Hands down best week of lockdown so far.
We went for a socially distanced dog walk with my Mum! I was finally allowed to cuddle Monty dog too, so whilst I didn’t get to hug my parents, it was a lot closer than we’d been in such a long time.
Can you see how thrilled Tilly was?!
It still feels bonkers that we can walk with Mum, but not Dad. We can walk with Mum, who will then go indoors and be in close quarters with my Dad, but he cannot come and be on a 2m distant walk… hey ho.
In the run up to this momentous event, I also had confirmation of hair cut dates for both myself and the dogs. I know, right? I bought lottery tickets as it felt like my luckiest day ever.
Earlier in the week, the dogs had a bath. This was largely driven by how bad Bindi smells – she is still getting hours of pleasure every day stripping those bones from the butcher, and boy do we know about it! I thought it would be wise to let George go first, as a kind of “see, it’s not bad”.
George was a perfect princess and seemed to almost enjoy her bath. Truth be told, she tolerates the bath in order to get to the drying bit. She loves playing in the towel, and then she can’t get enough of the hair dryer. She sits beautifully waiting for it, and then looks at you imploringly any time you turn it off to check if she’s done yet.
Bindi… well, that was another story altogether! She spent most of her bath trying to get out of the tub. She shook repeatedly, sending bits of dog shampoo lather and mud all over the place. And when it was time to get dry she scarpered back to her stinky bones in the garden again!
I wrestled her back upstairs to the hair dryer and gave her a blow dry. Can you feel the emotion in those eyes? I think if she’d had the ability to kill me in my sleep, she would have done it that night! lol
And barely half an hour after we’d finished, Tom left me a message to say he’d be parking his van on the drive to groom them next week. Relief all around!
On their walks this week, I’ve noticed the bluebells have been dying back. The new colours coming through are the purple of the wild foxgloves and the white and yellow of these super huge daisies.
I’m not sure what the yellow ones are, because none of the ones I found online look the same. Tilly’s hand is in the photo for scale. She seems to be quite enjoying my new found observation skills. No beetles for a couple of weeks, but we’ll keep looking.
She’s been using her own eyes too. Home school took a turn for the better and this week she has not only written a story, but also drawn a self portrait.
The difference?
I believe it is the new routine that I realised I needed in order to have any chance of keeping up in the course I am taking.
I am a routine person. I thrive on it. I like knowing where I need to be and what I need to be focusing on. I like to plan. I like to execute. I like to tick things off my list. I come from a long line of high achievers and have been struggling with the feeling that I am wasting my most valuable resource – my time.
I needed more focus and no more wishy washy grey areas.
So I drew some lines.
Tilly and I discussed them and how the lines were actually better for both of us.
By 6am, I get up to work and she doesn’t talk to me before 8am. If she wakes up early, she plays in her room or on a times tables or spelling app on her tablet.
From 8am until 1pm, I am all hers. Five entire hours where my focus is on her. She loves this bit. She has taken on board the fact that our five hours together includes breakfast, dog walk, home school, fun together and lunch. Best of all, she has grasped that she gets the most fun time when there’s no faffing around over getting dressed or doing her work. It’s a complete win-win – I am so much less stressed and she is getting quality time.
From 1pm until 4.30pm, I am in work mode, and Tilly can play inside or in the garden, watch TV or be on video chat with her friends. At 4.30 I stop, leave the study and start making dinner.
We eat together with no devices – this is something sacrosanct from long before lockdown, but I was concerned that the lack of other structure might impinge on it. I needn’t have worried.
If all has gone to plan up to this point, I go and run her bath and then we have up to an hour of reading time together before she clambers into bed at 7.30pm and I come back to my study to do my evening shift.
My momentum level has shifted completely and my brain is firing with ideas.
Weekends have become meaningful again. My mojo for switching off from work and doing things that feel like fun at the weekend has skyrocketed too.
Last weekend I cleared a huge area of my garden and this weekend I leveled it. Then I laid anti-weed mesh followed by some patio slabs around the base of the washing line. I had that sense of achievement looking at it and playing with the spirit level and the bag of sand Dad had left me. It wasn’t enough though. The next thing was shovelling slate chips from out the front and barrowing them around to make the pathways.
Today I carried on and cleared a different patch. I planted another shrub that had been stuck in a pot for far too long and then started setting up Tilly’s fairy garden. She was thrilled and has positioned fairies, unicorns, hedgehog figures and little signposts all the way through it. She asked me to do it for her two months ago but I had things that “had to happen first”. It felt brilliant knowing that I’d made those things happen and could tick some things off my list.
One of those things was getting the seeds sown. This is a close up of what has sprouted in one of the raised beds. I don’t know yet whether it is indeed a sunny giant sunflower or if it will be one of the Tilly flowers that Toby got her, but it’s gone from seed to sprout in a week!
There are four or five bits like this. If they are all giant sunflowers, we will need to re-home them quite quickly, as I don’t think the raised bed will cope!
This weekend has also seen the culmination of three days of “baking”. We made the oaty flapjack base layer, baked it, let it cool and then put it in the fridge overnight. Then we added the caramel (from a tin, because that’s what the recipe asked for) and put it back in the fridge overnight.
The caramel still hadn’t gone hard when I added the chocolate layer, but it had been in the fridge overnight and I was being nagged…
When it came to getting it out of the tin, it just looked like a crime scene! The chocolate broke like the ice on a frozen birdbath. The caramel is still squishy, and the layers haven’t really bonded. It tastes good in small doses, but I’m not sure if we’ll bother with this one again. I feel like I’m recovering from a Xmas lunch every time I have a piece!
Luckily, my green curry was much more successful. I wish Tilly would eat a more varied diet, but then I’d have to share my precious with her 😉
She was a bit peeved when I opened the packet of Thai crackers and said she could only have one if she ate the Thai curry… Next week it’s curry and poppadoms, so maybe she’ll be more tempted?
To be fair, I wasn’t that tempted by her tea party offering. Can’t imagine why not, can you? She assured me that the muddy water in the little tea cup was finest Earl Grey, but I wasn’t convinced.
I’d made our usual colourful “picnic” lunch and she wanted us to eat it off her plates. She even presented me with a selection to wash up before I brought lunch out to the garden. I may have eaten mine before I got outside 😉
At least we can always agree on ice cream 😀
What has been great in your week? Xx
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