5 OS pleasures in your day today - part 3

mhagster

Up early.

Picked up memorial jewellery this morning. It’s lovely. Made me cry. 

Then time to go to work and meet new family who were so lovely and for a nice change it was only a few minutes drive! 

Home and wrote. 

DD2 finished her work a bit earlier so was home earlier than I had planned for making tea ( as I was still writing) so she walked dog and then had a shower whilst I finished where I was working up to. Will finish it tomorrow. I need peace and quiet to write. 

Made macaroni. 

Bit of a chat then I’ve just came to bed. Will watch final episode of race across the world. 

DigForVictory

LaineyT - aw, beautiful one in her mud less rug! "lie-in followed by coffee & croissants" <added to list of things to try!> "DSS and lovely fiancée + young spaniel"- I can hear feet pattering! Hoping the chess player is able to safely travel soon. "worried as the house lights were off" but ooof, Cpt S & C dog peacefully zonked together! Wholly see eyedrops is ideally a game for two human players. "Joe R get his century, ROOOT!" absolutely! Love that the 'tell' that a horse is cold is cold ears. Some days just chime with reminders, but the lumps in the throat are love. Jupiter shining is a delight!

DundeeDoll - playing with your woollen hats on at a ceilidh... Cor, cs-surf success if you land back on beach with Jacques Vert! Chortling over 'romantic Italian meal for two'. Root canal treatment part one?! ulp? "2 coaches to Glasgow's Concert Hall (home of the RSNO) for a rehearsal with the Glasgow choral academy (another RSNO outreach project)" - just Cor. "2 of the 8 have been widowered this year - we raised a glass and reminisced" - one of the best ways to remember. Awed/amazed/amused at work on keynote & locations. "line of 108 buckets to drop coins in ... so of course we both did"

Highdays - Christmas get together Anyway, wow. Strategic packages of leftovers - genius! December to enjoy with no pressures - Brilliant! "not doing a lot, hunkering down and keeping warm" - as you support your family members, you Are doing a lot. (More cake? Yes, Of Course, it won't be just you eating it.) "sorted the date for the next Christmas do in 2026" - plain awed here! And yes they all grow & change & you sometimes miss the days you Could protect them, but life keeps moving & they'll come to protect you.

mhagster - aw Haggis, bemused by rearranged furniture. Your pulled together in a hurry lunch sounds Delicious! Wreathmaking - glorious to play with textures & colours. Haggis hasn't quite grasped squirrels can & will go straight up if they so choose?! Memorial jewellery is intriguing. "early night just to be cosy" win-win! How do you feel about the new car on the motorway? Dead right to interrogate brother and document his wishes so come the time you have the to do list sorted! Ye gods the multitasking - work call, guests there and folding laundry! Where there are Labradors, there is Hoovering. Work picking up? Along with the weather, eep. Love how a blown branch becomes a decorated feature. "need peace and quiet to write" - oh yes. The magic of the right words is rarely conjured in rumble of a working kitchen, but easier in the quiet spaces, be they on a hill, parked in a carpark, or even in a locked cubicle.

ampersand - glorious photos! Gosh, what an angel! Advent And Banns - there's a combination... "iron heat on kitchen roll/toilet paper" - good, I will try to restore old friends 'appreciated' by young artists. Love a tree covered in blossom even in December! Cheering NZ wins with you! Yippee the hamper win & "will be much shared/handed on" and of course this is part of the pleasure. Yikes savaged by honeysuckle - glad puned but are you healing OK (ironically 'extracts can be used as a wash to promoted healing of minor skin wounds', but let's just avoid the cuts to start with)? Love how you turn on a dime to charm a present out of the Fates!

PaulieHerts - "More delay" but "stock up on 25% off wine" - fingers crossed! How Are You? Where Are You?

Purple kitten - our Stir Up was a full week late but that was as I had the brandy. Love your approaches to stray & glad to hear she's in loving savvy hands. Blue tit as well?! Glad new arrival responding to TLC. "cranberry, stuffing and brie chicken" sounds Wonderful! "we’ll just have to say no as and when needed" - and this is how to enjoy the festive season, to say No to the rollercoaster, No to the juggernaut and do it on Your Terms - it's not wrong, it's survival.

