FRI 8 MAY 2026 POST BEGUN 1004HRS BST

 

Happy 22nd birthday to my eldest grand, finding it a wee bit shocking and totally joyous I have a 22yo grandson! His cousin, No2 of my three grandsons, will be 21 in July. And the eldest grandson is big brother of youngest grandson who will be four in October. I love being a grandma (three grandsons, two granddaughters)!

 

Meanwhile we here in the UK are running the election coverage in the background as we await news of how the vote turns out in our particular area. So far Reform is scooping up seats from Labour and Conservatives down in England with our Scottish results not expected until later this afternoon (estimated to be announced at 1600hrs/4pm our time today). 

 

I stood in the too-short queue to vote yesterday asking myself 'Why am I bothering, what is the point, my idiotic fellow Scots almost certainly will tick the SNP or Scottish Labour boxes and my Reform votes will be a futile exercise in protest voting. Reached the front of the queue, went in, got my ballots and nonetheless ticked both boxes for Reform. We'll see but I'm not holding my breath.

 

I'm succeeding at my reorganisation project (formerly known as 'decluttering'). The current uncertainty around motor fuel and 'the cost of living' (meaning sky rocketing petrol-utilities-food prices - omfgosh!) means things I have realised I can do without have to be stacked and tarp covered on the back porch in hope that one day we'll be able to hire a car to lug all this to the skip and charity shops. 

 

I finally forced myself to understand the best Christmas planning is to go with one each warm-white prelit green and flocked 2ft PE trees, one colour tree baubles and matching tree toppers, simple mantle garland and Holy Family sculpture with the Advent Wreath as the dinner table centrepiece - it all fits into one bag. The rest is now in four bags out in the shed because dangit hope floats one day we'll be in a slightly bigger home and my 4ft Balsam Hill tree will once again be star of the show. HEY! A girl can dream, can't she?!

 

It took me two weeks to sort through 15 years of accumulated Christmas 'stuff', and I was surprised to discover half of it all elicited 'What the bloody hell was I thinking when I made/bought THAT?!'. Hopefully the charity shops will be thrilled to have that to flog. 

 

The rest of it went into two piles - one being the mini things including single colour sets (green, blue, red, gold) for use in my new 'midmalism' scheme. 'Midmalism' being a step between max and mini malism). The second pile was for decor I can't bear to part with. 

 

Well, you know, one thing leads to another. I somewhat ruthlessly went through ALL the seasonal decor (four seasons plus Halloween and Easter) and pared all that down as well. Paul is of course over the moon, he is a minimalist to the core. I think he'd be fine with one chair, one plate, one...

 

Still doing brain challenge things, I'm currently massively hooked on word search puzzle books. My Essential Tremor and the gerontology medics encouraged me to take up colouring-in books as well. Oh. Dear. I now own several sets of watercolour pens and I've lost count of how many colouring books I have. Whilst awaiting a miracle (a move to a slightly bigger home with two bathrooms) I content myself with 'painting' colouring book images of rooms and gardens. BONUS: I now know my favourite colour is Autumn. 

 

And yes, I'm still at the maths thing. I have found I am great at addition and subtraction but if I don't reinforce the multiplication and division bits every single day, I 'lose' those two vital skills. 

 

My cardiologist is impatiently waiting out my current pericarditis flare to put me in cardiac rehab. He wants me to do the rehab programme for people with my unique heart 'challenges' but won't refer me until this latest stupid flare is sufficiently passed. I love he calls all the heart thingies 'challenges' although I do have to wonder if he means treating my complex set of conditions is more challenging for him than for me. Any road, he found me a no-incline treadmill and a compact rowing machine, both to be ordered once the rehab stint is completed. And while he's not thrilled to hear I have a balance rocker and a set of hand-weights (he still thinks I'm going to push myself during the flare recovery period - hahahahahahaha, hey Doc, this ain't my first rodeo!) he is ok with me having those items as long as I promise not to use them until he gives the go-ahead.

 

Oh nice, an election update just hit, Reform is mopping up the political floor:) Nice. Nice. Nice. 

 

 

POST BEGUN SAT 14 MAR 2026 1216HRS GMT

 

Bloody hell, it's all kicking off here with what is feeling more and more a catastrophic cascade of troubles on numerous fronts, from the Labour 'government' complicit in fostering islamic extremist terror attacks (currently focusing on Jewish Britons but openly admitting they will come for 'the non-believers' once they've killed all the Jews) to war in the Middle East. 

 

Naturally our idiot craven 'prime minister' is at pains to 'reassure' his muslim mates 'We did not participate in the US and Israeli strikes against Iran' thinking the nutters will accept his cowardice and thereby spare us. Meanwhile 'lone wolf' and 'sleeper cell' attacks here and abroad are escalating in frequency and severity of damage. 

