A much better start to the week

Thank you for the comments on my last post.....I was going through a particularly bad time when I wrote that (you might have guessed!), but things are much better this week.  Although I almost hesitate to say that in case it tempts fate and the roof caves in or all my white goods blow up at the same time....knowing my luck!

The weather, for a start - we've had foul weather (strong winds and seemingly endless rain) for what seems like months now, but this week there's hardly any rain in the forecast, little or no wind and we've even had quite a lot of sunshine.  Monday and Tuesday mornings there was a really hard frost, but the sun came out fairly soon (oh, that's another nice thing, some really lovely sunrises and sunsets) to burn most of it away, although it took longer yesterday.  This morning, although it's still dark and I can't see much outside, I don't think there's a frost (it's not so cold, for a start) and it seems to be foggy.  

Anyway, Monday morning we decided to take advantage of the bright sunshine and go to our favourite beach, Dunster.  We took a flask of hot chocolate and some water and snacks for Betty, and got dressed up in lots of layers.  Well, as it happened, we didn't need so many layers - once on the beach in full sunshine, it was actually quite warm, enough to shed a layer or 2.  Oh, it was wonderful - Betty adored racing around, digging holes in the sand, flinging herself down on her back rolling around, 'killing' mouthfuls of seaweed (she loves grabbing a huge mound of it - there's loads on Dunster beach - and shaking it violently as if it were a rat).  It's an absolute joy to see her having so much fun.  And walking on that beach, watching the waves gently rolling in, with not many people around (it's practically deserted this time of year) calms my soul.  We usually walk up the beach to the end of the little chalet park, then walk back down through the chalet park (it's allowed, so long as you keep your dog on the lead) - it's a small park, the chalets are privately owned and it's a lovely little community, with nature trails and ponds and a nice little café (closed through the winter though, hence our flask).  A few owners were there, having work done on their chalets, they're all very friendly.  It was absolutely lovely.

A major problem we're having which has been causing me no end of sleepless nights, headaches and a lot of stress, is gradually being sorted out now, we've had some help with it this week and things are slowly coming together.  I'm feeling a lot more hopeful about it now and a lot less stressed.  

We've survived for the past several years without having a printer - we did have one years ago, but it broke down and we didn't replace it.  Somebody gave us one a couple of years back, but it was so complicated we just couldn't get it to work.....even husband's son in law, who's a computer engineer, had no success, so we got rid of it.  Any printing we've needed doing, a friend or neighbour has done for us, or I've gone to the library and used their facilities to print stuff out.  Well, we finally decided this week we could really do with one, so have bought one (I got advice from my very techie-minded friend as to which one to get).  I'm not even going to attempt to set it up myself - my brain freezes completely when I try to do anything techie, and that's when I'm feeling normal, never mind about having a half-fried brain like I have now.  So he's going to come and help me with it (erm, do it for me hopefully, hehe).  He's good like that.

I'm going to have a batch cooking day tomorrow, I want to make as many meals to freeze as I can with a big pack of mince, bag of chicken fillets and some packs of sausages and bacon.  I read a blog the other day where the lady had spent a couple of days batch cooking and had made 60(!!) meals to freeze.  I haven't that many containers or the space to store them in my freezer, but am hoping to make more than a dozen.