Come and tell us your dull and unexciting news 36: Calmly through the day

[MissConductUS]

A quiet and friendly corner of MN to share the very dull day to day happenings of our lives. No criticisms, political discussions, or controversies here. Think of it as neighbors (I'm a Yank) chatting over the garden fence or having a cup of tea while the kids play together. Everyone is welcome.

It will be calming for all.

Previous:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5477400-come-and-tell-us-your-dull-and-unexciting-news-35-calmly-through-the-day?page=1

Yes watching Below Deck Med series 11, on episode 2.

Hope you got some sleep.

Washed bedding now back on bed, cat is very happy and on bed. Just having a smoked salmon ploughmans for lunch. DH hoovered dining room which was good as it had 2 weeks cat fluff from our holiday.

Cat just rolled over and fell off bed so is now acting like that was planned and gone to his food.

@bizzey i got one of the bobble removers, exactly four years ago. It’s really good. I use it on cushion covers and they look like new again. I’ve used it on clothes as well. Mine is a rechargeable one, that model isn’t available now, but the newer models look really good.
@Mumtobabyhavoc and @Themidnightcuppa a few years ago we went on holiday to family in Cambridge. They told us about one of the largest mazes in Britain, in Saffron Walden. Off we went following the signs, really looking forward to trying to find our way out. We got to the sign and found out that the maze is a turf cut one. My DD decided to walk round it, so my son and I were shouting encouraging things to her, telling her to follow the sound of our voices, if she couldn’t see us. She was not amused, but we were practically rolling about laughing.
@MrsSPenguinz We watch Below Deck too. Oh my this is a very controversial series. DD and I are open mouthed at some of the goings-on. I love Aisha, so funny with her “Amaaazing” at so many things and I think Joy is the best chef out of all the series. Her food looks stupendous. DD and I were laughing remembering the chef who served up nachos 😂 and microwaved the steak!
I can just imagine your cat styling out the falling off the bed 🤣. They are very haughty and don’t like being laughed at.

The maze talk is remind me of when I took the boys to Hampton Court about 10ish years ago , so the boys were early/mid teens.

We navigated the maze and got to the middle .

I then said let's have a game , who can get out first
Stating with the youngest ,, we all set off at different times .

What the boys didn't know , was that I had spotted a gate that led to the quick exit door!!! 😅😅..

They could not believe that I had got out before then when we finally met up !

Then they spotted lots of people exiting from this door and they realized 😂😂😂!!

bizzey, I'm sure your gardening efforts are fine. I also wouldn't want to garden for three hours at a time. My containers on the deck are easy to maintain, and the front garden needs very little other than watering. DH cuts the grass, which is a lot more work.

Penguinz, it's a universal cat trait to never acknowledge a mistake. The larger of our two cats will sometimes try to leap onto the kitchen countertops and not quite make it, and fall back down onto the floor. She inevitably saunters off as if it never happened. Nothing to see here, human!

Below Deck sounds like a fun show, but I can't watch it without adding another paid video subscription service. I'm at my max now with Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Apple TV. I am really looking forward to the new season of Ted Lasso, which is supposed to air sometime in August. I love that it's mostly set in England and about football.

We're getting a rather bad thunderstorm at the moment, but I was able to walk this morning and saw this family of turkeys. It's a hen and four little ones. Sorry for the poor quality of the pictures. I wasn't close enough when I spotted them to get good pictures and they disappeared into the woods before I could get closer.

I had lunch with my old work colleagues yesterday, which was great fun. They filled my in on who had left, who had gotten moved into new roles, etc. They all said I looked very relaxed.

DH has a call later today with our financial planner to review our finances. It's the first one since we retired last fall. And DH reminded me that today is the seven-month anniversary of my coronary bypass surgery.

Wow @MissConductUS 😮😮!
7 months already!!
I am sure the world is spinning on a quicker axis as we get older .

Time use to drag when we were younger...now it goes ..puff !
And I haven't even hit my 60's y t !(Roll on Christmas when I can get my travel discount card !! 😅😂👍)

I’ve just found out that as I have a blue disability badge, and use a wheelchair I can get a card which entitles me to take a carer for free to certain cinemas. The card costs £6 for the year, and as cinema tickets are more than that, it’s such a good saving. Also, weirdly blue badge holders are exempt from hosepipe bans, and their gardeners too. (My gardener is OH, but it still counts!)

@Mumtobabyhavoc I hope you are catching up with your sleep. It must be so hard with taking care of children and your mum. I’m sleeping very little, but at least I can nap during the day. I tend to wake myself up by snorting!

Uman, the watering exemption is in recognition that carrying watering cans isn't as easy, or possible, if disabled.

