places – nothing that a little piped cream didn’t cover and hide any flaws!

After a lovely time chatting with friends we hadn’t seen for ages and sampling the bits and pieces layed out on the table we left for home just before 7pm. It was a brisk walk with our empty cake tin in the freezing cold and we were glad to get inside and warm up. The preprepared curry DH had made yesterday may also have helped!

We started to nod off during Vera (we had seen it before) so switched over to watch Ken Dodd, the unseen footage – there is nothing like a good laugh for that well being feeling – and ended up going to bed later than intended and we were still awake at midnight listening to the local fireworks going off outside and the constant tune alerts on my phone as the Happy New Year messages started to come in from our family.

We have a very strange new year message, known only to a few in the family, which is Shimme Hips Wob. It is a standing joke from when I had my first mobile phone for Christmas a long time ago. It had predictive text, of a sort, but not very sophiticated and of course, as with most of these things, it learns over time what you want to say. I am 100% certain I typed in happy new year, however, the message was ‘predictively’ changed as the phone didn’t recognise these words I had typed and substituted some of its own. I had no idea how to change it back to what I wanted and in trying the message got sent. It read ‘Shimme Hips Wob love Mummy Nonmo and Daddy Faddidy!!

And so that sticks even today and I still get cards written by my daughters to mummy nonmo – quite an affectionate term I think.

So, today is that day when the festivities are truly at an end, well for us anyway, we have the day ahead to rest, chat, make a new batch of soup, maybe watch some TV and grab an early night. I might look to do a review tomorrow – taking stock.

Until then, this is mummy nonmo signing off and Shimme Hips Wob to you all x

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