Too tired and then too chilled

We had a very full on weekend - a weekend we knew would be an issue but it was more of an issue than we thought.

We decided to give back to the community a year ago. We have a local sort of residents association - run by volunteers and serving almost 6000 households. It raises funds and then spends them on community projects. They stage special events like Christmas lights and festivities, poppies for memorial days, help with financial support of community projects etc. We wanted to give back to our community now we are retired and so when approached we agreed to help. I agreed to take ont he role of secretary which, I was told, involved attending committee meetings once every 6 weeks and doing minutes. Perfect. Nigel then took on the role as Treasurer - not onerous they said. Oh my goodness. It has taken way more time than we anticipated and the weekend was a bit of an epiphany. As a committee we organised what was like a village fete. In fairness there s a committee of 7 and most falls on one lady for events and she is amazing - an utter superstar and she masterminded pretty much all of it, but we helped, Nigel helped a lot, and several other members of the committee were brilliant too. But it's not a fair distribution of labour and effort and it is more than Nigel and I wanted to be honest. The event on Saturday was a great success and raised more money than we anticipated but part (a small part) of our contribution was running a treasure hunt game and my craft stall. I swore 7 years ago I would never ever ever do an outside event again. Saturday reminded me why. We erected our very cheap very useless gazebo (everyone else had swish pop up ones) It was windy and it blew over twice and when it wasn't blowing over we were holding onto two of the supports. My knee has been awful so I was in a lot of pain and standing for 6 hours wasn't helpful. We were frustrated and tired and quite frankly exhausted by the time we had put it all up, taken it all down, packed away etc. So Sunday passed in a blur and then we spent Monday chilling (I say that laughably) in another heatwave.

However we feel more normal now and, even after yesterday's disaster, we have had a nice few days. I caught up with a good friend for a few hours this morning and my disaster I caused will hopefully be fixed tomorrow. My disaster....

 

When you are trimming back some shrubs and cut through a tough bit and realise it’s a Virgin Media cable not a branch it’s not a good day!!!

Thankfully it’s only … only … the phone cable not the internet and TV

I was not a popular wife at that point. He won’t let me use the electric trimmers because the last time I used those I cut through the cable on the trimmer, so I was only allowed the safe secateurs. Guess I’m not allowed those any more either! He said he’s a bit worried about me using cutlery these days!

However it was a laugh when you phone up … all automated of course … and you report its a fault with the phone (no option to say you have cut the cables) and they test it remotely and say it’s not working and then say they will call you to confirm the engineer visit on the number you have just reported isn’t working

 

Anyway - some scrapping to share from a recent cybercrop at A Trip Down memory Lane where I taught 2 classes and designed 5 class pages

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And ... just because ... a little meerkat I painted the day before yesterday

 

 

 

Today I am thankful for

• the weekend being over
• chill time
• Nigel - always