EH - Essex > Hebrides...the next step of the adventure?

Sunshine_girl2

EH I have just caught up with your diary. Your poor mum she has enough to deal with at the moment with your dad being unwell. I am glad to hear she is ok but she must have been badly shaken by it all. As for hospitals my own mum was a nurse got  40 years and she now complains all the time about the woes of the NHS . She reckons they need to go back to the old ways where the patients were the most important thing not paperwork. The communication between different depts is dire to say the least. I do hope your dad is slightly better when you get to see him after your busy day tomorrow. 

Good news on the hallway getting started on Monday. 

The pants look really good , treat yourself with your £20. 

jokono

Good luck with the hallway works, I hope it all goes smoothly!

I have a pair of long leggings with the super wide waistband and a bit of elastic at the top, they are the most comfortable pair I ever had.

savingholmes

Your day tomorrow sounds super busy. Be kind to yourself - whatever that looks like for you.

EssexHebridean

Hello - thanks everyone for popping in!  SH I’m pleased to say my hectic day has got a bit calmer - thank goodness! Jokono I checked my Lockets leggings and they have a triangular insert in the gusset for comfort - which of course makes them better for cycling too!  Rosa We’re certainly crossing fingers that patient liaison are able to help - Mum’s had a “holding response” back - basically they’re very busy but will be in contact shortly…not surprised they’re busy to be honest!  SG2 I agree with your Mum that it used to be that the patients were the number 1 focus - now it feels that they are treated in many cases as annoying things that mean it’s harder to find the time for admin, and that mean targets are missed - I suspect this is one of the issues with Dad - he’s not responding to treatment as they feel he “should be”. Oddly enough I don’t think that’s his fault, though! 😂

The reasons for the day becoming rather less Tetris-like is that I heard from my Mum mid morning that the car has now been moved, and allowing that she’s uncertain how much there is of any importance inside anyway (she grabbed the most important bits, and MrEH picked up some more bits when he put the key in the car for her) it’s too far for her to want to go and check. The recovery people are going to do an inventory for her. At the moment I also haven’t managed to slot the shopping in either - I forgot to take bags when I went to the gym so decided I’d instead do whatever fitted in my backpack and a second bag in my basket when I head back from the hospital on the bike. We can pop in tomorrow at some stage for anything that gets missed, or might get bits in T’s instead. 

The Gr3ggs TGTG bag was decent - £2.59 got us a cheese ploughman’s roll, an egg mayo sandwich and two steak bakes. The sandwich & roll have been eaten between us for lunch and the bakes will do lunch tomorrow as they’ll be the ideal thing to grab during our online meeting. Happy enough with that! I also learned that their paper bags hang at just the right height on my handlebars to allow me to cycle easily as well, so I didn’t have to either squish it into the backpack or push the bike the rest of the way back to the car! Once I’d dropped the TGTG bag off I also found a lovely cycling route - off road but with tracks/trails that were fine for my little bike including a path alongside the river, SO nice, I’ll be exploring more of that! 

Banks checked and fine - I’ve swept from my “budget account” to the VSP today but not from the joint account. I’m going to leave transferring anything to PBs until later in the month too as I want to see how things will pan out through this month with the increased travel costs. At least after this week that should drop back a bit anyway which is useful. My car still has plenty of diesel, MrEH’s will do right through next week and into the week after with luck. His will still be doing the commute 4 days a week as it makes more sense for me to drive that than to have to mess about swapping the bike into mine for a single day. 

I’ll grab the bike out in a little while and head to the hospital, then home again via Al’s. Just need to pop bags into my backpack so I’ve got them. It’s a lovely day for a cycle here - bright and sunny! Oh - must sort out the freezer to make sure I can get the bag of oven chips into it when I get back too! 

foxgloves

It's lovely here too. You are inspiring me to get my bike out for a good going over. I was doing well with it, having not cycled for over 30 years when I got it in 2018 but I stopped using it the winter before the pandemic struck & haven't cycled since then - a ridiculous situation as our village has a cycle route straight into town. 
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savingholmes

Glad your day improved. The cycle route you found sounds lovely. I need to get back in the habit of daily walks to the local park(s). Some of them are stunning.

