Day 809

Day 809...

Our Monday morning started with coffee followed by a 2.5 mile walk in 46 minutes - boom!

It was then off to Asda to collect this weeks grocery shopping before returning home for an online doctors appointment. I've been menopausal for a number of years now and had been recommended a doctor who specialises in treating women with the menopause to see if she could help with night sweats and consequently broken nights sleep.

Having been diagnosed and treated for breast cancer in 2019 I have been reluctant to go down the route of hormone treatments because of the link between them and breast cancer. Estrogen therapy for menopause symptoms can be problematic for women who have had, or may be at risk of, breast cancer so I need to be careful which treatments, if any, I pursue. But it was lovely to chat with a doctor who had the time to talk and explain and offer solutions; a plan has been put in place and we will see how we get on over the next few weeks.

After a spot of lunch (or very late breakfast as it was our first meal of the day) we decided to go on another walk but this time we drove to a local country park...Elvaston Castle. This resulted in a walk of 3.5 miles in an hour and fourteen minutes; suffice to say I have exceed my 10,000 steps today!

Back home and we decided to have a bit of a workout; while I stayed indoors to do some body-weight exercises Simon ventured outdoors to 'our gym'. But he'd not been out there all that long when he came back in rather annoyed with himself. He'd decided to do some sprints up and down the short lane to our house and had slipped on some wet leaves and moss and had fallen over. Although there were no cuts or grazes his left wrist had taken the brunt of the fall and was feeling a little tender! He'd attempted to carry on with his workout but his wrist was having none of it so the workout was cut short and the rest of the evening was spent keeping his wrist elevated and alternating between icing it and wrapping it in a support bandage. We are hoping that it is just badly bruised or maybe sprained as he is able to move all his fingers and there are no obvious or unusual lumps or bumps. We will see how it goes overnight and  if it's no better tomorrow it may need a trip to A&E!

We shall wait and see...see you tomorrow.
xx

Day 677

 Day 677...

A quiet Sunday to round out a quiet weekend.

The day started with the usual collection of our weekly grocery shopping, which was rather uneventful for a change. With the shopping all put away it was time to figure out how the rest of the day was going to unfurl.

We had no plans, and we had no jobs that had to be done, so we decided to simply get outside and enjoy the fresh air. We headed to Elvaston Castle, our closest country park, for a brisk walk. We completed two miles in 39 minutes and then decided it was time for coffee.

We headed to our closest Starbucks. We were chatting about the need for the car to be washed and had resigned ourselves to making that the first job when we got home. But as we were leaving we noticed that the garage across the way had jet-washers; £2 and 5 minutes later and our car was sparkly clean once again. Win!

Back home and Simon spent a further ten minutes giving the car a wipe around the door sills and he even hoovered it as well! Now, Simon is not a car fan and admitted that he has never really been bothered before about keeping any of our previous cars especially clean and tidy. But he is really enjoying this new car, he loves driving it and wants to keep it looking good! Well, who am I to stop him?!

With the afternoon drawing in it was time for more jigsaw for me before the light faded and some digital art time for Simon.

A quiet Sunday in January. January is such a strange month, the anti-climax following the hustle and bustle of December, the festivities of Christmas and then New Year so it always ends up feeling a bit 'flat'. Then add in cold weather and dark nights and it feels like a recipe for a bit of a non-event. I think we need to get a few things put in the diary to look forward to, especially as England sees the majority of its restrictions lifted towards the end of the coming week which means life can start to feel more 'normal' again. I checked back on my blog posts from this time last year (not long after we'd gone into another lockdown) to see what we had been up to and we had snow! In fact we had so much snow that we had to close pre-school for two days...no chance of that happening this year as though it's been chilly there is no sign of any snow.

See you tomorrow.
xx

Day 510

Day 510...

Today has been a little more active than the last couple of days.

A steady start to the day and our first job was to pay a visit to our local recycling centre to get rid of the roots of trees that we had dug up a couple of weekends ago. As the weather had been dry yesterday we had had the sense to load the roots into the car ready for this morning. 

Earlier in the summer we had made quite a few trips to the local recycling centre and had gotten to know one of the workers, Lewis. It was the first time there in a few weeks but Lewis remembered us and was keen to chat and find out how we were - how sweet was that?!

We then headed over to a local sports store as I wanted to look at some dumbbells to compliment my set of kettlebells. We were able to pick up a couple of 5kg and a couple of 2.5kg ones which should be great for me to workout with and be able to extend the range of exercises that I currently do. We also picked up a couple of push-up bar grips.

Back home it was time for a quick coffee before Simon headed out to the barbers and I took Molly out for a drive. When we arrived home Molly had a message from her driving instructor saying there might be a test date for her next week...we were quite hopeful but unfortunately it didn't pan out. But at least we know he is on the look out for cancellations and Molly is checking online each day so fingers crossed something pops up!

Within a few minutes of Molly and I arriving home so did Simon and we decided to book some tickets to visit Nottingham Castle tomorrow. After a few attempts I was able to secure a couple of tickets for just after lunch tomorrow. It has been a fair few years since we have visited the castle and for the last couple of years it has been closed to the public while it underwent some extensive renovations so it will be interesting to see what it now looks like.

Then we jumped in the car and went to our closest country park, another, but smaller castle...Elvaston Castle. We had a wander around the grounds and managed 2.5miles in about 56 minutes; we walked areas that we had not walked before and are very appreciative to have somewhere so lovely to wander so local to us.

Back home and we rounded out the day with a workout in our 'gym' and a chance for me to try out my new dumbbells!

See you tomorrow.
xx

Day 474

Day 474...

Monday has rolled around once again and it was another day when I wasn't feeling the greatest. I'm blaming hormones and the state of the world!

But we had the usual start to a Monday morning with collecting the weekly grocery shop but once that was done and all put away we decided to head off out to a local country park for a walk around.

We are very fortunate to have a couple of country parks within a twenty minute drive of where we live. Although we decided to avoid our first choice as the necessary parking had to be paid for via an app with no obvious other way to pay. Disappointed with the lack of options we decided to head elsewhere.

As we arrived at our park of choice, Elvaston Castle, the sun seemed to disappear and within a couple of minutes of leaving the car we had to put up the umbrella's. 

Thankfully the rain didn't last too long and we were able to take a gentle stroll around the grounds managing a couple of miles.

We have missed taking walks of late, as life has become more 'normal' we have been occupied with work and little projects around the house which has eaten into our time to go out for walks. Hopefully over the summer when I am away from work for a fair few weeks we will be able to get back into more of a routine again.

Over the course of the afternoon Simon took Molly out for a drive while I re-worked some of the cash-flow forecasting for pre-school as a few variables have changed and I wanted to start my working week tomorrow with the most up to date figures. It took me slightly longer than I would have liked but at least I know that I have all the information that I need to make more progress.

Molly took the driving seat once again this evening as she drove us over to her kickboxing class and she is doing really well. We are really seeing a much more intuitive driving style starting to emerge. She has a test date booked for October, because that was the earliest date she could get, but she is checking the system everyday to see if she can get one earlier. But it would appear that everyone is doing the same trying to make up for all the time lost over the last sixteen months or so.

So the powers that be have announced today that we will see restrictions being lifted from July 19th, providing the data allows. So all being well wearing face masks will be optional, no more social distancing, no more checking in at hospitality venues and the removal of limits on numbers of people at events. Fingers crossed this all happens as I am so over all the restrictions and just simply want to get back to what was a normal life. We just now need to get travel sorted as I am desperate to get to a Disney park...preferably Walt Disney World in Florida but to be honest any Disney park would do!!

See you tomorrow.
xx