Saturday This and That . . .

 

Welcome to the great British August Bank Holiday weeked! This is the last Bank Holiday weekend we will have now until Christmas.  As you can see from the traffic everyone is out to make it a good one!  If there is one thing I have learned over here it is this. On a bank holiday weekend, especially a sunny one, you never go anywhere which involves travelling on a Motorway as you will spend horrendous hours in a hot car stuck in a traffic queue and going no place at all!   

 

Traffic on our motorway's is horrid most of the the time anyways, but throw in a Bank Holiday weekend and you have hit the gold mine of holiday horrors!  They even devoted a whole episode of our much beloved sitcom, I don't believe it . . .  "One Foot in the Grave" to it.  Victor Meldrew has always been a moaner anyways, but stuck in a car on a British motorway on a Bank Holiday weekend and you have struck motherlode of  British Comedy.  There is nothing like having a good old moan about real life to put a smile on one's face!  This episode entitled "The Beast in the Cage" sums it up perfectly!  (For a brilliant excerpt from that click here. Or for the brilliantly funny whole episode, you can click here.)  

 

We decided to treat ourselves last night and went out for supper to an Indian Restaurant not too far from where we live.  We went there for supper one night when Lura & John were visiting.  They have an Indian/Thai/Chinese buffet.  It runs from 4:30 until 10:30.  We always like to go early to things like this because we know the food is fresh and hasn't been sitting there for ages.   You don't want to spoil a lovely weekend by eating anything dodgy, and you can get dodgy things at an Indian Buffet, or at least I have heard that you can.  In any case we enjoyed our dinner. Everything was very tasty. There was one fly in the place and it, of course, found our table.  Why does that always happen?  I hate HATE flies!  It would be no good for me to live in a hot arid climate full of flies because I would not be able to stand it!

Not too long after we began our meal a party of builders/men who had obviously also enjoyed a liquid lunch arrived.  They were loud and obnoxious to say the least. And then a family came in with a screaming baby, so it wasn't the quietest of meals.  Todd has a hard enough time hearing anyways as his hearing aids get all blocked up sometimes, but with all the background noise he couldn't hear a word I was saying so we did not linger for very long after we had finished eating and were back home by six. 

 

One thing I have discovered in recent years is I no longer have the appetite that makes it worth going to an all you can eat buffet.  I used to very easily be able to stomach seconds, but not any more.  That means I have to be particularly choosy on my first go around the buffet and only pick what I am pretty sure I am going to like.  Does anyone else find that?  When I was a much younger woman, we would often eat a pizza or box of Kraft Dinner in the evening as a night snack.  Not any more!  I just am not that hungry, and the indigestion of eating something that time of night would keep me up all night anyways!  

Eating anything at night is a no-go for me nowadays.  Normally we have our big meal around 1 PM now and then we will have a bowl of cereal or some toast about 6.  I am not sure how we will work that when the kids are here, but we will work it out somehow.   I just hope they don't starve. 

 

Old people smell.  This is a fact.  I was reading about it just yesterday. Nonenal, a chemical compound that people develop as they age, is the culprit behind the smell. “Old People Smell” . . .  aka the body odor that can accompany aging and is particularly noticeable in nursing homes . . . apparently now has a fix.  Todd will be 81 on his birthday.  I have never noticed that he smells.  (Sorry but 81 is rather elderly I think.)  Or maybe I smell too?   I don't know.  I hope not!  You can read all about body smells here.  Its a real thing.  

What I want to know is how do people know that belly buttons smell? What kind of person is able to make that determination?  Its not something I have ever truly pondered.  

 

This is my sister and her partner's cat, named Link.  Unfortunately a few days ago they lost him. He was 19 which is a fairly long life for a cat to have.  Its been a really sad year for them. First mom and now Link. He was such a beautiful cat.  My mom used to love feeding him bits of her toast in the morning.  They have two other cats, my mother's cat Pumpkin and my sister's cat named Gary.  Mom always called Gary the shy one.  He talked to her a lot.  She liked that and had a really soft spot for Gary. Pumpkin adopted my sister after she moved in, and still sleeps with her every night.  My heart goes out to Cindy and Dan and their latest loss. I know how devastating it is when you lose a pet.  The grief is real and tangible.  They are not just "Cats" or "Dogs".  They are members of the family, and we have loved them as much as we have loved any family member. We mourn and grieve their lost every bit as much.  I think that 2019 is going to be our family's Annus Horribilis as the Queen puts it.  I hope and pray that the grief stops here.  