EssexHebridean

I had an ancient bike stashed away in the garage for years foxgloves - kept making a promise to myself to either get it sorted out and ride it or let it go, but by the time I did finally pull it out and look at it it really did need a lot of work so I let it go. Then the parking situation for work changed and the foldy bike was the obvious solution - but having that made me realise I did enjoy riding it and so I decided to start stashing money against the purchase of a full size one for use around here - when our neighbours offered me the one I now have it felt like a perfect solution! I often find it’s actually quicker than using the car to get to places too - I literally couldn’t do home to the hospital quicker driving than I do on the bike, so it’s really useful! SH MrEH and I loved our daily walks which we did through lockdown, and both agreed we missed them when we have d both returned to our offices. We’ll definitely make a point of continuing them on Fridays now he’s wfh again. I also make a point of getting out for a minimum of a mile walk each lunchtime - for fresh air and in the winter for some added daylight too. I’ve not struggled anywhere near as much with MH and SAD in January as I used to since starting that habit a few years ago and it’s a non-negotiable now for me. 

foxgloves

My bike is relatively new, @EssexHebridean. My Mum gave me the money to buy it after my Dad died, because of all the help I gave her with the financial & household admin. So I bought it in 2018 & had to take it really slowly because I hadn't cycled since my early 20s. I was just starting to  enjoy cycling into town & to meetings (I was on a local mental health charity board for a couple of years) when for a number of silly reasons (some of which I can't even remember!), I stopped. My fitness levels dropped a lot during the pandemic & I've lost my confidence to cycle. I do intend to get back to it by early next month at the latest though.
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savingholmes

@foxgloves I hope you find your confidence. I went back to swimming today for the first time since last August and did well. You may surprise yourself.

EH - I think I need to make regular walks non-negotiable. I've lost my way a little since giving up my dog to Ex. Please keep posting about exercise as it motivating

EssexHebridean

I was really quite nervous for the first few weeks of riding the bike - particularly around traffic. We’re incredibly fortunate around home to have a really great network of cycle routes and can get quite a distance round the town either completely traffic free or on very quiet roads. I have to deal with traffic a lot more around work unsurprisingly - but I’m also getting a LOT better at “reading” what motorists are going to do next in a concerted effort to kill me. Quite frequently now I can (safely) put them in a position where I scare all kinds of carp out of them and really bring it home to them what they could have done had I not  been on the ball..and if that makes them more careful in the future, then all good! 

SH I’m afraid to say I have NO exercise of any description to report for today! I’ve barely left the house and have only just scraped over 2000 steps! 😂 Planning a fair bit of movement for the week though - from cycling to lunchtime walks plus 2 full length gym sessions - hoping NOT to get tomorrow night’s one interrupted as my after work one was last week with the phone call from Mum! 😆

So a pricey-ish week on the grocery front. £2.59 on that TGTG bag, £14.01 in Al’s, £34.93 in T’s and a random £6.66 in F@rmF00ds. However, a good £26 of that was stocking up on various bits where we have a feeling the price might increase shortly. 2 of T’s 30 pack multipacks of crisps - we go through at least 6 packs a week for lunches - MrEH has one daily and I usually have one on a Friday. Occasionally at other times too. They’ve increased from £2.50 > £3.20 over the last year and we reckon they will also get harder to get too. Of course after we’d bought those was whe we found the boxes of 32 packets for £2.99 in FF’s - but yes, we bought one of those too! 😂 Also got pasta, tinned toms, sugar, tinned soup, rice and a few others bits as well as the weekly shop. At some stage this week I’d like to properly evaluate what we have in now, to see if there is anything else we want to stash, and then I think I need to start a system where each time we take something out of the storecupboard we add a replacement to the list. I do still want to get some tinned fish - good stocks of both tuna and sardines, but both are proving tricky to get hold of at the moment.

Also made the discovery that FF’s do butter slightly cheaper than T’s which is handy. It’s the first time we’d been in - we only got a store locally quite recently. There’s definitely some good stuff in there - they’re not competitive on frozen stuff compared to Al’s, but some of the special lines will be worth keeping an eye on. It’s walkable across from T’s too so the two can be done in a single trip with no extra mileage.

Tomorrow and Tuesday are the two prep days for the hallway works - so we’re all geared  up for Steve to arrive first thing tomorrow morning - in fact I need to make sure the alarms are set rather earlier than usual to account for that! I’m looking forward to getting going on it, but also absolutely dreading the mess! Still - it needs doing and I know how much better it will be once it IS done! (But still…the MESS!) I keep reminding myself that it IS just two days and then a break before the plastering happens.