Moving on

Cherryfudge

Welcome back @Seasidegal58. Deciding to draw a line under the previous job was a challenge but I felt better once it was done. Now all I've got to do is everything else!

I managed to get last month's timesheet and spreadsheet off to my manager before dinner. The veggie chilli was okay but not okay enough to make it again... which means two portions are left for me to finish up!

We watched 'Digging for Britain' for a while then DH went to buy bread or pastries or something. Too cold for me, and anyway I was falling asleep. In the end I had a very long early bath and nearly dozed off but eventually warmed up and am now awake enough to type. I've no idea why I'm so tired, I slept ages last night. Perhaps it's not doing enough, or perhaps it's having such a jumble of demanding things to work through. All done now, anyway. The rest will have to wait as I'm back on the cleaning team rota tomorrow.

Nothing spent, though cc is paid apart from a stray bit which comes out of the other account. I can sort that out when I sort out the payment for the course.

Cherryfudge

For some reason I'm tired again! I did get out and about though, thanks to being on the cleaning rota, and was heading for 10,000 steps by the time I got home (I haven't added much since).

I remembered to find a diary for recording spending: they are down 20% and will undoubtedly go down more but I don't want to build up too much backlog of recording. Once I'd had lunch I sat down to apply myself to signing up for the course, but couldn't plunge in at the deep end and get learning as they have to process my application. That won't be in the first week of January as promised on their return email, as that will be over by Monday.

The only other thing was making an eye appointment as I'm still having a problem with dry eyes despite drops, gel and omega 3.

Expenditure:
Stationery £1.12
CPD £166.00

Cherryfudge

Without my expected outlet of starting my future career (at least a bit of learning for it), I wandered back into Futurelearn and the French course, which my head thought was four weeks, of which I'd done one and a half. To my surprise it was only two 'weeks' so I suddenly found I'd finished it. That's one less for my huge list!

Tomorrow is set to turn cold again, and half of the south of England seems to be under water, whereas here we're merely very soggy. However, I spent five minutes trowelling up a layer of dead leaves that were turning slippery by the front gate, and throwing them over garden tubs in the hope of providing shelter and nutrition for the precious shoots that are sprouting there. I nearly bought some garlic to plant, but thought twice about it as it had been left in the rain and the bulbs were mostly soft. I really need a garden plan, but with my usual inability to make any sort of plan that doesn't have a defined end in sight, that may be a way off.

Cherryfudge

The most productive thing today has been trying to pack up Christmas decorations. We've bought half a dozen lidded boxes - not huge ones, though the decorations collection is looking very big indeed, including as it does inherited decorations which have childhood associations.

So far I've a box of red and gold tinsel, and box of blue and silver tinsel and tree decorations and a box of miscellaneous tree decorations. The real surprise has been about 7 sets of fairy lights, if you include the ones that stay up all the time. I seem to remember some used to go out of doors, but there's been so much and the boxes got shoved out of order over the summers, that we didn't know what there was. There's now a growing pile to donate - apparently the charity DH volunteers for has storage for Christmas things.

Some bits have gone in the bin though I admit I pulled the non-disintegrating bits off a wreath with the idea of maybe making something with them.

I've been indoors all day, which isn't ideal. I've made a bit of progress on the other Futurelearn course, but there's an academic paper to read which is an uphill struggle. Why can't things be put in nice plain English? IT doesn't change the meaning, just the accessibility. However, I've found out how to underline which means at least it's prettier to look at.

Dinner was the usual Saturday fish and chips but we were watching a documentary on how diet affects health so perhaps we need to rethink that! The congealed fat once it goes cold... bleah. And it's no better in our arteries.

I shall go and attack a few more Christmas decorations now, in the hope of taming the monster.

P.S, I sent a photo of some to the family WhatApp: the rapid denials of ownership/desire to own were quite amusing!

Cherryfudge

I have battled my way to six boxes of Christmas decs (need to buy more, boxes not decorations) and completed the academic reading and some more of the course. I think I need to go back through what I've done so far because I certainly didn't take from it whatever it was I was supposed to take! However, there was a superbly useful little section on a thing called the 'SQ3R' reading method which I could see would work for me, so progress has been made.

There also seems to be a problem with the formatting of the section I've just done, which I've occasionally found with online learning. In this case there's no option to submit answers to the end of section quizzes, just the option to skip the question. Why didn't I have that glitch in certain exams in the past?!  

Cherryfudge

A quiet day today. Once again I didn't wake up till about nine thirty, and 'did' church online. I was a bit sorry to miss a send-off for a friend who's been running something there for ten years and is now retiring, but she's not leaving the church so hopefully I'll keep in better touch than I have recently.

We had fishcakes for lunch and have almost finished the Christmas carrots and Christmas cake.

