Husband's first shop, and dieting before Xmas

 Today is the first anniversary of my lovely friend Toni-anne's death from cancer last year.  I thought of her when looking out of the bedroom windows this morning - I always stand and look at the views for a few moments, seeing if there's any wildlife about (there usually is) and if anything's changed in the landscape.  The first time she came to visit us here, we both stood looking out of the front bedroom window (the photo at the top of my blog, although that time when Toni came, there were sheep in that field) and she said "How do you get anything at all done, living here?".  If she lived here, she said, she'd be sitting on my high backed stool at that window, looking out at the view all day.

Husband has just gone out to do the supermarket shopping - he has done it by himself a handful of times, but mainly just a small shop for a handful of things.  Today, whilst not being a full trolley shop, it is bigger than just a little top up.  I wonder if he'll regret offering to do the shopping regularly, once he comes back today?!  It means I have to write him a list (in big capitals, partly because of his dyslexia, but also because he will probably have forgotten to take his reading glasses!), and he will stick rigidly to the list.  I do generally write a hasty list for myself, but often when I'm in the shop I'll see something on a shelf and think 'oh yes, I need one of those'....whereas he won't.  Still, it means he'll save a bit of money!  I am grateful that he's volunteered to do it, it relieves me of a job that I hate, and gives me a bit of free time to get on with things whilst he's not here cluttering up the place - and it means the blasted TV isn't on! 😁 Win-win.

Another storm forecast for the next couple of days, sigh - it's already blustery and rainy and is set to get a lot worse.  Well, it is winter.  I don't have to go anywhere - I've decided not to go out to any garden centres, craft fairs, Christmas lights displays and the like, because I want to avoid crowds whilst this new covid strain is building up.  And who wants to go out in weather like this anyway?  Even Betty's not keen, she does her business then turns and heads for home.  It's so dark and gloomy and the days are so short now, barely 8 hours (less, I think) of daylight.  Still, only another couple of weeks and it's the shortest day, then daylight starts stretching out a bit again, albeit only a couple of minutes or so.  It always makes me happier though once the 21/22 Dec has passed - Spring is on the way, albeit 2 or 3 months to go yet.  And 84 days till I can go back to my beloved caravan!

I'm making soup today, for our lunches for the next 2 or 3 days - broccoli and cauliflower with blue cheese.  We've decided to go very low carb for a couple of weeks - we'll be eating all sorts of carby/rich food over the Christmas period, so need to get a bit of weight off now to counteract that.  So for 2 weeks or so we'll be having no potatoes, pasta, rice, bread or cereal, although husband will probably still have a slice of toast or a small bowl of cereal for breakfast - I'm not much of a breakfast eater.  Lunches will be homemade soups, or a cheese & tomato omelette, or salad with cottage cheese, ham or tinned fish.  Dinners will be meat or fish with lots of green veggies.  Husband likes a pudding, so he'll have a yogurt or a piece of fruit.  We actually started on Saturday....oven roasted ribs and salad, then roast pork with green veggies for yesterday......I'm peeing for England already (cutting down drastically on carbs always gets rid of excess water for me).  I'm in the right headspace for this at the moment, so should have no problem sticking to it for a couple of weeks.