Betty's lovely playtime, and feeling yuck

 Betty had a wonderful time at the dog exercise field yesterday (sorry no pictures, didn't even occur to me).  For the first time she actually went on a couple of the exercise/agility things - she particularly loved the tyre mountain.  It's a load of various sized tyres, from car to tractor sizes, all piled up and filled in with sand, once she realised it was sand she was all over it, as she loves playing in the sand on the beach.  She did exactly what she does on the beach - dug holes in the sand, threw herself down in them on her back and rolled around.  Filled my heart with joy to see her enjoying herself so much.  There are 2 tunnels, big tubes around 10 or 12 feet long - she won't go in them though, even with us throwing balls through them and calling her, she just runs around the side of them!  So funny.  She also spent 10 mins or so just running around with her nose to the ground, hoovering up all the smells from the previous dozens and dozens of dogs that have been there before.  She was zonked out fast asleep for an hour soon after we got home.  Because of all the rain we've had, the field was extremely muddy in places though, and will obviously get worse as even more rain is forecast.  I think the owners of the field will have to address that, perhaps bring in some grit or bark chips to cover the worst areas.

I think I'm coming down with something, it started last night with a fit of sneezing, followed by a headache, overwhelming tiredness and aching muscles, so I went to bed early.  I slept reasonably  well, but still feel under the weather this morning, in fact I feel pretty rotten.  Hopefully it's just a cold coming on and won't hang about.

Gloomy dark evenings

 Thank you all for your comments, and my apologies for being so haphazard in answering them - I know sometimes I do, but quite often I don't.  I do certainly read them all though, and appreciate them.

I woke up ridiculously early this morning, due to the clock change, but just lay in bed reading the papers on my phone.  I was sorry to read Matthew Perry has died, he's certainly had a troubled life, poor man.  I'm sure the pressures of fame must cause no end of problems for some.  This time of year, from the clocks going back to the winter solstice on 21/22 December is the period I dislike the most, it just signals short, dark, gloomy days for me.  I know 21 December is the middle of winter, but it's the time when the days start getting longer, albeit by just a minute or 2 per day.  So it's uphill from there to Spring, as far as I'm concerned.  Out of all the months of the year, December is my least favourite, I think.  I'm not overly keen on Christmas and all the 'Buy me!  You need this!' hype surrounding it, and with my lovely Mum having died on Christmas Eve, and my beloved Nanna on Boxing Day, it's not a particularly happy time.  But at least December does seem to speed by in a mad rush each year.

I bought a leg of pork for husband for his roast dinner today, I'll have all the usual roast and green veg, with stuffing and apple sauce.  I may even have a bit of crackling.  The pork will give him dinners for the next couple of days as well, along with sandwiches for his lunch.  Any leftovers after that will be sliced or diced and frozen.  I'll do plenty of veg so we can have bubble and squeak tomorrow, with a fried egg for me, the same for husband with the addition of some cold pork.

Tomorrow morning we're taking Betty to the dog exercise field, there's no rain in the forecast which is good.  It's a pity the dog field has quickly become so popular to hire, we can only manage to book it about every 3 weeks or so, and obviously we don't know what the weather's going to be like that far ahead.  Betty's not a fan of walks in the rain, and I'm certainly not either.  We've got to take her to the vets in the afternoon, she's having trouble with one of her ears again, and her anal glands need emptying - that's not something that husband or I want to do, it absolutely stinks to high heaven.  I do love my baby, but I draw a line at doing that!

Double charged, contradictions and worry

 In Sainsburys yesterday, the checkout cashier was young, disinterested, unsmiling, yawning and clearly didn't want to be there, she didn't look at or speak to us.  Whilst I was packing things, I happened to notice that she scanned one thing twice - I pointed it out to her.  A minute or two later, she did it again with another product - not deliberately, just carelessness.  So again I had to tell her so she could void it, she didn't apologise either time, just voided the item without a word.  When we'd finished and paid, I spent a couple of minutes going through my receipt before leaving the shop, just to make sure we hadn't been double charged for any other items, fortunately we hadn't.  When I briefly worked in a supermarket, we were expressly told to be polite and friendly and engage with the customers - the girl yesterday must have missed that training talk!  And it made me wonder just how many other customers she'd inadvertently overcharged with her carelessness.

