When in Turmoil .....

Tidy up.

It's not really been a happy homecoming from our holiday.  Apart from G's granddad dying and us missing his funeral, my mum's oldest friend passed away.  It was her funeral this week, but I really couldn't ask for time off when I had just come back.

Also,  a dear old friend of the family in the States (he played bagpipes at my father's funeral) is now very ill, and his wife wrote to say she didn't think he would be well enough to continue with writing to us as he has done for the past 25 years. 

And work has been horrible.  An ongoing issue blew up just before I went on holiday, but I thought it had been resolved.  However, when I went back to work on Monday there was a letter instructing me that I had to attend a meeting to discuss it, and it was quite obvious that the nasty Boss of my Boss was at the bottom of it. 

Luckily, I am one of the two people in my whole department who are in the union, so I was able to have a Rep come with me for support.  It does make me fear for the future though, that this government is taking such shocking action to de-claw union activity, and that one day people may not have this action unless we all wake up and smell the coffee.

I'm not looking for any sympathy here by the way, just mentioning it all as some of the reasons why I haven't blipped this week.  Quite frankly, I just couldn't be bothered.  Life was feeling a bit s**t, and I'd rather have been on a beach somewhere. 

Still, on my day off I dealt with the stresses of the week in the best way I know - I cleaned.  I now have a re-organised cutlery drawer, sparkling cutlery, and nice clean kitchen cupboards.  I've been through all of G's drawers and wardrobe, and sorted out masses of stuff for the bin/charity shop/refugee collections. 

And I finally decided on which online course I was going to sign up for; Duolingo is a completely free online language course, which offers many European languages.  I chose Spanish, and since Thursday night when I signed up, I have become 3% proficient in the language!  Bueno!

I've resolved to spend no more of my own time at work from now on, when I could just finish at my official time and come home to do stuff for myself - such as Spanish lessons.  And I'm sorry dear Blip, I am also going to cut back drastically on you and your pal Facebook.

It is time for me to try to develop and stretch myself.  If I can spend a year in learning a new language before I am 60, I would be so proud of myself. 

And if I don't manage it, then there are still a world of books to read and plays to watch, and I'll manage to cram a few more in if I just finish work on time and do not come home and get sucked into Blip and FB every night!