Frith - hurrah baby nephew & sister's poetry award! "carer's association breakfast in a pub" - I need to tell mum's live-in career about this. "move all the furniture round" - this is all part of settling in/preparing for Christmas? Rousing cheers friend got Leave to Remain! Just oh argh work "Today's telling off was because we sold out". Delighted you got a rosemary plant - absolutely loaded with meaning as well as delicious. Yeay reverbed coinage! Taking food to a new mum is a cardinal act of mercy. Wow, rubber roof?! Excellent plan!

Happycas - "Not very much happening here but that's good news" hear hear! Pace the excitement!

topsyturphy - "Having visitors ... makes me more tidy." oh yes! "Had fun with elf on the shelf" - good, someone should. (So long as it's not me!)

OS Pleasures recently (last fortnight!)

Agony aunt special “my son wears slippers held together with sniper tape & my sisters say it’s gaffer tape”. No, Green, fabric, shrubbery for the fastening of onto weaponry - sniper tape & anyway where do I go to get slippers that have a decent sole & won’t delaminate in less than 12 weeks?

It’s beginning to look a bit like a Christmas of decanters. Says she with a happily off the meds grin. It started as an online misjudgement that I didn’t resolve fast enough & then I bought more decanters & then still more (all from charity shops). I must do this again as a consistent eccentricity is actually relatively easy to manage. Striving to get what folk want is effortful! Plus my more affluent relatives can always return them to charity shops if they wish. I’ve had the laugh at the stunned faces & “you too?”s, and it’s far more fun than socks.

You just do not appreciate a clock until you don’t hear it. The grandfather clock was not chiming the hours correctly (five then five then seven) so the local horologist made a house call & dismantled the patient for shipping. I drove so tenderly! And today brought back & reassembled & set ticking, & wound & it has chimed perfectly & I heard that sound in the womb & all my childhood & often when I came back, but my husband never learned to sleep through it & so it would be stopped at 9 each night for him. The clock goes on, and that is seriously comforting somehow.

Lady mother carefully lurching downstairs for another coffee which is too hot & is ignored. (Logic coffee & mum rarely form a coherent pattern, but she’s been downing the stuff for decades, it would make sense her biochemistry is a bit odd.)

There’s a “baby & child first aid course” being run in mum’s parish & I think they may be a bit young. Sis chiding me it’s for mothers & carers… (I get major Midsomer fantasies reading the parish magazine. The opportunities!)

Sisters have persuaded me to gift a box of chocolates to the grandchildren of the house they’re going to for Boxing Day. Spares them and wrangles me karma points!

Mum’s tree being decorated by committee while she aches quietly. I shuttle painkillers & a glass of vino, having hung a Santa with a saxophone.

Ah, the snarl of a sibling wrestling with wrapping your present. I skittered off, humming “hark the herald” loudly…

Christmas comes but once a year, a mother once a lifetime. And leave the dishwasher to it's already stuffed job. <the yell I didn't voice to my sister>

The sloe gin is bottled & looking (terrifyingly) credibly medicinal, for a given value of quack medicine… Mind you, womenfolk, woodland & gin - we’re a potent combination.

“Santa Claus is coming to town” & “all I want” is permission to get the heck out. (That said, overheard the red hot chilli pipers live as we chatted to Edinburgh cousin & vicariously loved every last decibel.)

The Costco disposable cups have an amusing way of accessing fluid - your nose pushes the flap open. (Youngest is looking at me like a toddler who has just discovered green paint looks a bit like grass. I gather I am Well Behind on current events.)

Home ! And chortling somewhat over a decanter containing Robinsons green squash with glitter (some days truth is ‘way more bizarre than fiction!)  OK I won’t be there to see the little stunned faces, but actually well out of reach makes a certain sense.

The Myrtle cuttings are apparently still alive. I regard this as a very hopeful sign, but by no means the triumph I hope for, as it’s not yet April 2026.

Yeay, mum is switched to a fixed rate - her flexible was pretty good but fixed means us daughters simply need worry less.