The coffee morning at the neighbour's house was good, mostly.  I say mostly because, as always, husband never stops talking, he could talk the hind legs off a donkey.  He's always been the same so I mostly stay quiet and let him do the talking.  The thing that does irritate me though is that, whenever I do talk, he will constantly butt in and finish whatever I was talking about.  And, even more irritating - and this is a fairly recent thing - he almost always contradicts me, regardless of what I was saying.  I don't think he actually means to, it's just that with his very poor memory nowadays, his recollection of events is often very different to mine.  It's like the Queen said when Harry & Meghan had come out with some claims....Recollections may vary!  But it's annoying because it makes it seem like I was lying.  I sometimes long for time alone, or at least time to spend with friends without husband dominating every conversation.

He actually did go out yesterday afternoon, so I had a lovely hour or two of total peace and quiet, getting on with the crochet blanket.  I've finished the border and made a start on a few little flowers - another couple of sessions should see it completed and ready to gift.

With regard to the housing situation....I know we'll get offered a place sooner or later - well, it's most likely to be later.  The Council themselves say the average waiting time for someone to be offered a property is around 3 years, or more, unless they are on the Homeless and Emergency list, which we're not.  It's not uncommon to have a wait of 5 years - there are very many more tenants waiting for homes than there are available properties.  My worry is that the longer we have to wait, the older we'll be - if we have to wait 5 years, husband will be 77, I'll be 68, and our health conditions aren't getting any better.  I'm just worried that I might not have the physical or mental capacity to cope with it all when the time comes - and it will be me who has to deal with everything.  It's all such a worry.

Deciding what to get rid of...

 Beautifully sunny morning yesterday so we took Betty to the nearby nature reserve, not been there for a while.  Had a lovely walk, with hardly anybody there - we generally go on one of the less popular paths anyway, the ones which have the bird hides tend to be busier.

I went through my clothes again yesterday - suddenly remembered I had a plastic lidded box under my bed containing clothes which I hadn't worn for probably a year.  I kept a couple of things, but the rest have been bagged up for the charity shop, along with some other clothes which are now too big.  I decided I'm not keeping them as I don't want to grow back into them!  I suggested husband sort through his wardrobe as well - it's stuffed with shirts and smart trousers which he never wears, except for rare weddings and funerals.  I said it would be sensible to keep a couple of shirts, but he really doesn't need 6 or 8 that he literally never wears.  Same with the smart trousers - he lives in shorts during the summer, and tracksuit trousers in winter, and nearly all of the smart trousers no longer fit him anyway, as his waistline has expanded over the past couple of years.  He hasn't started on it yet, but I'll suggest it again this afternoon.

I think when we do finally move home, we'll probably get rid of his wardrobe - it's a great big heavy antique pine one, it is very nice but will most likely be far too big when we're downsizing to a smaller property.  He's got a really nice antique pine chest of drawers, he could probably have one of my 3 smaller sets of pine drawers to add to that, plus a simple clothes rail if he wants one.  We do have a fair bit of excess furniture we'll no longer need - or fit - in a smaller place....e.g. as well as the leather sofa which turns into a very nice comfy sofa bed, which we'll be keeping, we currently have 5 armchairs of different types.  Three are in the lounge, one in the dining room and one upstairs in my bedroom - I'll be keeping that as it's a recliner and I use it a lot.  Two of the downstairs armchairs will go though.  Our dining table is a big and old drop leaf solid oak one, very cumbersome and heavy, along with heavy oak chairs.  We will get rid of those and buy a small 2-seater table - we already have 2 further more modern light wood dining chairs, currently in my craft room, which we'll keep and try to get a table to match.  Husband has a large corner pine desk, that'll go too, we'll get a smaller computer console desk, the student kind that kids have in their bedrooms.

