Oh Happy Day

Day 234

Welcome to the weekend and a very slow start in our household today. With nothing to be up and out for we opted for a late start and a late breakfast.

But once moving we had a few jobs to get completed. First was to take some photos of Simon and me for our passports as they need renewing. This meant lots of attempts at getting the right type of photo; looking forward, no glasses, no expression, plain background and no shadows - easy right?! Thank goodness for Molly's photographic equipment as we were able to use her light boxes to get the best and cleanest lighting possible. I just hope when the applications get processed that they meet all the requirements!

We then had a couple of repair jobs to do; one radiator to bleed to see if we can get it to warm up (thankfully it worked) and then a few lightbulbs to replace in our outdoor garden lights which now the nights are getting darker earlier was very much needed.

Today has been a beautiful day, crisp with sunshine at times, a little mist lingering about but ideal for taking a walk out this afternoon. We were out for just over an hour and completed 3.6 miles, and saw lots, and lots, of people out walking...much more than we have seen of late. There were lots of cars parked close to where we live when normally we wouldn't see any, this is definitely the effect of the second lockdown as this is what happened back during the first one. At least everyone we encountered was in a good mood and happy to acknowledge each other while giving a respectful amount of distance.

Once home and fueled with coffee it was time to sit down and watch a Disney movie. Along with fellow Disney nerds Michelle and Tracey we attempted to have a 'group watch' but after a little faffing about we decided to adopt the old fashioned approach of setting up our movie of choice on Disney Plus and pressing play at the same time. Our movie of choice? Coco - such a beautiful film not only in meaning but visually as well. And yes I cried...what is it about Disney/Pixar movies that can bring you to tears?!

And then about half way through the movie we heard the news that Joe Biden had been declared as the president of the USA; thank goodness for that! It was so great dipping into social media (once I'd watched the movie) to see lots of very happy people! And although I suspect the next couple of months are going to be rather interesting the end result will see us, hopefully, return back to a more normal and reasoned world steered by people who actually know what they are doing.

Thought I would share this picture today as after posting it on the Disney Dream Girls Family Facebook page one of our American friends pointed out that it was rather appropriate considering todays events. 

Simon ten years ago started to draw a Mickey Mouse every day for a year; his 365 Mickey project, and this is the drawing that started it all. Sat at my mum's house one Sunday afternoon 10 years ago, listening to the sound of fireworks as people around us celebrated Bonfire Night from three days earlier, Simon took up his pens and decided to draw Mickey Mouse and so embarked a project that would last for 365 days. Each day Simon would draw a Mickey based on a suggestion from me or, as the year moved on, we would pick a theme; it turned out to be a fantastic achievement and provides us, to this day, with some lovely memories.

Well, we have a bottle of champagne chilling in the fridge so I better stop writing and raise a glass to a new found sense of hope in the world.

Stay safe, wash your hands, keep your distance and wear a mask.

xx

Whirlwind of a Day

Day 233...

And what a busy day it has been today.

Work started with a mini staff meeting as we had a number of issues to chat through and once we all had reached a consensus it was then my job to action it.

We had lots of chat about planning for the coming few weeks as well as into next year. There were the usual emails to field and banking to complete but the day rolled around pretty quickly.

Once home I still had a few work bits and pieces to deal with, telephone conversations to have, messages to deal with and I think I managed to grab a couple of half cups of coffee along the way.

The jigsaws that I have listed for sale are doing pretty well and currently just over half will sell, which is pretty good going all ready. 

We are in day 2 of the second official lockdown but nothing much for me seems to have changed. I am still going to work as all education is staying open. Both Simon and Ethan continue to work from home so no change there then. Molly is with her boyfriend and carrying on with all her Shutter Studios projects; check out her website and social media to see what she's been up to. 

When we went into lockdown back in March it was very evident that the whole country had stopped. Where I live in the middle of the UK we have a major motorway intersecting through us and every day I go to work I have to travel over this motorway. Back in March this stretch of road was eerily quiet and when we ventured out to fetch groceries I would comment on how much actual road we could see as historically it has been a very busy, often jam packed, section of road. 

Since lockdown was eased, or lifted, or whatever you want to call it, the road has gotten busier over time and while perhaps not as busy as it once used to be it has become, once more, a busy stretch of road. When I drove over the road today I looked expecting to see a much quieter road but no, everything was moving in the same way as it has been doing for the past few months. So we have a second lockdown but has anything really changed? 

And while I write this nothing has changed with the US elections as we are still waiting for a winner to be declared and the last few states votes to be counted. And all despite one candidate having way more of the popular vote than the other!

Roll on 2021 and fingers crossed for some normality.

