Where have you all gone?

You were there the day before yesterday, but I popped in here tonight to say something and now I am too worried about where the blogroll has disappeared to to post about what I was going to say!  All my favourite blogs were there, easily accessible for me [and you] to dip in and out of - and now they are gone!  

If anyone knows what is going on, do share!

Phew!

It seems that life is just keeping me away from blogging at the moment. I have really appreciated the support that this blogging community has given to me over the last few years, and whilst I am not closing this blog down, I am coming to the conclusion that aiming to post regularly is just not going to happen.

Each day is split into three sections and I am only supposed to work two of them each day, but at the moment, that's rare. It's not killing me, though, because when I have a late night out at a meeting, I tend to have a morning the next day when I can have a later start. There are days when I am out and about all day, but others where I maybe just have to pop somewhere for an hour, or I can just work at home on paperwork for most of the day. It does balance out in the end, but what with the house, spending time with the YFG and on the phone with the EFG, visiting my dad occasionally and just attempting to keep up with friends, I'm not spending time on blogs now.  Have to say that I do miss your news, though.

I have launched a new choir in one of our town churches, and we are meeting each week - we kicked off with nine members on the first night - and we were thrilled to be able to sing a Joseph song by the end of it - given that it is a choir to enable people who "can't" sing to benefit from the health aspects of singing, we were chuffed with ourselves!

Our bereavement support group in one of the other smaller churches is also working out very well as we have had a couple of new people coming along in the last couple of months. There are two sisters attending who have both been widowed in the last 18 months, and they have just had another blow in that their third sister has just died after a long struggle with cancer.  We are spending time in prayer for them all.

We are looking forward to seeing UJ today - it was his birthday yesterday and the YFG has made him a beautiful chocolate cake for tea today.  I am also going to be doing some baking for a local MacMillan coffee morning this Friday, so the mixer is busy this week - ginger cake has been requested.

The EFG has settled very well back into Aberdonian life - she loves the situation in the new flat. There are four of them in the flat, although there are five rooms, but one hasn't been let. One of the other girls never actually sleeps in the flat, so most of the time there is only the EFG and two others there - so quite relaxed and calm. They are having weekly Sunday or Monday meals together and she is getting on with the other girls very well: the two she is spending most time with are both doing primary education, but all of them have their own groups of friends and do not depend on one another for friendship, which is rather more healthy than the last flat group which was heavily dependent on one another - and made life uncomfortable when they fell out.

September has been as cost-effective as I could make it - but I had to go and buy some new boots yesterday: as I have said before, my winter boots are 11 [black pair] and at least 16 [brown] years old. The black pair sprung a leak and I had wet feet on Monday.....I wear black a lot of the time, so it was time to get some more. I went into Clarks and asked the lady for all the plain black boots they had in size 8 to try on - and she brought out three pairs. I bought two of them!  I thought that I had definitely had my money's worth out of the others, since the 11 year old pair cost me £50 and I have worn them so much!

I have kicked off the school governor year by announcing that this is my last year and that I WILL definitely be retiring at the end of the year - and we have further put plans in place to designate the next chair in January so that I can spend 6 months handing over to the new chair before I retire. I am thrilled with the school and the way it has moved forward and developed over my time as a governor, and it is time to let go and move on now.  It will be one less responsibility too!

Enough for this morning - need to go and get the day moving!

And we're off with the challenge!

We were severely limited with financial challenges when the EF girls were here last year, and so spending was at a level which we could sustain, but not a lot was saved, if you see what I mean. Now that the September 1st has arrived and I feel like a new beginning again - and it is the start of the school and Methodist Connexional years - so here we go again!

Why? Because we have a big bill coming in from March when the chimney was fixed, because the girls want to be insured to drive when they have had more lessons, because there is more work on the house that I want to do, including replacing a shower unit and some decorating, because we need to save up for some new carpets! I have to make a contribution for fuel to the cousin who is taking the EFG back to Aberdeen.  And I want to do all of those projects this year, before the income drops as I mentioned in the last post......

So for this month - we are doing back to back weekly spending challenges where we only buy what we absolutely need, and I reckon we can manage on about £25 a week for the two of us. That is for FOOD only. Hopefully we might spend a bit less.......we'll see. We kicked off yesterday with a no-spend day so we still have £25 in the pot for this week.