Babysis has been listening to the belly dancing music CD I found in a charity shop up here (it’s not all clog dancing) and pondering going back to it post- mastectomy. After all, I pointed out, it would lend a new & terrifying credibility to dancing with a sword on your head. She’s not laughed that hard in weeks…

Work bag packed, by raincoat. Pizza slices plated in fridge for breakfast. The basics of Monday are in place Sunday night.

Own bed. Own bedlinen. Warm duvet all around me. Thank you kindly gods.

Ground floor colleague giving me family flashbacks all skinny 6’5” length of him.

My “application will not be taken forward”. Oddly, whilst wry, I’m not wrung. Someone else will get the bigger money, but also the hard questions. While I can carry on my cheerful ways doing what I enjoy & need not deal in the murky politics. So who has the experience they do want to appreciate?!

Ancestry “discover your origins” DNA advert. I know my parents, their families, their extended families - I need to spend money on stamps writing to them, not on a genetic test that just tells me broad percentages of land masses.

Sis was raffling on about her green squash at zoom & I let her form the view I think it dubious, expensive & unappealing. It’ll make getting a bottle from me so much more fun in another few weeks.

I’m used to a curated bookshelf backdrop but there’s an American on the news with a record collection & a photo of a corgi ?! Credibility low…!

It is really weird to go on a visit without live comms. I’m so used to having the internet & an informed colleague on call that it felt strange depending wholly on the contents of my skull! We managed & stayed professional but I’ve updated the H&S record. Then (once back in decent signal) reassured all who have responsibilities!

Seems my hair meets police standards for an off the collar updo. Hadn’t quite thought that through before but it sort of figures. (It’s not something I worry about, recognising I am the slowest moving of most parties, but with decades of experience swinging a loaded shoulder bag.)

Paperwork done and filed, me ready for bed as next visit starts at nine tomorrow. Back to back visits are unusual these days, & I’m thankful a colleague will be driving.

Aww Youngest’s expression when he was told to open the Amazon bags, tell me which he liked & we’d return the rest & buy more of his favourites. (I plundered the BF deals and got one of each discounted expensive sketchbook as he’d utterly failed to specify gsm or pages or Anything so…) I should snaffle one of the boxes of blue pencil leads for the day itself!

Gentled a colleague through some gnarly data, to find she’s been trying to open a safe with a toothpick. Me, I hand it to our lock picking team & work with the decrypted outcome & had presumed she had the decrypt not the blinking original! All sorted now, but yikes.

Scouts, gingerbread, flour (one Amazing parent who, sent a snap & a heads up, grinned “no problem” - I want to give her patrol points!) and crab football! Happy mayhem, just as we like it.

Beautiful edge-of-full Moon!

Debating the difference between a kimono & a yukata with son in bathrobe. A few moments vigorous googling & I pointed out his bathrobe was a yukata, there is no gender to a kimono & his robe was fastened correctly for a living person. The startled expression was great fun.

Aw how thoughtful - I am to get a bowel cancer screening kit in the next two weeks. (To whom should I send the thank you note?)

Again, smitten by the Moon. Ok in the pharmacy carpark it felt more like match lighting than powerful mysterious but still impressive!

Dear gods, Only Connect & the fresh Prince of bel air. Truly some of their question setters are right out on the cusp of reasonable.

QI says we have two senses of smell & that each nostril is it’s own sense. I may have misunderstood as Google doesn't back that up in full - it reckons we have the smell through the nose & the smell from food etc in the mouth which makes more sense.

Crooned gently over mag jongg sets online & decided to catalogue the ones I have rather than pine for a cased set I still can’t get the lads to play with.

Drat! Tesco have stopped putting their highest end pate into little spring top jars. Nor has my local any concept of langoustine. Will just have to go without & an eye up other seafood treats.

Youngest laughed as I whuffled my bedtime meds into my mouth before they fell into the sink. It works, but it isn’t graceful…

We have work from home protocols if you’ve a cold etc yet the sniffs & rasps in the lift suggest at least two people gave not got the memo. Whilst I am ecstatic to see a colleague who was felled by the flu despite the jab for a fortnight.

