Since it was snowing quite heavily when we went to bed the night before, it was no big surprise to get up to a layer of white over everything this morning. What we hadn’t expected, was for it to be such a beautiful clear day too! Not too much snow, a cm or so, just enough to coat everything in bright white and for the view out of the windows to be completely different from the previous days. Since the temperature overnight had been -7, the snow was even dry and powdery… the very best kind! 😁
One of my most favourite things, is to see the sun sparkling on the snow and looking like thousands of little diamonds twinkling in the vast expanses of white. I’m always excited to see it and I do think it’s one of nature’s most beautiful gifts. Mark will tell you how many times I sit on a chairlift with him, yelling ‘Look…. LOOK… diamonds in the snow!!’. It’s probably worn a bit thin for him now! 🙄 😂
The boys were predictably quite excited by the sudden change in the garden, they always get very impatient to be let out in the morning when there is fresh snow outside. They just love it! This winter has been fantastic for them, they’ve been able to get out in the garden throughout, since we’ve had so little snow and it’s alternated between falling, settling and melting. The previous three winters, they’ve not been able to get out at all for a good 3 months as the snow depths are just too high for it to be safe (e.g. risk of broken legs, due to hidden snow holes.. cos they only have 2 speeds – asleep or warp factor 5 😆) or simply, that the height of the snow has either exceeded the height of the fences or close enough to render them utterly useless!
Today, Mark decided to tackle another gritty job (he’s on a mission to do all the crappy ones first!) and to take everything out of the workshop, hoover and dust it, sort it and put it all back in some semblance of logical order. This might sound like excessive or even OCD behaviour, but the truth is that the access door to the wood pellet storage room is in the workshop. It doesn’t matter how much you attempt to seal round the door with copious amounts of gaffer tape etc, the minute that lorry starts pumping the best part of 7 tonnes in there, the dust finds its way out. Thankfully, the delivery only happens twice a year, but the resulting dust takes weeks to get rid of completely.. particularly in that room. On the upside, I don’t think our storage areas have EVER been this organised and clean!!! 😁 😇
Since the sun was shining unexpectedly this morning, I took the opportunity to sand down and repaint the chair that was unearthed from the depths of the boiler room. We have needed a couple of spare chairs for use in the breakfast room for a while now and it looks nicer if they actually match the current chairs. I stripped down the old seat pad and have made a start on making and re-covering a new foam seat cushion. The seat padding I cut from the foam of a retired bed mattress, that I was saving for ‘some project or other’ and was firmly in the pile of ‘come in handys’ that I refused to throw out. I have never been so grateful that I hoard all this stuff and no one will ever be able to convince me to chuck all this crap out again!! 😝
We all heard the night before that the UK is now on lockdown, which is a huge relief but also had me feeling quite odd throughout the day. A strange combination of feelings… it turns out that whilst I was forever yelling at the ipad in frustration that the UK didn’t seem to be taking this seriously and ‘what are they doing?!!’. Now that it has, it turns out that while most of the British people were going about life largely as normal, it didn’t feel so real. It does now. 🤨 It had a very unsettling effect on me, which I wasn’t expecting.
I’m also guessing most of you are feeling a bit weird, unsettled, scared… for your health, for your finances, for your loved ones. Feelings do seem to run to extremes and swing from one thing to another.. sometimes from one minute to the next. I found that the first few days of the lockdown are the worst for this, so incase any of you are having similar reactions, I send you an extra big hug and just hang in there, be kind to yourself, do anything you can that cheers you up or brings a smile to your face, or simply makes you feel like you’ve accomplished something. It does help and it does get easier as you become more institutionalised, I promise! 😉 😂
Stay safe everyone xxx
Aten: I’ve got nothing! NOTHING!! 😂