Another thing to go will be our large upright fridge freezer - it's fairly old now, although still works perfectly.  We have another spare much newer under counter fridge in the utility room, we were given it by my brother who was having a new kitchen fitted, we'll keep that instead, along with the big upright freezer in the utility room.  When the time comes I'll advertise all this stuff on our local Marketplace page, at cheap prices so it all goes quickly.  Husband was rubbing his hands with glee at the thought of getting loadsamoney for all this stuff, but I said it'll be far better to sell it all cheaply so it gets sold rapidly.  If we charge the sort of prices he wants, we'll never sell it and I don't want to take unnecessary surplus stuff with us when we move.  It'll all be extra money anyway, and we have plenty of money in our house move savings fund, due to my careful saving and transferring extra amounts into it, such as the surprise legacy from the deceased relative I never knew I had.

We're still no nearer getting a house move - all we can do is keep putting in bids on suitable properties each week, one day we'll get lucky and it'll be our turn.  Only one property worth putting a bid on this week.....the bungalow itself is not ideal, and it doesn't have a front garden or a drive for the car, parking is on the street.  But the location is good, close to a supermarket and GP surgery.  It is a bit soul destroying putting all these bids in week after week and getting nowhere, we've been on the housing list for almost a year now.  Just got to keep doing it and keep our fingers crossed.

Going shopping early this morning, as we've been invited to a neighbour's coffee and cake morning at 11.00 am.  I really must get on with the baby blanket this afternoon, I didn't do any yesterday.  Feeling a bit flat and despondent today.

I see I'm getting a ton of spam comments again, advertising links to who knows what.  I don't know why they bother, they're never going to get published - well not on this blog anyway.

I'll be eating prawns for months!

 We needed to stock up on frozen food - we go shopping for freezer stuff about every couple of months.  We decided to try FarmFoods instead of the usual Iceland Food Warehouse - they're next door to each other in our town and neither is ever busy when we go, quite frankly I don't know how they manage to stay open when they're in direct competition with each other and being next door.  My main gripe with FarmFoods is that half the shop is given over to - well, crap basically - rows and rows of multipacks of canned pop, crisps, biscuits and sweets.  And their fresh fruit and veg isn't up to much - not good quality and very limited choice.  However, they do have some good bargains on fresh dairy stuff and frozen foods, although it is a bit hit and miss.....e.g. their frozen cauli and broccoli (I buy it for Betty's homemade food) is in smaller packs and isn't particularly good value.  I buy big bags of frozen diced ready cooked chicken for Betty too, it's good value and convenient.  They do big bags (1.5kg) of frozen tiger king prawns - really massive prawns, which I love.  They're £19.99 each or 2 bags for £30 - I got 2 yesterday.  They're expensive, but they last a long time as I don't need to use many because of them being so huge.  Husband likes them too, I used them to make a Thai prawn curry for us both for dinner last night - scrumptious.  They also quite often do special offers on butter - last time we went, they were doing 500g tubs of Country Life butter for 99p.  No such luck this time, but they did have 750g tubs at £4.00, which is £1 cheaper than Sainsburys.

I noticed Lidl had some of their £1.50 veg boxes - fresh fruit & veg that's nearing the end of its life and will otherwise be thrown out.  So I went and had a look - some people on FB rave about them, but I have to say I have rarely seen one that I would buy, even for £1.50 - the ones they had yesterday had veg and fruit that was so far gone I'd just throw it on the compost heap.  Lettuces that were slimy, tomatoes so soft and squidgy they'd split, very brown bananas, carrots that were going mouldy.  Yuck.  

Seems lots of us count marrying our husbands as one of our best life decisions - which is just as well I suppose!  Another good decision I made was to drive up to the Midlands to see my Mum in hospital on the last day of her life, on Christmas Eve 2019.  We got there 10 minutes after she died, and to this day I don't regret that, as I said all along I didn't want to watch her die.  However, I'm so glad I could give her a hug and kiss whilst she was still warm, rather than seeing her cold and waxy body in the sterile and soulless environment of a funeral home.

