Shopping, socks and gin cocktails!

 

I've been up since 6am.  I booked a saver delivery slot for £1 between 6am -10 am.  You get given an hour's delivery slot just before 6am so when I got up I knew it was coming between 7.05 and 8.05am.  But I had to check my email for any substitutions.  I refuse to do email on my phone!!  Only sub was 15 eggs for the 12 I had ordered.  Win win, as you get the sub for the lower price!  

When you put it all together it doesn't look much for £92.25 (that's minus the £1 delivery fee) to last me until the end of May with maybe a few fresh fruit/veg top ups.  No meat except bacon rashers and I got a frozen fish pie mix.  Good job I still have a ton of cooked meat in the freezer.

I've been slowly clearing out the 'stuff' from my craft room and my 'room of doom' where all the 'stuff' from the upstairs cupboards was dumped when my son and DIL moved in.  We finally managed to get all their storage boxes into the upstairs cupboards which just leaves mine to clear.  I'm sorting out all my teaching resources into donate/dump piles.  That's taking ages so I do an hour at a time.  I've still got assessment folders full of kids' work from my previous school!!  These kids are all sitting Higher exams right now!  Which proves that all that 'evidence' we have to gather never gets looked at or taken in by anyone in management or the education dept.  Urghhh!  Lots of burning/shredding paperwork is going on as it all has names/DOB etc.

My relaxation is sock knitting 🧦  Here's my latest one hot off the needles last night!  I had an idea to use up wee bits of leftover yarn and make a stripey multicoloured pair.  But it's such a faff joining yarns and I'm not very good/patient at knitting in the tails.  So I stuck to just 2 colours.  The photo doesn't do justice to the lovely bluey green colours.

I'm signed off work for another 4 weeks.  I've not yet been summoned to an attendance meeting so it looks like HR have accepted I'll not be back until I retire.  Not sure if I want to go back for the last week or 2 yet.  I've been told by my work besties that the teacher covering my class of now 14 kids (one has been moved into the other P1 class!!) is struggling with them and has said he doesn't know how I managed without the support he has in place.  In retrospect, I don't know either!!

The planning for my retirement garden party has been taken out of my hands and is being organised by my work besties.  I'm not sure if I'm scared or relieved!!  It's taking on a life of it's own as there's now a Whatsapp group (I'm not in it!) to organise everything.  My previous 2 headteachers have been invited!!  If everyone comes I may have over 40 folk here!! 😱 All I need to do is make the garden look good.  

I bottled the blackcurrant gin liqueur I started last year and started a new rhubarb one with the first rhubarb of the year.  Look at that pretty pink colour already!  Now we've got a start on some cocktail ingredients.  I'm planning on buying Prosecco so we can add some to make a Kir Royale with the blackcurrant gin and maybe a Rhubarb Gin Fizz!   I have an idea to create an Ali Cocktail using things grown in my garden or allotment.  Wee bit of research need I think! 🍸