That's great about the cinema @Umanresources and good you have the option to still use a hosepipe just keep very quiet about it on other parts of MN 😂

Glad your lunch was good @MissConductUS

Hope you've been able to rest @Mumtobabyhavoc

We've got a lot done today, bedding washed and changed then spent an hour hoovering house and got it cat fluff free then DH and I spent 3.5 hours in the gardening sorting the shed and clearing leaves. It was amazing to get so much done but now am rather tired. Our shed is being removed on Friday so we are on a tight timescale but we are on track. We also have to clear leaves so they don't damage the lawn but its doing well, it had nearly 2 weeks with no water whilst we were in Sri Lanka but seems fine now though still a bit brown in places. All the plants managed really well and many are in flower now.

We have been chatting with 4 neighbours which has been nice. One about his dead tree which is why we have to take our shed down and his tree comes down early August. That's great for us as its leaning in our direction and has been dead a few years. Then the others were about the garden and our summerhouse plans and holidays and it turns out our neighbour used to work in Chengdu as a professor. She also warned us about a sparrow hawk so we are keeping silkies in unless we are out. They were chirping away coming round with us.

Umanresources; Your carer can also get a card which entitles them to discounts on various things. Although I was still working FT, I was also my husband's carer; and amongst other things I got a discount at my chiropractor's.https://www.carerscarduk.co.uk/discounts-for-carers

It's quite a bit cooler here today at 23c, cool breeze and only supposed to reach 26c.

It was too hot yesterday at 36c with humidity making it feel like 42c.

Glad its cooler for you @Mumtobabyhavoc

We have just spent a couple of hours clearing and cleaning the things in the garden shed as its coming down tomorrow. Yesterday DH spent 3 hours clearing the lane so we are all ready. I cleaned kitchen floor.

Going to have fish, chips and baked beans for dinner with coca-cola. The silkies were happy we let them out whilst we were doing the shed and they dug a hole each and were rolling around in the soil and singing. Its mid 20s here this week which is nice.

Wow, Penguins, you and DH have been busy!

It's now cloudy and windy. Temp is 24c. Rain is in the forecast for Saturday.

I've made bison burgers with Swiss cheese on brioche buns for dinner.

I'm back from my holiday (went to the wilds of Michigan's UP and experienced iffy wifi).

Dcat made friends with the cat sitter and seems to have gained at least 5 lbs. These two facts may be related.

The pepper plants on my deck sprouted peppers while I was away. I shouldn't be so surprised - they are pepper plants after all.

My boiler's been acting up, and today I had no hot water at all. Phoned Vaillant, and the engineer arrived within half an hour. An hour later, and it's all fixed!

@MrsSPenguinz gosh you have been busy! I wouldn’t dare mention being able to use a hosepipe elsewhere on MN. Mind you we haven’t had a ban and we have had some rain, so the garden is very lush needs the lawn mowing. We had a chippy tea for a change yesterday. I think we had run out of ideas and inclination for making meals.

@sueelleker thank you for the information about the carers card. I had no idea such a thing existed. There are quite a few great savings to be made. Quick service from Vaillant. Well done.

@Mumtobabyhavoc glad it’s cooled down a bit for you and hope you are managing to get more sleep. I’ve not tried bison, is it a stronger taste than beef? I’m always willing to try new foods. I have tried crocodile, ostrich, venison, hare, goat and kangaroo. I like the less gamier meats best. I’ve just ordered some buffalo burgers, not sure of the difference between buffalo and bison (apart from you can’t wash your hands in a buffalo) 🤦‍♀️ so sorry for that!

@mathanxiety I had to look up UP, my goodness it looks gorgeous there. I was reading your post and couldn’t stop myself from reading “iffy wiffy”. It just made me laugh, I want to get it into a conversation today. I have a couple of words that just make me laugh so much, one is “kibble” and the other is “shapeshifter”. I have no idea why I find them funny but watching Harry Potter films makes me giggle.

This morning I spent some time folding carrier bags. The ones from Ocado have money back on them and practically fold flat. The bags for life, made from recycled plastic take some folding, but I always feel it’s a job well done, when they are flat in a drawer in the hall, ready for use.

i had another delivery from the pharmacy this morning, as well. It’s the wraps for my feet and legs. I thought it was going to be another month before they arrived. I’ve not looked at them properly because I’m trying to steel myself first.

Hope everyone has a great weekend. Hopefully not too hot for people.

