Time off for good behaviour!

Today I finally had a day where I didn't have an appointment to be somewhere at a specific time - or anywhere in fact - and it was great! I got so much done and recharged after a hectic few weeks which saw me taking some time away from the internet, so apologies for not commenting on some of your blogs for a while!

Monday was our last yoga lesson until the new year so she decided to lead us in a yoga nidra session, i.e. guided meditation. I like the physical side of yoga but find meditation boring, probably because I'm a little heathen and spend the time making shopping lists in my head instead. But this time I tried really hard to go along with it and didn't move at all for the entire 50 minutes. I was praying I wouldn't have a coughing fit but managed to hold that off until the end and while it didn't do anything for me, one of the older ladies was shocked to find herself in tears at the end of it. I guess you have to take the parts you like and let go of the rest but I'll be glad to get back to the physical exercises in January!

Monday night was also our last sewing session of the year where we all cooked something and had dinner together instead. It was nice to meet the new group that we were able to set up for an earlier session and I'm happy to see that that group is also now full! I finally completed a couple of quilts I'd wanted to make for Charlie and Elynn and while they don't look much in the photos, I'm very pleased with them.

This one also reads "Elynn" but
you can't see it in the photo - not that
she'll mind because she can't read either!

We bought a huge plant as a gift for our sewing teacher but she cracked me up as she was leaving with it. She's very tiny (well vertically anyway) and had a santa hat on, and when she picked our gift up to walk back to the car she looked like a mobile plant pot!

As I was taking stuff up to the compost bin at the top of my garden I heard the young kids next door playing outside and when I spoke to my former neighbour the other Saturday I told her how nice it was to hear kids laughing in "her" garden again. She told me before she left that when she looked at that front door for the last time she felt absolutely nothing so in the end I think she really did the right thing for her by selling up and moving back to the west coast. I've spoken to her twice since she left and it's taken longer than she thought to get the renovations completed and her kitchen installed. She said she was living on salads at the moment and almost cried the other day when she fished her salad spinner out of a packing box but only came up with the top part! I asked her if she'd gotten one of those whirly-gig washing lines in the garden and when she said yes I answered "problem solved, peg your lettuce to that and get running"! We ended up laughing so much I think it did both of us a lot of good. She also told me the elderly widow opposite was another Brit and now she (my neighbour) is offering to run this recent widow around and they've been stopping in for coffee together a couple of times a week. I'm so, so happy for her because while I thought she might be making a terrible mistake at first, now I don't think she has at all and can hopefully be happy for however many years she has left!

I kept the kids the other Friday night for Jordan and Jen to go on their first ever date without the kids and they were really easy to look after so I know Jen was relieved. Then I had them both again on the Wednesday but by this time Elynn had come down with "hand, foot and mouth" and Charlie had a stinking cold, so guess who spent half of last week fighting off the lurgy instead of enjoying myself at the old fogies' Christmas lunch! Yeah me, but when I started coughing I fished out my trusty oregano oil and within about an hour it was much relieved, came back again about three hours later, and was gone completely by the next morning after another swig before going to bed. It really does seem to work for me! I know not everything works for everyone, but one of the younger ladies at sewing club was telling me that she has Reynaud's disease and gets terrible pain in her hands and feet from the cold. I forget now what she said she'd stumbled across but whichever essential oil it was, something had finally started working for her after so many years of suffering! I always think "give it a shot" and who knows, it just might work!

Then on the Saturday we had Charlie's school Christmas service at the local church (followed by mulled wine - the best bit) and while the kids did really well they had a new African priest conducting the service and while he brought a beaming smile and great energy to the whole thing, those of us sitting at the back couldn't hear a word he was saying. So I said something to André about Mr. Bean and we both cracked up because he knew exactly what I was referring to!

This Saturday I and seemingly a million others was invited to a presentation of their 2026 catalogue by GAL, the local bus company my friend and I have done so many trips with. Monique (our new lady president) was also invited and while we were expecting more of a presentation (it was too crowded for that), they'd laid on quite a spread and their new catalogue has me drooling like a kid in a sweety shop! My sister just got back from a long weekend at a Christmas market in Prague and while they don't have Prague on the list for next year I'm already drooling about the prospect of Sardinia, Lake Garda, the scenic Swiss railway trip and - and here I think they must have been listening to their customers - Christmas (well early December) visiting the Châteaux de la Loire!!!! I'm gonna have to take a good look at my finances because I'm not sure I can afford India too in spring, but at least I'll have something to drool over once Christmas has come and gone!

GAL did their presentation at the local
golf club in the grounds of the Château in Esery.
Perfect weather and lots of potential trips
to drool over!