Moving on

rtandon27

@cheeryfudge - try chili powder - I get mine bulk from the international foods aisle of our local Mr.S - most animals are put off by the smell and it's non-toxic - washes away with the rain or when watering plants, so I reapply once or twice a week.

Cherryfudge

rtandon27 said:

@cheeryfudge - try chili powder - I get mine bulk from the international foods aisle of our local Mr.S - most animals are put off by the smell and it's no toxic - washes away with the rain or when watering plants, so I reapply once or twice a week.

Thank you @rtandon27, I will try that! At the rate of rain we've had, one application may last a while.

We had great excitement just now as a squirrel turned up on the bird feeder and I got a few quite well-posed photos before it scarpered over to the neighbour. I know people get annoyed at squirrels feeding off the bird food, but it's rare we see any here.

Cherryfudge

Today has been quite restful, which I needed after not such a great night's sleep. I think I'm subconsciously getting a bit wound up: not only is autumn tern looming, but I am still being overwhelmed by greengages! I've tried to deal with one or two issues today so they aren't on my mind.

It's been warm and sunny - again. Was there ever a year like it? We walked down to church. I'd not have said I was particularly looking forward to it as the August services are in three parts: worship songs, refreshments and socialising then the talk. Half an hour of enforced socialising isn't my thing, but the twice I've been so far, I've had the best time. This time I recognised someone I used to support and who comes from time to time with a carer. I didn't know the carer but went to say hello beforehand (Cherry can take herself out of the job, but the job stays in Cherry). Then in the refreshments break I saw them again and offered to stay with my former client, who needs one to one and is not verbal, if the carer wanted to get a drink. When the carer came back we had a long chat - turns out we know a few of the same people. Talking shop is somewhat therapeutic, even if I don't intend to go back.

I also saw the former pastor, who has moved away, and the talk was by someone who went to school with my eldest, so it was interesting to see where they are now.

Back at home. Dh cooked the gammon steaks which we had with Moroccan-style cous cous, fried onions, carrots, peas and sweetcorn. Nice! He had a short rest while I did some dishes (still no working dishwasher: the shop was supposed to get back to us but hasn't), then he had a long walk and I dozed off for most of the afternoon. In the evening we took greengages round to our former neighbours, then bumped into my friend from the Tuesday group with her husband and after appropriate conversations, had our own short walk. Such a nice evening to be out.

DH's long walk had netted him lots of steps and I was at that point still under 10,000 so I did some gardening, namely a bit of weeding, planting up another pot of leeks, gathering more greengages off the grass, watering things and skimming the un-composted top layer of the full compost bin into the other compost bin so I can use the compost that's ready.

Having had so much rest earlier, I'm not so tired now and I've done a little bit of admin for the Sunday morning group, contacted a friend about going for coffee and done quite a bit of Duolingo, so I've gone up a league. It's two years since I got to the point where I was actually reading bits in French without translating, and now I'm rejoicing in being able to do so much of the time. Of course, in real life I'd have to ask people to slow down and there would be lots of words I didn't know, but for now, it's running smoothly. And talking of running smoothly, DH seems to have fixed the old clock he bought the other week and which had been overwound. It's running and the strike mechanism is working, but we won't know whether more needs to be done till it's all back together.

Nothing spent today.

Cherryfudge

Monday turned into a busy day: my friend and I went out for coffee and to put the world to rights, and she paid though I'd invited her. Then it was home for lunch (one of the freebie pizzas from the L1dl bakery spin thing) and an afternoon of jam making before work. This evening I have gathered yet more greengages (and there are still a lot on the tree) and cleaned the fruit for another batch of jam. I'm following a R1ver C0ttage recipe for fridge jam and used vanilla sugar in the second batch. I think it's going to be better than the first one so I added some vanilla essence to batch number 3 and have only just remembered I have another jar of vanilla sugar that I could have used. But never mind - this is highly unlikely to be the last batch so there will be other opportunities!

Right, well, I need to put together some overnight oats for tomorrow, then get some sleep.

Expenditure:
Housekeeping £1.09

Cherryfudge

Tuesday was child care day, and all went well, including them both staying awake the whole time, so hopefully their parents won't have had a late evening.

A small greengage triumph or two: I'm still collecting about 500g of greengages a day (down from double that) with lots on the tree that aren't yet ready, so I'm constantly fighting the tide! One of the families who accepted a bag of fruit the other day said their daughters ate them like sweets, so another bag has gone to them. Then I realised I can do jam-making in stages. Last night I washed, weighed and sorted the fruit for a batch of jam, then stewed them till soft as per the recipe and stirred in the sugar. Then I turned off the heat and left it, covered, overnight. In the morning I brought it up to a rolling boil and completed the cooking. After that I put it through a colander which caught every single stone - formerly the most time-consuming part of the process. The recipe takes about 180 greengages per batch, so finding 180 tiny stones individually takes some doing. I did try taking the stones out first but it's still massively time-consuming. I've also tried sieving it but the sieve is too fine and gets clogged with the skins.

Anyway, I completed that batch before going to help with the children, and filled a tiny pesto jam with some for A A and H, who aren't jam fans but I don't see why they should get away scot-free.  

This evening we had mackerel for tea - a Tuesday favourite as it's it's quick and easy. I've done most of the ironing and picked up the day's greengages. Tomorrow morning I'm doing my Wednesday job.

Today's expenditure:
Housekeeping £11.54
Photo storage 99p.

Cherryfudge

I managed to post today's diary (now yesterday's) in the wrong thread and wouldn't you know it, it won't let me copy and paste anywhere but the thread where I accidentally typed it, which is here. 

