18th Nov day 35 super clean and Super Strike

Having done the work run with Simon I managed to get petrol and return to 904 in double quick time. I was in one of those 'must get on' moods, haven't had any of those since I left the UK. I wanted to clean the kitchen windows, I know you are thinking what a saddo, needs to get a life! But actually for me I like doing jobs like that for other people and particularly my kids, who work full time and do brilliantly bringing up my grandkids, as well as keeping their homes really well. 

I think it's a throw back from my Mum coming to stay when I was in that position, she would always bring her rubber gloves - good sign you'd think - but did she ever do anything practical - never. Now don't get me wrong my Mum was a delightful, gentle woman but hard-working she was not. In fact she had the most beautiful hands and nails all her life, mainly because she got my Dad or one of us girls to do all the dirty jobs. One time in my teams my Dad had the cheek to say to me "Helen if the Communists took over you'd be fine, no-one would ever take you for a white collar worker!" But in fairness to him I did have hands that any Irish Navvy would have been proud of at the time probably from scrubbing the bath with Vim!

I digress again, but when I stay at Cheryls to have Jack the dog whilst they are on hols, I absolutely love doing things like cleaning the oven etc as I know it helps her. So I cleaned Simon's kitchen and bathroom windows, inside and out and then decided to give the bathroom a thoriugh going over, every last bit of it from the ceiling down. It took me over 3 hours to do but it was incredibly satisfying. It was then time to walk to the local butchers to get the meat for dinner as Carol was coming and I was cooking. I chose sausages with spinach and pineapple, they went brilliantly with roasted veg.

I went to get Nicholas from school and we drove to get his Dad as we were going bowling straight from school. In the car he did his spellings homework, collective nouns. He had to tell me what they were the collective words for, as well as spelling them and he got all 13 right - well done that boy. Most of them I knew but I had never heard of a 'tilt' of windmills and I had forgotten it's a 'wonder' of stars. That's a great one as the stars are phenomenal. I love the throw away line in Genesis 1 vs 16 where it says "He made the stars also". That has to be one of the greatest under-statements ever. Anyway what's an orchestra? You are thinking a collection of musicians, but it's also a collection of crickets. English lesson over.

This picture of the boys at bowling is a joy to me, it's just father and son having fun together in every day life, I really appreciate being here and sharing in these moments. Simon is good at bowling, always has been but even he didn't manage a strike, so many 9s but not quite there. You will be proud of me I managed to get the worst score (as usual) so Nicholas was in the middle.

Dinner worked out fine, it was nice to cook for Carol as she normally does it at home. The two of them are good company so it's great being around them. I did my blog and read after dinner and let them to have quality time without me.