And of course another great decision was getting my beautiful Betty, she's my baby (I've never had nor wanted children) and brings me so much joy, she makes me smile literally every single day.  It's her birthday today, she's 7 years old, we've had her since she was just 8 weeks old and I can't believe how quickly the time has gone by.

In common with some of you, husband's had a letter to say he's getting a payment of £500 for the Winter Fuel Allowance again.  I'm so grateful for this, it really does make a big difference to us.  We'll have no worries about turning the central heating up if it's cold this winter (we've not needed to put it on yet), and it'll mean we can put another big chunk into our moving house savings.

Best decisions

 Yesterday was sunny and calm, albeit a bit cold, so we took the opportunity to go out for a walk.  We went to Watchet, a pretty little harbour town and one of our favourite places, we love walking along the pier and leaning on the wall looking out to sea.

Do you ever think that some decisions you made in life were the best things ever?  I'm sure most of us would be so glad we made certain decisions.  Moving down here to Somerset from a large Midlands town (and prior to that, a busy and noisy London suburb near to Heathrow Airport) was probably the best decision we ever made, along with buying our cheap dilapidated old caravan and doing it up to be the perfect holiday home.  We love our rural life here in Somerset and couldn't ever envisage moving back up north to a heavily built up and populated area.  Obviously as we get older rural living presents more problems, and we know we have to move for our future health needs, but hopefully it will still be a nice area with fields nearby, on the edge of a small town.

And of course, getting married to my husband was the best decision, he's always been and still is my soulmate.  At times his behaviour is very frustrating and challenging, but I remind myself it's not his fault, he didn't choose to have heart failure and cognitive impairment.  I sometimes think, when it's been an especially stressful day because of something he's done - I didn't sign up for this life.  But actually I did - our marriage vows are for better or worse, in sickness and in health.  So whatever life throws at us, I will deal with it.

I've made some good friends over the years too, it's a pity I don't see enough of my couple of best friends - time and distance constraints.

What are the best decisions you ever made?  And are there any you regret?  Obviously, there are some things I regret, but I tend to think they're in the past and nothing we can do about them - except try not to make the same mistakes again.

A hug for Sue, and a hippyish baby blanket

 I'd like to start off by saying I hope Sue of A Smaller and Simpler Life/A Year of Modern Rationing is well and enjoying her blogging break.  I miss your blogs Sue, as I'm sure we all do, but understand that we must all do what is best for us.  I hope you'll return to Blogland, but that's a selfish point of view.  Take care Sue, and please have a (collective) virtual hug from us all.

I finished the main body of the crochet baby blanket yesterday, and started on the border, it's a couple of rows of single crochet and then a scalloped shell edge.  I'm now going to crochet a few single and double flowers, and maybe a couple of butterflies, and sew them on.  The main part of the blanket is in a deep aubergine colour, the border is lilac and the flowers and butterflies will be lilac and shades of pink.  Our neighbour dresses in quite a Bohemian, hippyish way and is having a little girl, so slightly unconventional colours would I feel be more suited to her than the normal plain cream and pink.  I was initially going to do the blanket in shades of dove grey, teal green and mustard yellow - that was before I knew she was having a girl though....those colours would have been more suited to a boy I think.  I've enjoyed making this one, once finished I might carry on with the dove grey one - I'd started it some weeks back, before changing to the aubergine colour scheme.  The dove grey one can go in my stash - I'm sure there'll be a baby boy born sooner or later.  I do like crocheting, especially baby blankets, through the winter - it's nice to have a warm lapful of wool.  Oh and I'll put a pic of the blanket on here when it's done.

I made a lovely dinner yesterday, if I do say so myself.  It was new potatoes thinly sliced and layered with sliced leeks and smoked salmon, I made a cheese, pesto and cream sauce to pour over it (had part of a tub of fresh pesto to use up) and baked it in the oven.  It was gorgeous, even husband really liked it and he's not really a fan of smoked salmon - says it's too strong tasting.  Served it with long stemmed broccoli.  Today husband's having roast chicken slices I froze in gravy, he's asked for mash and peas with it.  I'm having a portion of the herby crumble-topped ratatouille I made and froze a couple of weeks ago.  So it's a non-cooking day today.