It's been another busy week work wise. But the weather is improving and I can feel the life outside. There is life inside too it seems...I found more of Woo's wobbly eye art work 😁
So on Wednesday, I was looking forward to taking a long lunch and seeing Claire in the park. She had got drinks and pastries for us and we sat in the sunshine talking and talking. It feels like so long since we had a proper chat. We don't catch up much over messages or the phone, so there is so much to go over. 2 hours passed in the blink of an eye and I had to go back for scheduled meetings, but I would have happily stayed there in the sunshine with this beautiful soul.
Our Wednesday night games night was a wash out. Bunnykins could hardly be convinced to join us and was preferring to listen to something on her phone. This then got Mark and Woo cross and grumpy and the whole thing collapsed soon after this picture was taken. I think now that Bunnykins is back at school she doesn't feel the value of socialising with us. She could understand the logic during lockdown - but now she really just wants to be on her own. It does make me sad, but I understand that it is her personality, not personal. She does love us, I know that for sure and she shows it so many other ways, but spending time with other people is draining for her. So I think that may be it for games night.
So anyway, Woo and I went and snuggled up and watched Travel Man together, which I was entirely happy with as an outcome given how tired I was mentally.
Thursday was a day of end to end meetings. I had 30 minutes first thing where a meeting had been moved. Then I went into a half hour client meeting at 9:30am, followed by a 2hr SMT (Senior Management Team) meeting. Followed by at 45min catch up with my counterpart from another area of the business. Then there was an opportune 10 minutes talking to a colleague to co-ordinate on slides for the afternoon. I was glad to have that sorted as at least I could take an hour for lunch with Mark without concern about work. From 2pm there was then a 3hr quarterly team meeting. When this was done, we then had an online social!
It was a cooking session with an initiative called Migrateful.
It was very good. We made coconut peas with a lady called Kashi. At first it was quite quiet, we were all on mute following along. But a good atmosphere developed with people asking interesting questions to which Kashi was happy to respond and a good chat developed.
It was a simple dish, but very tasty.
By the time we had finished cooking and I sat down to eat, I was completely zonked. The social didn't last long after, and I was quite grateful for that.
And then before you can say "what the heck?" it was Friday again. Bunnykins had a non-school uniform day so this was the girls after breakfast, just before I was due to take Woo to the bus-stop.
Saturday morning, Mark made us pancakes then was straight out to the garden to get working on replacing the raised bed around the tree bed.
I sat a moment and thought that we were keen to move this bamboo. It had got massive and nothing could grow behind it. Also it had little fruits in the summer that are not edible but can stain clothes on the line. So I thought - hey, I'll just whip that out of there! There was another smaller one also in the wrong place that I thought I would re-plant at the back of the bed.
Well, I got going and soon realised this thing was pretty solidly embedded. I dug and dug, cutting through roots as i came to them, trying to keep undermining the root ball to cut as many as possible. Woo was helping lots which was great. We stopped for lunch and then I carried on digging and digging. We already had got the big pry bar out and tried a few times. It is about 5foot long, 5cm diameter iron bar. About 3:30pm I gave it another go. I jammed it in under the root ball and swung my weight off it. I had started to think it not possible... but it moved! At this, Woo and Mark jumped across to help. They grabbed branches to help shake the thing loose. It was massively heavy!
Mark was still carrying on with construction.
He got the shredder out for me and Woo to use.
By about 5pm, we had shredded what we could of the green waste. The root ball was up - the smaller bamboo moved to the right place and I was exhausted. I am not sure I would have made the same decision again if I had known the amount of work, as right now I do need to relax at the weekends. But it was good physical and mindful work. My fitbit logged me undertaking "sport" and I got my steps in before I went in to make tea.
I put some chips, onion rings and veggie burgers in the oven and then went to grab a very welcome shower.
After tea, we watched one of my favourite films - Working Girl. Bunnykins was unimpressed, but stuck with it, while Woo was fascinated by the 80's ness of it.
On Sunday, Mark went off for another ridiculously long run with Jason. I read my book a bit, helped the girls with breakfast, sorted out some laundry and put the slow cooker on. It was only then I realised the changing of the clocks and that I had lost an hour which felt very irritating indeed.
At 11am I went over to the park for a coffee with Ben.
I have to get through the busyness of this year, and the imposed limitations of lockdown have helped make that easier - there is nothing that can be done so it is easier to find time to do nothing.
I feel a bit behind the curve in planning all the marvelous things we could do as lockdown eases. Is that because I am too busy to plan, or because I am afraid to plan - afraid to go back into a different busyness? I suspect I will adapt to it fine, we have so far.
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