Cherryfudge

I don't think I did a plan for this week, but here's a plan for today:

• DH is at home so this afternoon we'll go out for our beverages of choice - perhaps I need to find him some cake to prevent his indulging in shop-bought! He can't eat bananas, so the banana muffins I made yesterday won't cut the mustard. I wish I had time (and jars!) to turn some limes I bought yesterday into curd - but all the jars, even the empty ones - have been dedicated to greengage jam...
• Wash hair.
• Push on with prep for the autumn term. Am still rejigging bits of rota and finding there are several slots to fill as someone still needs to get trained and there are no suitable training slots till November. *Sigh*
• Pick greengages
• Pick blackberries
• Work at 5
• Too dark after work now to do gardening (boo! hiss!) so try to fit in a little beforehand.
• Write up case notes for yesterday ('Cancelled by client, rescheduled for ...')

The 2pm update:

• hair washed
• sent a message about the training but it came to nothing
• case notes written.

We are going to walk to the garden centre for our coffee and tea, so I will find some compost bags and plant pots to put in their recycling.

Cherryfudge

Turns out to be a day of unexpecteds, in a nice way. I decided to abandon the walk as I was working later and wanted to save some energy. We went out for our garden centre drinks after lunch (Chickpea tikka again) and drove past our daughter, who doesn't even live in the same town. I texted her to say we'd seen her, and it turned out she'd had lunch with friends and was parked in the place we were going to. We had our drinks then had a call from her to say she was back from town and where were we? We ended up staying another hour and having a drink together, and meanwhile she recognised someone at an adjacent table as a social media friend who had been in our older son's school year and now has children. They chatted for a bit then on our way through the building we met someone we know through church, and on the way out we passed a Mum and daughter the same age as DD and I who we know from way back, so we had a chat with them as well. The extra drinks were obviously an unexpected cost but it was worth it to have the time together.

I also took some empty comport bags and plastic flower pots to their recycling and collected coffee grounds and three largeish plant pots for our garden.

I had to cut the time short as I needed to be at work, but between going out and returning, our road had been closed for roadworks so I was three minutes late. However, I was given a shorter shift so I was able to make up the time.

The greengage harvest has slacked and today's greengages have been sorted, washed, bagged up and given to a neighbour. There is still a backlog, but at least it's not a tidal wave any more!

Expenditure:
Entertainment £9.50
Housekeeping £6.62
Petrol £42.43
Diesel £14.47 (those two might be the other way round but basically, fuel for both cars).

Cherryfudge

I've spent a lot of today on admin for Sundays, including a very helpful hour with someone from this forum who very generously and patiently talked me through 101 things I needed to know. You know who you are, and I hope you can feel how useful it was! Also a lot of work in the future, but as you warned me, I will need to be careful not to end up being the one who does most of the legwork! I genuinely found it interesting too.

And one thing you never get to find out on a forum is what a person sounds like, and this person has a lovely speaking voice.

So now I'm cogitating (nice word), have sorted out a bit more rota and am back to trying to get the team's training up to date.

I worked for three hours this evening (paid job) and am going to have a relaxing bath before bed. Nothing spent by me, DH spent £1.30 on fruit and £2.96 on southern fried chicken for 'us dinners'. 

I'm looking forward to tomorrow as we plan to do the car boot sale then meet up with various family members for pizza. They are getting excited about an 'all you can eat', so I must try to be moderate as I don't burn it off as well as they do!

I also had a phone call from the friends we were due to stay with this time next week. She broke her ankle some weeks ago and isn't back to full strength yet. Of course I said we'd be happy to postpone, but we will still have our days away in the house we have been lent next week.

Cherryfudge

Today's been very full and ultimately tiring, but well worth it.

We did our customary run to the car boot sale this morning, an MS version as we didn't have time for me to go round everything so some spending will have been avoided. DH got a very, very old coin from the coin dealer for £2 and is delighted with it. As for me:
6 wallflower plants, £2
Bag of onions, 75p
Rather luridly coloured mermaid jigsaw for the little ones, £1
Small pudding bowl, very farmhouse kitchen-y, £1
Sweatshirt, £2 (these are £25 online, and I'd been thinking I could do with another sweatshirt).

Then we met up with the rest of the family (eight adults and three children) to take advantage of an all-you-can-eat pizza deal, which was a lot of fun. We paid £17.50 for each adult and £10 each for the two children old enough to participate, and L, who had been 'in training' by not eating a lot beforehand and running 14km in the morning, set the restaurant record by getting to his fourth pizza. I managed two, which got praise from the others (!) but DH did best with a very restrained single pizza. The dough balls were included with the price and the bill afterwards showed they would have come to £96.75!!! It was an incredible bill, showing not only what we paid but also what we saved on the full price (though of course we wouldn't have bought so much full price). They also gave us free milk for one of the little ones as it was missing from the bill and the waitress waived the cost when it was pointed out.

After that, most of us went on a walk to help wear off the food: we went to the Tees Barrage, a place I'd never been before and which was interesting although the water is low. J and I spent most of the walk discussing management skills, which was also interesting! He has a team to run and so do I, but we're both learning and it's educative to see it through someone else's eyes.

I'd postponed my optician's appointment to do this, and wouldn't you know it, this was the day the nose pad broke on my glasses. We got home in time for them to be mended and for me to pick up one of my two new pairs of glasses. This is the cheaper pair and I'm very happy with my new look.

We were pretty tired by this time and called in briefly for groceries (£10.08) then I had a rest when we got home. I didn't need to eat till quite late!

We were talking about the mark-up they must have on the basic cost per pizza, though I know there are lots of other costs for the company in terms of staff, utilities, premises etc. We did think it would be a great low-cost family day at someone's house - provide a lot of pizza bases and just make our own toppings, especially if everyone brought ingredients to top one pizza and we then shared them.