I am so cautious about feeling positive incase another big storm comes and takes the roof away but we have had a good few days and all is heading in the right direction.
On Saturday morning I worked and it was a good couple of hours, lots of people in, plenty of them stopping for a cup of tea and a chat. I came home and Ady had more or less finished the pig move, I helped a bit and then we had lunch before heading down to the castle for carols. While there we processed all the laundry mountain, getting two washes and one load of drying done and back home with the second load of drying on and ready for collecting the next day. That was a literal load off my mind, every time I went in the bathroom my heart would sink at the heap of dirty laundry to deal with and I was running out of clean pants! Hopefully our petrol will arrive soon and we can actually test the washing machine here on the croft.
Carols were lovely – mulled wine, mince pies, someone playing the gorgeous steinway piano in the great hall and a load of us gathered to sing together. It was a perfect couple of hours 🙂 Fixed my soul. Home for wrapping presents for me, cooking dinner for Ady and a festive film. Everything felt so much better.
Yesterday was Turkey Day. Ady did the first one on his own – the disabled one that we have been nurturing along for the last 2 weeks. Fliss had rather screwed Ady down on a price so we sold her that one discounted as the leg was bruised. We’ve made our money back on it though and it would never have continued for long so was always a lost cause once it had been injured. I helped with the second one. We shot it in the head to kill it, then bled it and then plucked it. I helped with the plucking and Ady gave me a very comprehensive turkey biology. It’s crop was huge, so big and full I brought it up for the kids to cut open and inspect – full of fresh grass and grain. All it’s organs were pink and healthy and although sad to have killed an animal it makes me happy to know what a great life our animals have.
We delivered Fliss’ turkey, collected the laundry and then I made some cranberry sauce, some bread, some mince pies and got dinner sorted as Vikki was coming up to eat with us. we had a nice evening with her although she stayed later than I was really up for being hospitable for so I went straight to bed when she left at about 1am.
Today was a rescheduled ferry and although our petrol didn’t come everything else did including some things I had given up expecting before Christmas so that was great. Ady and I walked down to collect the post and some bits from the shop then home for a late lunch. The kids spent the morning decorating gingerbread houses that Dave and Naomi had brought for them when they visited and Scarlett in particular was very artistic and spent hours on it. They look fab and smell divine. I turned the ginger infused vodka into liqueur and had a disasterous attempt at icing the Christmas cake which will need fixing up tomorrow once the first layer is dry. It will taste fine though which is the main thing!
Ady did lots of ‘just popping out…’ things which was a bit irritating as we had agreed to spend this week with the kids but they enjoyed having me around all day. Tomorrow they want to make stockings, I want to sort the cake out and we’re all heading to the shop for mulled wine and mince pies in the evening before our traditional Christmas Eve curry.
I am ignoring the weather…