 

I up-graded my phone this week.  Same make, newer model. It is a Samsung Galaxy A20e 32GB blue.  Hopefully I will be able to take better photos with this one. I traded in my old one and got a discount for that which was good and they were able to transfer everything from my old phone onto my new one right in the shop.  I didn't know however that I would have to turn it off and then back on again in order for the ability to text and voice to kick in however, which made for a rather interesting comedy of errors when I was at the hospital the other day. 

Every time you park at the hospital today, you have to pay £3 for parking, no matter how long you are there.  5 minutes or 5 hours.  There is a grocery store with a Cafe across the road from the hospital so when Todd was taking me for my blood test, I told him to just drop me off and then go for a drink. I would message him when I was done and he could pick me back up again outside the entrance.  I got in really quickly, in fact I was the first one there.  He literally could have stopped outside the entrance for the five minutes that it took.  Nevermind  . . .  anyways, I walked around to the main entrance after the test and tried to text him to say I was finished.  I kept getting the message that only emergency calls were allowed.  

Hmmm . . .  I tried adding him as an emergency contact.  No dice. I went rummaging through my purse to see if I could find a coin so that I could call him using the pay phone. Nada.  Zip.  Nothing but a few tuppences which I was pretty sure I couldn't use. 

In the meantime, he had finished his drink and was thinking, this is taking a long time and had begun messaging and texting me . . . .  messages, which of course, I was not receiving.  Finally he decided to just take a chance and he drove back over and cruised past the front entrance.  Thankfully I saw him and was able to hop out and hop into the car.  

We couldn't figure out what was wrong with the phone, so we drove over to the shop where I had gotten it. Not open yet, so we sat in the car outside the shop for half an hour waiting for it to open up. I thought it very strange as I could access all of the internet stuff, just no texts or voice.  When it opened we were first in the queue and lo and behold, I should have turned it off and back on again.  DUH!  Lesson learnt for next time!  

 

On Thursday this week we had our plum, apple and pear trees cut down.  I was sad to see them go.  They had been our friends for 9 years.  It would not have been so bad had they actually produced fruit.  The plum tree had never given us more than half a dozen plums.  The pear tree had been rather prolific every year but this one.  The apple tree also, but this year nothing at all on any of them.  Well, there were two pears and one apple, plus they did not look healthy at all.  It was recommended we get rid of them.  So we did.  It always breaks my heart a little bit to do something like that.  After all you are destroying a living thing.  A friend and his son came and did it and they carted away all of the branches, etc for us as well, along with some other things Todd needed to take to the tip, which was very kind of them.   

 

And to end on a rather happy note  . . .  Grace is now feeding herself.  Its a rather messy business, but a cute one.  God love her, she is so precious. We haven't seen so much of her this summer as Ariana's sister is staying with them for the duration.  She is working at the same restaurant that Jose manages before she returns to Spain and uni in the fall where she is training to become a nurse like Ariana.  Compassion truly runs in their family. 

  

And on a truly sweet note  . . .  I picked up a package of these this week and they are gorgeous!  Yum!

A thought to carry with you  . . . 

° * 。 • ˚ ˚ ˛ ˚ ˛ •
•。★★ 。* 。
° 。 ° ˛˚˛ * _Π_____*。*˚
˚ ˛ •˛•˚ */______/~＼。˚ ˚ ˛
˚ ˛ •˛• ˚ ｜ 田田 ｜門 ★
 *Be happy,

it drives people crazy.

~Unknown •。★★ 。* 。 

 

Baking in The English Kitchen today  . . .  Scottish Dundee Cakes.  You can make a large one or 10 smaller ones.  The large one bakes in 2 1/4 hours, the small ones in about half an hour.  I did the small ones and they are delicious!

I hope your Saturday is a wonderful one. Don't forget! 

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And I do too!