Screams & laughter lure me from my work to see just what is causing it - colleague passing her mobile around & lo, terrifyingly credibly AI footage of her all bright eyed & then kissing Donald Trump! All six of us admiring the technology & adamant only with AI… another colleague has something similar with Putin - were somewhere between shocked awed & desperately in need of another cup of tea.

Remote tech troubleshooting of a rats nest of cables, two routers and a great deal of confusion. Simultaneous phone call & zoom call to try to disentangle matters! Or swap on another tower… There are ways forward, but ones with me physically present happen in the new year.

Scouts making Christmas cards with black card & metallic pens, folding origami & making hut long paper chain. And the inscriptions - hallmark wouldn’t dare. “Happy Christmas dad! I’ll make the toast this week, ok?” Stomp on a man’s generous efforts why not, but with absolute pragmatic love.

Last pass at the annual epistle. Written At Last, now to send.

Enchiladas & bed - bliss!

Silly certificates I get the Shakespeare spirit award for 'bringing poetry to the office'! (Er, then laying down the good word on our quizmaster, who opined RAM was longterm storage & was re-educated firmly.)

Team crazy golf, maximum 6 shots a hole & I play a reliable 6 every hole pretty much throughout. All good fun & no one hurt!

As a stack of Christmas cards is delivered, so too is the gift that keeps on giving, the bowel screening kit. I’m very grateful for the peace of mind it will bring (as well as the laughs).

Health, Strength, Love & Courage to all as have need, & as we power through December, be ready to say both "Yes" to new things and "No" when you need the space. It's supposed to be a time of joy and yet folks confuse money with that - be ready to stop them trying to haul you along too. You know where to find joy & ye gods, reading this wonderful thread filled with wisdom & humour & compassion & support, it certainly isn't the supermarket, or anywhere that prizes coin. (Hear the screams over on the debt free wannabe thread & in the diaries as people learn.) If I can't get my act together before the 25th, wishing you all a very Merry Christmas & hope to see you before the New Year!

Purple_kitten

Wow, I'm going to post after DfV..

I’ve lost my post for the past few days so for today

We won an eBay big 4ft wood cat wheel for 99p, but needed to pick it up from London, so made a day of it.

Travelled up on the first off-peak, standing all the way and fancied a hot drink when we got there, so we wandered out of the station to the most amazing shop, with an offer so good we had to try they were making the pastry and it was outstanding and such value for money, the chap in there had a good banter as well.

I prefer walking and boy we needed to walk some off so we took in the sights to Covent Garden, wandering around the markets, before we headed into the Transport Museum for a few hours. After that it was over to Camden, and I feel quite privileged to have seen it “as it was previously” but certainly not now. Then back to Waterloo to collect Wheel and clamber back to the station to get home with it.

So far, touch wood they are loving it, waiting to see if it’s a one-minute wonder but hoping not, and it was a fun day out.

PaulieHerts

Hi DFV and all reading here 😊
We’re still in the house, whilst our rental stands expensively empty ☹️. After much back and forth with building control and the structural engineer, all the technical information has gone to the building control engineer who will get it on Monday “as he doesn’t do emails “ 🤷‍♀️. So if he approves it 🤞 we could still technically move to our rental before Christmas but who knows.
Meanwhile we’re trying to get on with ordinary life.  Lunch out on Tuesday for friend’s birthday, swimming this morning (38 lengths and it does help to relieve some of the stress), then to the crematorium to say hello to mum, dad and brother and leave flowers and a robin 😊. Then lunch at lovely pub nearby.
Caught up with Shetland and 100% Club and watched final Race Across the World.
Night all 💤

Frith

Pleasures for today (Wednesday)

1) Not a bad sleep. 

2) Bigger son came round and we went to floody town to pick up my mum's Christmas present, do the charity shops then we had breakfast in the museum. 

3) Cleaned out the driveway drain. Lots of worm filled compost scraped out of that. 

4) Went to bigger son's for a games night. 

