And here we are – already 2 days into October and, already again, misty mornings are upon us. I do love this time of year, although winter is my favourite.
I’m worried that if we blink we may miss the rest of 2025. I already feel as though the entire year has passed us completely by. And yet, so much did happen. This isn’t the end-of-the-year roundup, though. This is today’s regular blog post.
Last Friday
Last week seems a long time ago. But on Friday, JetPack did do its thing and it did auto-share Friday’s scheduled post. I didn’t get a lot of work done. In fact, I didn’t get any work done. We both had to get up and get ready to go to the funeral. As funerals go, it went as planned. It was nice to see the family for the first time in a few weeks. And it was nice to see familiar faces from across the years. There were also very many we didn’t know, naturally.
Son #2 met us at the funeral, came to the wake for a short while, but then had to go home and get packed for his weekend away and to get the dog packed for another weekend with us. We had a quick bite to eat before excusing ourselves too, as we had to be home in time for when grand-doggy #1 arrived. Son #2 stayed long enough for us to find him a map for the part of the Lake District he was going to. And we all had chorizo and mushrooms with rice for tea. That’s us 2 and the dog. Son #2 had already gone on his merry way.
I won a competition to win 2 tickets to the Grand Designs show at the NEC in Solihull. So we told Son #2 that we wouldn’t be able to have the dog that weekend. I’m going to be even more cagey in the future about when we might both be out, as there were 4 burglaries in our village on Friday, 3 of them successful (for the thieves, not the home owners).
I was able to spend a couple of hours on Lady Mathilda’s first novella, Book 11 in the great novella challenge, working on both her and her older sister’s biographies. I don’t usually spend a lot of time on characters’ previous lives at this stage of a story, but there were some historical facts I had to make sure were correct and that they fit in with both ladies’ lives. It was really interesting work and gave me a couple of extra ideas to flesh both characters out a little.
And that was Friday in a nutshell.
Saturday
The dog got us up early on Saturday, which was useful, because he was going to be left on his own twice and we wanted to spend some time with him before we went out. We stayed in until we’d had our midday breakfast, doing odd bits and pieces around the house. Then we had to go and do the shopping.
We went to the bank to get some cash out, to the butcher to buy the meat for the week, to the home bargains shop to get some glucosamine sulphate and some mealworms, and to the supermarket to do our weekly shop.
When we got home the dog was very pleased to see us and we had some more fun time with him. At 4pm, though, we had to go out again as we were taking the mother-in-law to the pictures to see Downton Abbey: The Finale. It was an okay film, but not one we’d pay to go and see again if we had the chance. We both thought the storyline was a bit thin and I thought there were too many sermons going on. But it was a nice change and his mum thoroughly enjoyed it.
We dropped her home again and, again, the dog was very pleased to see us. And I found out there’d been another robbery the night before, this time a van had been stolen from one of the large villages we’re in between.
Sunday
On Sunday I finally got around to doing some work, although we both did housework in the morning too.
He washed all of the bird baths and drinkers and fed them, cleared up after the dog, emptied all of the house bins, and cleaned the conservatory floor. I hung some washing up, put some washing through, and rearranged the dining room furniture so that we can either both sit and look out of the patio doors onto the garden while we eat or both sit with our back to the patio doors and watch the telly.
I added 24 light therapy appointments to my diary between November and January, and I made the daily faff hour a daily housework hour and added a daily garden hour.
Our green bin will stop being emptied in November, and I want to make sure we make the most of that service by trying to do something every day, even if I’m just snip-snip-snipping away at things. Once I start my light therapy, I can’t go out in the garden anyway as it’s UV light treatment, like a sunbed, and I already burn badly without having extra sunlight time. Even in autumn.
They start emptying the green bin in March again, but we have 3 whole months of no garden waste collection. If we do any major clearance during the winter months, we’ll take the waste to the tip ourselves.
I scheduled in a newsletter once a month, on the first workday of each month. I think the only task I have left to find a space for is the Patreon, and I also have to decide how often I’ll be posting new content on there. At the moment, everyone who joins is on the lowest grass roots membership and everyone gets everything between now and the end of the year. In the new year, depending on take-up, I’ll be publishing within the 3 tiers of membership.
I started today’s blog post, I did my weekly finances, I did my weekly backup, and I scheduled in the next publishing job, a short story that will be published in October, after the bookazine has come out. We had our midday breakfast and our mid-afternoon dinner in the dining room watching the birds in the garden. All distractions out of the way, only then did I get around to doing some more work with Lady Mathilda.
I’m going to leave this one here, as we’re already over 1,000 words. We’ll catch up on Monday to Thursday tomorrow!