And with that I will collect my glass of wine and head in the direction of the television as tonight is 'Baby Yoda' time 😉

Stay safe, wash your hands, keep your distance and wear a mask.
xx

Gunpowder, Treason & Plot

Day 232...

Here we are on Bonfire Night and we still have no definitive answer on the US elections and the UK has gone into Lockdown 2: Electric Boogaloo?? sorry I can't resist saying it every time it gets mentioned!

Today has been a non-work day for me and so my first job of the day was to do some research and prep ready for recording the Disney Dream Girls podcast later this evening. I had some villains to research as well as looking back 'on this day in Disney history'.

Once that was done I then had my main focus of the day...more jigsaws! Another 17 to clean up, photograph, edit and upload the photos and then create listings online for selling them. This did take me most of the day, it's surprising how long a process this is but at least all the jigsaws are now listed and are generating quite a bit of interest already.

I had some more of my Ebay sales collected early afternoon so I am gradually getting more space back in the house and less items that need to find a new home. My next lot to sell will be some board games that we no longer use...for some reason we have a number of different versions of monopoly...not sure why especially as I'm really not a fan of it!

Later this afternoon Michelle and I hooked up online and managed to get this Sunday's podcast recorded. It was great to have a quick chat and record together.

So the day ends with just as much uncertainty as the day started, no further forward with the US elections and plenty of whoosh's and bangs as fireworks fill the evening air and our government lead us into a month of lockdown that will leave us who knows where.

Take care wherever you may be, wash your hands, keep your distance and wear a mask.
xx 

Back to Work

Day 231...

Today was my first day back in work after our school holiday last week.

It was a pretty standard sort of work day catching up on emails and banking as well as discussing the coming term and the impact of COVID on our usual Christmas fundraising and other activities.

No Christmas Fair this year and no Christmas concerts either, but we are still going to try and raise some much needed funds and we will be organising a Christmas party for our children.

Once home from work it was a case of carrying on with work; composing emails to parents, committee and staff as well as beginning to think about whether we can arrange a Christmas raffle and whether businesses will be prepared to donate this year.

So today we have had the second lockdown confirmed for England following a vote in our parliament; tomorrow we start four weeks of varying restrictions. But for me, and anyone else working in education, we simply carry on as we have been doing. Simon and Ethan will carry on working from home; for Simon this is no change to what he has been doing for the past 7 years or so and Ethan has been home since March with no obvious date for return to the office.

We also have the US election result weighing over us and as I type there is still some debate over which way it will fall. The polls yet again appear to have got the final result way wrong and we now have to wait for postal ballots to get counted before the winner can be announced, and all the while living with the knowledge that the incumbent is trying everything possible to discredit the result. At the end of the day people have voted, all their votes need to be counted and a result announced on all votes counted - simple!

Stay safe wherever you are, wash your hands, keep your distance and wear a mask.
xx

Day 230

Day 230... 

What has today been about? 

Well it's been kind of quiet, straight forward and a bit repetitive. Starting off with another Ebay sale to package up ready for taking to the post office later. I then made a start on sorting through all my jigsaws to decided which are going up for sale.

It looks like I will try and sell the vast majority of them and so I sorted out all the Christmas ones to start with...all 25 of them. And so began the repetition of clean the box, check the contents, photograph it and then edit the photos. Once I had done that for all 25 it was then placing them all online for sale which was another series of repetitive actions.

My day did get a few interruptions with a couple of deliveries and a quick trip to the post office to send my most recent sales on their way but that was about as exciting as it got!

And today we have the US election happening and we may, or may not, know the result sometime tomorrow. And over here we have lots of discussion surrounding the upcoming national lockdown, the impending vote in parliament tomorrow and whether or not the figures about cases and deaths are truly accurate or not. Only time will tell.

Stay safe, wash your hands, keep your distance and wear a mask.
xx

Day 229

Day 229...

It has been another blustery day today and a day of getting lots of little jobs done.

Once we had collected the weekly grocery shop this morning we braved the elements to do a little outside tidying up. Throwing away the pumpkin carvings before they turned to mush and trying to sweep up as many of the leaves as we could.

Simon has then spent the rest of the day working as even though today is ordinarily a non-work day there is a deadline looming on Wednesday and so the whole team has been working extra hours where they could over the weekend and today.

I had a couple more ebay sales to parcel up ready for shipping out tomorrow. I've also got a few items that are to be collected so I made sure that they were all ready to go; re-boxing some of them and adding some bubble wrap!

Simon made a trip into the loft for me (I really don't like the loft!!) and brought down as many of my jigsaws as he could find...37 jigsaws and 8 board games later, and that doesn't include the 8 jigsaws that were piled up in the living room, and Simon thinks there may be more hidden away in the loft. Think I may have a jigsaw problem - oops! But I've decided that as I very rarely go back and re-do them I am going to try and sell them, which will mean I can then buy myself new ones. I have kept two Disney Christmas themed ones because they are Disney and Christmas and that's a perfect combination, as well as a Christmas set of three as I haven't actually done any of the three. 