5) Watched the finale of Race Across the World. 

ampersand

1>far too many.😃😋 Not exactly OldStyle, but definitely an amazing pleasure ce soir in Town of Horse emporium. At least 20 taster stands were set out, bookended by 2 stands of booze samples. All very, very yummy, the whole lot - smoked salmon, prawns, fabulous specialty cheeses, loads of different Christmas biccies, meringues+ cakes, mini wagyu beef pies, local A🌟sausages, spring rolls, tiramisu, limoncello and other chocolate cakes and tarts.....so, so, so, so much! 
2. All was further set off by Newmarket Town Band playing Christmas carols live in-store.💓😃
3. The excellent donated barley twist chair has found a free home with a chap in difficulty, learning re-upholstery.
4. Think Doblo insurance mess now sorted, so & not paying twice for one policy.😲🤞
5. A different midweek Communion with guest, Heather Johnstone, always interesting and with much from the Rehema project for essential fundraising.
Post-election violence and killings have delayed her arrival.
Excuse usual messy post please.
After midnight, with sneaky signal a few miles away.

topsyturphy

Pleasures for yesterday 

1. visitors have left and so has the elf, house is quiet and I can put my feet up.
2. Dog walk in the sunshine wrapped up
3. Unfortunately friends have had to cancel plans with me due to flu one suffering and one having to go to help family, pleasure a free weekend - Thinking of booking a ticket to a show tomorrow for my birthday now.
4. Washing done and dried - bed changed - first time I’ve slept in my bed for a week.
5. Watching the last 2 episodes of Shetland

DundeeDoll

many happy returns topsy
I love the transport museum pk
1) meeting with the head honchos - bus picked us up at a very respectable 8:30 - gave the VC and Dean scottie dog tins with shortbread biscuits (nice and light to travel but 6 tins did take quite a bit of space! just 2 of the 6 remaining)
2) then a tour of their medical school and hospital - students were absolutely lovely
3) a napperoonie - we both slept for an hour
4) walk along the canal
5) very enjoyable dinner and long and fun chat with colleague and then bed - now finished 2 of the books I brought with me - maybe 4 wasn't an overkill after all :-)

LaineyT

How frustrating PaulieH keeping everything crossed that you will be in soon.

For the last few days,

Some much needed winter sunshine and blue skies, lifts the spirits.

To cathedral city and met DN and DGN for a cuppa & a catch up. Little chap is delightful and chatters away, he made short work of his baby chino then started on his Mum’s hot chocolate. What is it about a little one with a chocolate smeared face that brings about lots of aaahs from fellow diners.

He made sure that we paid a visit to the toy shop and had a good look at the truck selection on offer 😉

Listening to Uncanny podcast whilst driving home, scaring myself silly with the road ghosts episode and regretting my car of choice with such a small bonnet, iykyk!

Met my bf at the big GC in Uni city and spent an enjoyable few hours looking at all the twinkly lights, alpine villages and eating lunch.

Saw two other friends who were making a tree dash during their lunch hour.

Dropped into DB’s to catch up with DN, he is doing virtual ward at home and still waiting on MRI results. Much bemoaning of cricket performances.

The beautiful grey one has a new fleece, the colour is described as Port and she is the toast of the yard as apparently burgundy is the colour of the season, who knew!

DundeeDoll

another day another hotel
1) bit of a lie-in cos mini-bus not coming for us till 10:30. A cold shower (this week's just one thing, easy when outside is 30 degrees!) and a leisurely breakfast
2) driven to the Sukosol where we stayed last year. Very nice. We walked to a laundry for my colleague to drop clothes off as she's been out a week longer and goes back 6 days later than me. They will deliver them back tomorrow
3) when we'd finished our slides for tomorrow she went for a kip and i went for a Thai massage - soooo relaxing (well apart from the ouches...)
4) after some more work off for a very nice dinner - i had fish and chips thai style. the waitress remembered us from last year, and the pianist was fabulous
5) back to more work but now i've called it a day (it is 11 oops, that's the trouble when you're 7 hours ahead of the office!) alarm set, teeth brushed, decaf coffee made, a couple of chapters of book #3 (the heaven and earth grocery store) and zzzzz