Uman, bison and buffalo are similar animals. Bison are N American, Buffalo are African and Asian. I've had buffalo milk cheese, but not meat. People call bison, buffalo here occasionally, and in the States often, but it is incorrect and a hold-over from early explorers. 🤓
I prefer eating bison to beef. Was cooking beef burgers a while ago, I had forgotten it wasn't bison, and I was wondering what the smell was, "why does this stink?" Then I checked the package and saw it was beef. 😂
I've had kangaroo as well and found it too rich after a few bites. Elk too strong. Alligator many years ago (similar to chicken, so what's the point?). And moose, properly hunted, which is by far the best as in, Best Steak of Your Life. Hunting moose for us is cultural and common up north, ie in the Yukon, which is where I had it. Typically, 2-3 families can share one for a year.

It's hazy here from wildfire smoke. It's 21c.

Uman, I just googled your joke. ✈️
Without a specific English accent it doesn't make sense here as the words sound nothing alike.
Sorry it was wasted, but I'm glad I understand it now! 😁

Hosepipes are indeed the subject of the moment on MN. I didn't know what they are when I first started posting here. In the U.S., they're called garden hoses, or simply hoses. Last summer, DH got tired of replacing the basic ones you get on Amazon and ordered a very heavy-duty set online that is constructed differently. We now have those for the deck and the front garden, and they're holding up beautifully. They're rather stiff, so they don't fold or kink as you move them.

Math, I've never been to the UP, but DH has, as he had family in Wisconsin growing up. You picked a great week to get away. I grew peppers on the deck last summer, but they didn't do that well, so I did more tomatoes this year instead.

Havoc, I've never had buffalo or bison, or seen the meat in the stores here. I have seen bison on the menu in restaurants, but very rarely. I'll have to try the bison steak the next time I see it.

It's been lovely here this week, sunny but not too hot, so we've been going to the pool almost every day. We're skipping it today, and I feel like I've had enough sun for a while.

DS is not with us this weekend, as he's going to Pennsylvania, which is a bit of a trip. He didn't mention what he's going for, which is fine. He'll tell us at some point. If I had to guess, it's to see a baseball game. We'll miss him, as will the cats, but it's nice to see that he's getting out and doing things on his own.

Not seen my partner in almost a week, wasnt feeling too good and to make sure I ate he ordered me dinner and got it sent to me (currently dont live together yet)

What a lovely thing to do, how thoughtful. I hope you are feeling better now.

We had sausages tonight with tenderstem broccoli and Jersey Royals. I don’t know where the sausages were from, but I didn’t like them, so I just had one bite.

I had a lovely surprise video calls with my grandsons this evening. The family are in the Azores and I was taken around the Airbnb. They were telling me what they had been doing on holiday, meals they had eaten, what they wanted to be when they grow up and the meals they had eaten. It’s lovely that they enjoy chatting with me and want to share their lives with me.

MissConductUS; I've had several collapsible hosepipes, and while the idea is good they're not very durable. Mine all ended up splitting. The one I've got now is stainless steel, so it should last better.

Well we had everything ready for old shed to come down yesterday to make it easier for neighbour to remove their dead tree but would have meant we wouldn't have had a shed for 4.5 months whilst we wait for planning and it to be built. But neighbours tree will fall on our garden / shed if falls so keen to help. But DS (non verbal autistic) decided to stage a sit in under a pale pink fleece blanket to save the shed so it's still here. We had a company which removes asbestos as it has an asbestos cement roof as 40 years old in and they said they could not make him sad, the guys were so kind.

So now we are seeing if the tree company can remove tree with old shed in place. That would be better for us, especially DS. I think it should be possible just a bit more difficult. The trunk is 45cms from our shed at one point. We made DS lots of nice food and he was happy again and we put his things back in the shed. It was useful to clear it all anyway. I also cleaned it all yesterday now it's staying longer.

So lovely about your grandsons @Umanresources

DH is collecting my Waitrose order which DS will love as it has lots of posh ice cream and lots of his bath foam and conditioners in. The silkies were singing yesterday digging holes to sit in.

I am feeling a little better thank you. He's a very thoughtful man. Definitely the type thats hard to find. So lucky to have him

I have just started my ADHD medication today and I’m not allowed caffeine or alcohol. So we went out for dinner and drank a lot of beer then came home and drank a lot of wine and cocktails till about 4am.

This was both an excellent idea and a terrible one, but I wanted a bit of a blowout.

I miss my cardamom tea more than I thought I would.

DS was very happy with the Waitrose order, lots of fruit, cinnamon buns and melt in middle chocolate puddings and giant chicken Kiev all got eaten yesterday from it. Today we are going to the Sandringham Flower Show and having Sunday lunch. Just had our first cup of tea and have given the silkies and the cat breakfast. It's nice to have a day out. There's a plants from the show sell off at 4pm though don't know how long we will stay. There are other plants being sold throughout the show. It's rare for me to be able to resist buying plants. I always say I won't then oh maybe just one then that one would go nicely with it and oh it's buy one get one half price may as well get 3.