I was lounging round in pjs (warmer than jeans) when DH announced he was going on a walk and I decided I needed to get out of doors. I bundled up in not only jeans but multiple jumpers and coat, and we had a good walk, getting in the famed 10,000 steps and seeing the prints of deer on a track alongside some woodland. We stayed mostly on the road though as the mud is so slippery.

Later I remembered I had cream to use up and dug out the Kenwood from its hiding place upstairs. I've often thought I don't use it enough to justify it (possibly because it was so long till I could afford one that I acquired manual skills for most of the things it can do), but today it came into its own and I have two decent sized pats of butter - about 1lb total - and a tub of buttermilk. It cost £1.50 for the discounted cream, plus £50 for the machine, which I bought off a colleague.

No studying and no spending today, and TV was the first of the new series of the Pottery Throwdown.

Cherryfudge

My membership number has come through so I can register for the (future work?) forums and from tomorrow (why not today? But they seem to like to take things in stages) can register for the members-only area of the website.

Tomorrow, however, is totally full in my head because I have a dental appointment and an interview.  The fact the two will take up about an hour in total, well... that doesn't mean to say they don't fill my head.

For exactly the same reason, I'm going to make a list and work through it today, so I'm as ready as I can be for tomorrow, and I give myself permission not even to look at the proofreading courses till the interview is out of the way.

Jobs to do:
Put the washing machine on
Read through the infection control training I used to have to do in case there's a technical question or something I've completely forgotten about
Check I have a good outfit to wear to interview
Wash my hair
Check I have the documentation I have to take along.

DH has already bought a whetstone, learned how to sharpen chisels and re-sited the latch on a door. It's been waiting 30 years for one of us to get sufficiently motivated to fix it! He's now gone to buy the tinned foods off the shopping list and another set of smallish storage boxes for Christmas decorations.

I'm going to have to be 'micro' about getting today's tasks done so part one of putting the washing machine on will be to get dressed so these PJs can go in the wash.

Cherryfudge

It's been a funny sort of day - I can feel some sort of avoidance kicking in but I'm not sure what's behind it. It could be that I'm likely to be interviewed by someone who met me through a previous job, and is actually a form of previous-job-avoidance.

Achieved today: 2 lots of washing, one hair wash, retrieval of above-mentioned infection control book which turns out to be mostly about care homes, so not as useful as I'd thought.

DH took a bag of Christmas decorations to donate and I made a separate trip with a snowman he forgot. Then I went on to get some shopping, including a bag of fat balls for the wild birds. If we're going to have a few cold days, I want them to be fed. I had a voucher on my L1dl app for cereal but when I looked at it, even with the discount it was more than my usual one. Then having bought the usual one, I got another coupon, with 20% off more of what I'd just bought. I suppose I could buy a few with that as it will keep well. I'm noticing recently that L1dl discounts aren't really money saving as they tend to be for things I wouldn't normally buy, and certainly not for their cheapest version of things.

Dinner tonight was some garlic and wine flavoured sausages, mash and sauteed veg. DH liked the sausages but ended up with some of mine as I was watching a Netflix programme that would put anyone off meat, let alone someone like me who isn't a big fan in the first place. We also watched a programme where a certain famous doctor looks at people's supermarket trolleys and advises them what they should be eating - very similar to a particular BBC programme, really.

It's a good job I made the list earlier as I forgot to find the documents, though I know I had them together not long ago. I have most of tomorrow to check through them as the interview isn't till late afternoon.

Expenditure:
Housekeeping £11.22
Household £2.49
Pets £1

in_need_of_direction

Lots achieved yesterday. Good luck for this afternoon. You regularly deal with toddlers, anything else should be a breeze

Cherryfudge

Ha ha thanks, @in_need_of_direction! Yes, if I can cope with toddlers, what's a mere manager or two?

This morning's adventures have been the boiler not working and going to the dentist. Dentist was fine, including some X-rays that came up clear, and she doesn't need to see me till October which is quite MS.

The filter on the boiler seems to be the problem, and they can't get anyone out to it till Thursday, which is when DH is in work and I have to be doing my course in the afternoon, so I've warned them about it. I also realised I hadn't sent off for the guarantee and it had to be done today and I didn't have all the details, but when I spoke to them about it I was met with 'Oh no, don't do that! You have a 12 year warranty with us!' I'd seen about the twelve year warranty but wasn't clued up about what each covers so I asked them to clarify and it turns out we are indeed covered for twelve years. What happens if the firm goes out of business, I don't know.

DH took DGD1 to toddler club this morning, and it sounds as though both of them enjoyed it! It's a nice day here, despite being cold. DH has got the electric heaters out of the loft again but I'm all layered up and not needing one yet. I even did a few minutes' work tidying in the garden: the birch tree has shed a lot of twigs. It's so nice seeing bulbs coming through though I managed to get stagnant water on my hands and am anti-bacing to get totally rid of the smell as that probably won't help me at interview!

Expenditure:
Medical £79.00
Housekeeping £2.24?