wrapping up the week

It has been another busy week but busy is the norm here and mostly, I enjoy being busy.

The laundry keeps defeating me. The drier is completely dead, not even Richard can fix it. I don't think we'll get a new one anytime soon.

Richard was really busy last weekend, cutting down the badly neglected wildflower meadow (also known as the front garden) and then hiring a brush strimmer to get it down to the ground, ready to be seeded with yellow rattle and a suitable selection of wildflowers. The grass had taken over because we have not looked after the meadow. Oddly, wildflower grasslands in the wilderness don't seem to need this kind of attention.

Sam has been away all week on a community leadership training camp. He left on Monday morning and was not heard of until Friday evening. He came back exhausted but content, having camped in the wilderness, built rafts, made new friends and made a beginning on a new community project he and his new pals have to plan, develop and work on over the next few months.

Annie is now the proud owner of glasses. The frame really suits her. Did you notice how frames have increased in size over the past few years? Interesting how fashion affects eye wear also.

I will be working full time again soon. I am on a 0.8 FTE contract but have a near full time schedule. I don't think I'll have to change my working pattern much but it will be nice to have more money to spend on fripperies.

I am more than halfway through with my Zombies, Run! 5k training programme. Each session is about 50 minutes now, quite a big junk of time but the programme includes walking, running, stretching and exercise routines (for example knee lifts and heel lifts). To be honest, progress is slow and I am still somewhat hampered by my foot, which hurts sometimes. Learning from experience, I am taking it very slowly to prevent a flare up of my plantar fasciitis. I might not run the full distance when it is time for my virtual race on Halloween. I received two training missions for this race, to get me into the spirit of things. The first mission was spooky, a reconnaissance run to an abandoned mansion. Ghostly with a few hungry zombies thrown in. The second training run was even more spooky with a creepy old witch and hungry newts.

I am in a new book group. I am reading a non-fiction book about Boko Haram in Nigeria at the moment, it centres on the abduction of several hundred girls to serve as wive/slaves for Boko Haram extremists. It is really interesting actually, despite the grim topic. The other book we are reading is an autobiography by Michael J Fox. His acting is better than his writing, that's all I am saying. I have also just finished 'How to stop time' by Matt Haig, which I enjoyed.

I am taking a whole week of. I plan to do nothing but sew, knit and drink coffee. The kids are off, too. James is booked into an adventure camp organised by Scouts. £50 for a whole week, including food. Alistair is too young to go but wants to go to a camp, too. Not the alien invasion one he says. It took a while to get to the bottom of that one. The boys sometimes go to an American style holiday camp. You know, the kind of camp in involving cabins in the woods on the lake. Except ours is without cabins, woods and lake and during daytime only. Anyway, apart from campfires and sing alongs, one of the adventure camp activities was an alien invasion game, which seems to have traumatised my youngest. I still haven't booked anything for Alistair but maybe I can get him into football camp for two or three days. Failing that, he'll get as much screen time as he wishes to have.

The weekend has been uneventful. I did some chores, spent some time knitting and I worked on my quilt. I listened to audiobooks, too. James and Alistair were quite feral, playing outside with an assortment of neighbourhood children. At one point I lifted my head from my quilt, only to seem them climbing over our very high back fence. They were astonishingly filthy and very hungry. It is great that they are not the only children allowed to play outside, unsupervised.

I have switched the alarm clock off. I am so looking forward to having a lazy week. We went to Turkey last year for the October break and loved a bit of sunshine before the beginning of the dark season but this year, we are too poor and will just hang out here in Glasgow.

Have a good week, whatever it may bring xx