Cherry takes the reins

Cherryfudge

Floss said:

Yes, I started back on Thursday on 4-hour days next week & gradually increasing. It went OK, everyone was very pleased to see me back but I was knackered by 7.30pm!

I'm sure I would be too - four hours is a lot when you're not used to it! I'm sure you'll adapt over the next few weeks.  I hope it continues to go okay and you can get quality rest in between.

Cherryfudge

Today has been milder and not so rainy so Dh went out for a bike ride. He returned soon after, as a tyre had blown. He had a puncture on his everyday bike last week but this is his special bike: older and very light. The tyre went with more drama than a normal puncture but thankfully he's all right and spent the afternoon and about £35 struggling to replace it.

I've not done much except meet some former colleagues for coffee. One is struggling to keep her spirits up as she's between jobs, and she also had her child with her so we couldn't go all out on the putting the world to rights thing, but I think it was quite productive just to spend time together and share our now-disparate experiences.

I popped into The W0rks on the way home for notebooks for Christmas stockings but they seemed to be changing stock over and there wasn't a lot of choice. I did find a sweet little black doll for the pre-schoolers at church: for some reason all the dolls in the play area are white, and I felt for the non-white children who can't see a face like their own baby brother or sister, though they seem to hurtle about with a pram full of white dolls without complaint. I would have bought another for DGDs but there was only one left: it sounds as though other people have snapped them up. (There's an interesting thing I noticed a while back: one of the black boys settled a doll in a chair, fetched a piece of the toy farm and proceeded to 'fill' a toy bottle from the pump for the 'baby'. I don't now if any of the Yorkshire farming children would have known to do that! He was too little to tell me about where he came from but there are a lot of newly-arrived African families so perhaps it's something he's seen done in real life. Ten out of ten to the future father).

This evening I watched a programme on the princes in the Tower and crocheted a glove - the fourth (progress is sporadic). I also did a bit of prep for a Noah's Ark session with the little ones tomorrow - story book, building blocks, water play and colouring rainbows! Last time I did this story, with a group of bright 12 year olds, we came unstuck because none of them could tell me from the text in front of them how the flood happened. It's funny that, even at that age, they were so familiar with the simplified story that they couldn't see what was in what they were reading (the answer is, not just rain but underground springs, not that it will have made as big an impression on them as their inability to see it did on me).

Back to things MS: we had a look in the freezer this morning and worked out a few meals for the week starting with chicken pie tomorrow. I've also offered to make a picnic for DD and me to eat at the end of our shopping trip to save on eating out twice.

The shirts arrived for DH and one looks like a good fit but we're going to check it in daylight.

Expenditure:
Housekeeping F&C £7.50 plus anything Dh spent on fruit etc., plus £2.50
Gift £2.25
Entertainment £3.50
Donation or I may be refunded (the doll) £7
Bike repair £35 approx.

Honeysucklelou2

I put a small box of breakfast cereal in my children’s stockings. It was started when they were younger so that if they woke up at a ridiculously early hour and were hungry, they could eat the box of cereal without needing to wake me up that early!!!! That said, mine have always slept well on Christmas morning and have only woken up once at 5 ish. The cereal bix tradition remains though!

Cherryfudge

That's sweet, @Honeysucklelou2! Similarly, when we went to stay with friends while our children were small, we used to give the friends food gifts including a cake and chocolate cereal... we keep doing it although we're probably unlikely to touch chocolate cereal at any other time!

Were you up late or early? I hope you're feeling better now?

Sun_Addict

Aw how sweet about the little boy ❤️ I wonder what his story is bless him. I always had a black doll as a child. My mum used to foster children back in the 60s while their mums were in hospital and many of them were of Afro Caribbean background - I expect they didn’t have families here to help out in those days. One of the girl’s dad bought me the doll and I treasured it as it reminded me of my temporary “sister”. I was an only child and welcomed the company albeit just temporarily. 

Sun_Addict

Forgot to say re the mould, I use HG mould spray, it’s brilliant, gets rid of it and stops it coming back. Obviously if something more natural like the vinegar works then it’s better for the environment. 

CRANKY40

Your phone - it's not the phone storage that's full, it's the cloud storage. I deleted my previous back up and deleted some apps that I didn't use any more and then my phone did the backup. 

Cherryfudge

CRANKY40 said:

Your phone - it's not the phone storage that's full, it's the cloud storage. I deleted my previous back up and deleted some apps that I didn't use any more and then my phone did the backup. 

I bought extra storage and as far as I can tell that's the one that's showing as under 20% full - and I back up to Google and clear my iphone storage, so I suspect it's because the model I have isn't updating any more. It's been a lot better since I managed to get it to backup then reset it, though I as plagued for a while by lots of apps wanting to know if they could send me notifications. Still it's been a  good opportunity to reduce the amount of notifications I have!

DS1 has pointed me it the direction of the model he has, a lot newer than mine but not a new one, and at the sort of price I'm okay with. I forgot to ask him what memory his has, as the one with the larger memory costs a lot more! I do know his has a nice camera, which matters to me: the current one isn't as good for my purposes as the iphone4 I had years ago.

Our family Secret Santa list is live so I now have two challenges. The first is to make a list for whoever's buying for me (I started one on the whiteboard back in May. L has added 'African Land Snail' to it). The second is buying the gift for the person whose name I drew: definitely a challenge as it's DS2 and he hates doing lists. This year may be easier if their house purchase goes through.

Cherryfudge

Sun_Addict said:

Aw how sweet about the little boy ❤️ I wonder what his story is bless him. I always had a black doll as a child. My mum used to foster children back in the 60s while their mums were in hospital and many of them were of Afro Caribbean background - I expect they didn’t have families here to help out in those days. One of the girl’s dad bought me the doll and I treasured it as it reminded me of my temporary “sister”. I was an only child and welcomed the company albeit just temporarily. 

I remember my parents bought me a big doll for Christmas when I was about six and my best friend moved away. She was named after my friend but it wasn't the same. ;( However, I still have my black doll who is a real favourite.

Incidentally, the friend who moved away at six turned up again when I was in my twenties though I never met her again. She went to the same school as my future sister in law.

A similar very strange co-incidence was when I went to college, just over 200 miles from where I'd always lived. I made friends with someone from Kent (even further from home) who was chatting about her friends from school. Something in my subconscious clicked and I asked 'Is this so-and-so?' My friend looked surprised and said 'yes'. She assumed she'd said something that had given the person's full name away but in fact the link was that when I was seven, this girl and her sister had moved into our neighbourhood and used to call to take me to Sunday School. They moved away four years later, but their family worked for a missionary society whose headquarters were in the town where my new friend lived, and something in my brain had linked the two. It was the same girl, about 250 miles away.

Which is all a bit of a digression from buying a doll for pre-schoolers.  

Cherryfudge

This morning was my second time of leading the session for pre-schoolers at church: it wasn't too much of a problem as the helpers knew what they were doing more than I did, and there were only three children in our group! While it's a drop in numbers, it was good because they weren't overwhelmed and all of them settled down and joined in.

Lunch was chicken pie - again! This is some of the chicken from the one that lasted us so well last week - I think this makes eleven portion with probably four more to go. It did have a lot of veg with it.

The rain cleared up this afternoon and it was about 13 degrees so DH and I had a good walk up the hill to where there's a great view across to the Dales. There was so much water running off the land that the road was often under running water, but not impassable. Still, jeans and trainers went in the wash when we got home!

I've spent 99p on an offer on a computer game (last of the big spenders) but this was an offer I've only seen once before, and bought it that time too.