Simon has completed a small prop building job by lining the inside of a small ammo box that will be used as storage for items connected to the MSE droid he completed the other week. He also had a repair to make on an outdoor garden ornament that had got knocked over this morning and had broke into two pieces. Thankfully with Simon's prop making talents there is very little that he cannot fix!

And that has been today. Another day done and another day closer to our second 'lockdown'. Stay safe out there, wash your hands, keep your distance and wear a mask.
xx

Start of November

Day 228...

The beginning of November and normally for those of us working in education at this time of year we are getting ready to return to school for what is always a busy term on the run-up to Christmas.

This term is usually full of fundraisers, Christmas parties, Christmas concerts (preceded by at least a couple of weeks of rehearsals), Christmas crafts and lots of over excited children.

But as we approach the start of the second lockdown for England it leaves us wondering just what the weeks preceding Christmas are actually going to look like.

We had already resigned ourselves to finding alternative ways of fundraising to our usual Christmas fair and chance for children to see Santa; to re-assessing the best way to hold a party to ensure no 'bubbles' were being compromised; to acknowledging there would be no concerts this year and now we have a lockdown to contend with. 

We have been told it will run from 5th November (the irony of it starting on Bonfire Night...gunpowder, treason and plot and all that) and will end on 2nd December...maybe...possibly...but it may need to go on longer!! Who knows? Argh!

Molly has decided to spend this next lockdown with her fella, a lot of miles away from home, and while I know she will be absolutely fine this will be the longest she has ever been away from home and for a mum, especially of a certain age, it has left me feeling overwhelmingly emotional this afternoon. They already have a long distance relationship and cope with that amazingly well seeing each other every few weeks. The first lockdown was a long haul and I really felt for them having to be apart for so long; in fact I felt for anyone in a relationship where they were not living together, it was a tough old time. Some would argue it was equally as tough for those living together as well! And yet here we find ourselves, yet again, heading into another lockdown.

I understand the reasoning behind the decision but do have to question why, if it's the right thing to do, has it taken them so long to come around to it. Advisory groups were telling the government back in late September to take a short lockdown but it has taken just over a month for them to implement it. And now rather than a lockdown being for a couple of weeks it will be at least four weeks, possibly longer and with Christmas looming everyone will be hoping that we can have some sort of normality for then. But to be honest the longer this goes on, and the more inept the handling of it, I can't see Christmas being anything like what we would normally expect.

And as this 'thing' drags on and more and more information starts to work its way through there is the nagging question of whether we are doing the right thing? Will a lockdown have any affect? Did the last lockdown have any actual affect? If the virus is seasonal did the lockdown occur at the time at which the virus would naturally wane as the weather warmed up? What about the usually flu figures,are they at the rate we would expect to see or is the new virus simply replacing the expected number of flu cases? Is the testing system working effectively? And don't lets get started about the tracking system that was supposed to be 'world beating' but is very evidently not!

But as a mere member of the public I don't have the answer to those questions, nor would I know where to go to get the answers let alone know who to trust to give me the right answers. I look forward to the documentary that will undoubtedly get made that will reveal what actually happened with SARS-Cov-2 and I just hope to goodness that what we have been put through these last 8 months will have been worth it, but I fear that the truth may well be a different story.

Let's finish this post with some normality. Despite Molly 'leaving home', today was a day of tidying around as the house had been decorated with various Halloween bit and pieces over the last week or so and it was now time to put everything away. I now have a few weeks to get ready for Christmas decorations!

We decided, despite the wind and the rain, to have a walk out mid-afternoon and managed a pretty decent 3.2 miles in exactly one hour. Once home it was time for coffee, chocolate and an attempt to watch as much as I could of Disney's Haunted Mansion movie. But why you may ask? Well part of this evening's Disney Dream Girls Sunday Disney Quiz was about said movie and while I have watched the movie before (I even own it on DVD) it was a lot of years ago and so my memory needing refreshing. It is not the best movie in the world and I managed to get about 50 minutes of it watched before the quiz started which, thankfully for me, was just enough. Michelle was setting the questions and she had watched the movie yesterday in order to come up with the questions but admitted to being so bored with it that she gave up about 50 minutes in!!

The quiz has become a little family of like minded Disney nerds that meet up in Zoom once a week to say hello, swap stories and share a little Disney. It has become a sense of normality in what can feel like a very strange world at times. I love my Disney family.

Let's take care out there, wash your hands, keep your distance, wear a mask and hope we get through it all safely.
xx