 

Paul and I would love for all this to 'just blow over' but all this feels more like an inevitability now. 

 

POSTED SAT 14 MAR 2026 1252 HRS GMT 

 

 

TUESDAY 24 FEB 2026 POST BEGUN 1413HRS GMT

 

Home stretch in sight, decluttering in a big way nearly finished. I'm using a weird combination of the Marie Kondo 'KonMari' and Swedish Death Cleaning methods, plus good old fashioned common sense (vastly underrated, common sense is) and it's working nicely. I am having to do it on the QT to keep Paul from 'helping' (aka hindering), though, and I'm running out of places to store the things awaiting disposal (to charity shops and the skip) out of his sight. Spring is coming, we'll be able to hire a car to cart the clutter away, I just hope I can keep a lid on things until Spring.

 

Why wait until Spring to hire the car? Because we live in NE Scotland and both of us hate driving in winter. Hitting black ice even at low speed is not fun and we live in an area well known for black ice formation. Black ice combined with most of our roads in this area not being high gritting priority. Even before giving up the car in 2020something, we'd learned to spend the Autumn preparing for winter including getting in household goods (and food) and scheduling doctor and dentist appointments before winter sets in so we didn't have to be out and about except quick walks to the nearby shops between rain and snow and ice storms.

 

So we hire a car for a week in Spring and mid-Autumn. The past few years the main focus has been charity shop and skip runs with a few day trips to local attractions sandwiched in. I'm hoping the Spring car hire is the final decluttering push so the Autumn car hire can be all day trips. Hope floats.

 

Btw, I'm still praying for a slightly bigger house. Despite looking at certain things (oh ok, kitchen gadgets) and asking myself why the hell I bought THAT, there are things I shed tears over when I force myself to put something in the 'get rid box' that I really really really do not want to give up but have to because I simply do not have room for whatever it is I'm crying about having to part with.

 

It's difficult to be ruthless even when it's a safety issue - yes, I sobbed my heart out sending the electric carving knife and meat slicer to the charity shop but Essential Tremor made both impossible for me to use safely. I hate to admit nipping my fingers trying to fit the electric carving knife blades back on, and very nearly slicing off a finger on the meat slicing machine had to happen twice before I caved to reality.

 

But. But I am becoming stronger - I only needed three Kleenex to cope with the tears (and runny nose) when I sent a huge amount of my craft supplies to the charity shop boxes. The tremor has advanced to the point beading and paper- are impossible even with work-arounds. Embroidery by hand and machine sewing are still possible so there is that.

 

Still, back to kitchen gadgets, the tremor is now so bad I've had to give up peeling and dicing potatoes for mash and I can see the days of homemade potato salad ending sooner rather than later. I'm ok with having to use frozen mashed potatoes - LOL, the potatoes come as finger sized pellets, you put them in a microwave safe bowl with unsalted butter pats and nuke 'em for ten or so minutes - as long as you have plenty of sour cream, frozen mash isn't all that bad. I'm not ok with buying store made potato salad (too many recalls!), though, so I may have to teach Paul how to properly (read hygienically) peel and dice potatoes if we want genuine Deep South Church Potluck quality potato salad. Paul has Asperger's and doesn't take instruction well so potato salad may be off the menu. sigh

 

POSTED TUESDAY 24 FEB 2026 1503HRS GMT

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday 7 January 2026 post begun 1605hrs (4:05pm) GMT

 

It's THAT day. First thing this morning I removed the front door wreath, pulled the candle bridge from the front window, packed away the holly berries candle holders, the Christmas stockings, the Skandi Father Christmas, and the wooden block count-down calendar. I un-decorated the Christmas Tree - good heavens that was quickly done! The hardest part of the tree un-decorating was carefully removing the light string. 

 

About those lights - the set was sold as 'cluster' but arrived as single spikes. Not what I'd wanted but nice enough so we used them and will use them again. 

 

My decision to use one colour baubles on the tree ended up being rather nice.

 

We liked the way it turned out so well we will do this one colour scheme again Christmas 2026 in red. Or blue. 

 

(if Russia doesn't nuke us before then thanks to Two-Tier Keir signing an agreement with the rest of the ridiculously named 'coalition of the willing' to put British boots on Ukraine soil IF a peace agreement is reached. Oh, and the USCG seizing that Venezuelan tanker off the coast of Iceland - a vessel reflagged as Russian midway through voyage and the subsequent news British military assisted the Americans - the Russians aren't happy about that, either.)

 

All in the whole process took two hours, from un-decorating to closing the boxes and putting them into the storage bags then taking the bags out to the insulated shed. Not bad considering it used to take me days to fully un-Christmas the house. 

 

posted 7 Jan 2026 1635hrs GMT