Moving at the speed of life

Took Hannah with me to view the place today, and she thought it was minky. (And yes, the carpet is horrible, and it’s bare with white emulsion and flourescent lighting). On the other hand, I was already buying in my mind a huge rug to cover the carpet, a few acres of cheap cream muslin to drape around the three floor to ceiling windows, some mood lighting and some smelly oils. Even mid morning on a week day there was masses of unrestricted street parking, excellent disabled access, a small park nearby, and a few sandwich shops within 2 mins walk.

….not put me off eating yet, though;-)

Having looked at a fairly unsuitable training venue yesterday, I worked out that the cost of running one 7 day course in a hotel is only slightly less than three months unit rental.  And the thought of being able to make the space mine is bliss. I hate the corporate hotel feel.

Went and looked at it today from the outside, as Sunday will be one of the days when it’s most used. Walked the distance from the underground one way (10 mins), and took a bus back to the city centre from right outside the door (less than 15 mins), so even though its off centre, it does have good transport links, even on a Sunday. And I think being based in Glasgow rather than here will be a psychological advantage. Was also pleased to realise that the very successful Scottish College of Herbal Medicine leases three of the other units. Not only does this mean that it would be good to be near other similar but non competing businesses, but also as they are open most weekends with students, it means that there will be lots of people around at the weekends. As one of my worries had been that it would be a bit dismal if I was the only place open, this ameliorates that. I’m just bloody terrified of taking the plunge though! Bob says I’ve reached the point of not being able to get bigger unless I have premises, but it definitely moves it from lucrative hobby to serious business status. Gulp.  Plus it would be nice to claim back the spare room and the caravan, both of which are full of things like chairs, flipcharts and their stands, water coolers, student textbooks (bought in bulk for the discount) etc.  Plus if I had my own space, I would do lots more taster days, which are a great marketing tool, but a big investment if I need to hire a venue, as I tend just to charge a very nominal fee for them.

I’m going to go back and have another look inside tomorrow.  Oh dear, what to do??? I’m going to go for a walk and talk to myself some more……

Said I, ineffectually.

Since Bob started to have weekends off, I feel we’ve been wasting his time off. Before, I always organised things for the weekend, as we were alone, and then Hannah got her dad to herself when he had his days off when I worked. Now we tend to sit around waiting for a plan to materialise on a Sat morning.

So today I wanted to visit a potential training venue at Mugdock Country Park, and we decided to do some geocaching when we were there. So Bob explained some maths to Hannah that she’d been struggling with, while I printed off some caches, then he went and got his hairs cut (aside: why is hair the only thing that reverts back to plural when you have hardly any of it), and we set off just before 11am.

The first one we identifed fairly easily, but we couldn’t get at the cache as a crowd of lovies in a film shoot for Fly Fishing or something were sitting on the tree that we thought it was under. We hung around thinking they would leave soon, but eventually THEY chased US. So despite the fact it was sleeting, I decided we would set off across a peat bog to the second. After we’d gone for MILES, my foot was really painful, so I took shelter in a derlict bothy, and pointed Bob and Hannah in the direction of the last couple of hunderd yards.

So there I am looking around at the cloven footprints in the bothy, thinking “that’s sweet, Bambi must shelter here”, when there was an enormous moo right behind me, I turned to find a herd of cows had snuck up on me in the wind. The leader had her head practically up my bum. Now, I know they are peaceful, but I was def outnumbered, so hurried out, to slip and fall in a cow pat. If you’ve never sat in a cow pat, looking up at 20 cows milling around you, and other cow pats flying through the air, you’ll appreciate my distress. They kept up with me for ages, despite me setting off at a good trot.

When I finally shook them off, phoned Bob in hysterics, and told him he would find me in the tea shop. Which turned out to be about 40 mins away. The two of them found me there an hour later, scoffing a cream tea, and trying to stay downwind of the rest of the customers.

So now we are home, everyone is bathed, washing machine full of shitty clothes, and I’m just about to take my aching bones to bed

Today I have been looking at an office/training room to lease. Gulp. This seems far too grown up for one as young as me I don’t know if I will or not, and it really depends on what I can negotiate about the length of the lease – its really too long at the moment to be sensible, I still want a “get out of jail free card”. But I am sick, sick, sick of using hotels. Its hideous, it’s expensive, and its so inflexible. Finish 20 mins early – sorry, you can’t have your coffee till the time you booked it. I’m trying to be rationale and calm, and not move in and decorate it in my mind before it actually makes financial sense.

So, Bob has been allergy tested against every dog we can lay our hands on, and it appears that the only one we can be absolutely sure if is a poodle. Which isn’t as poncy as it looks, so long as it doesn’t have a show cut. So now I’m looking

Didn’t sleep well last night – kept waking myself up by teeth grinding, and weird dreams, so was determined to get some fresh air today. Bob brought me tea in bed before he left, and I got a blissful hour to read trash, then Hannah appeared having done a Just Write exercise in bed, and was really proud of herself – today she had written about her room, and the view from her window. I had a bath, and she sat on the bathroom floor and did some maths, before hopping into my water, and we decided to see if Elaine and JR were free.

They were, so we organised to pick them up at the bus station, H made a picnic lunch and I tried to find some nearby caches. Without real success, but nothing daunted, set off to the meet the bus, by which time it was pouring. Fortunately the sun came out shortly after, and the day was sunny and bright from then on. Set off looking for a cache but couldn’t identify the road properly, when I looked at Hannah in the rear view mirror, and realised she had gone green, and had an “I’m about to vomit any minute” look on her face. Pulled into a layby, and decided we would just spend some time here, and perhaps find a place to leave our own cache. Two jaffa cakes and a peanut butter sandwich later, she felt much better, but was reluctant to get back in the car, so the girls played on the swings, explored the castle, and we walked along the beach. We were then given misleading information about a coffee shop, which didn’t exist, and ended up in a pub. However, they wouldn’t serve us as they were about to get a funeral party in the lounge bar, and the kids weren’t allowed in the public bar. We did use their toilets though! I went off to get the car, and we all returned to Ayr.

JR and Elaine had a late lunch, and Hannah had an early dinner, then the girls went out to play in the park, while we drank coffee and then followed them.  JR jumped/fell into the pool when they were playing, and soaked herself. Ever creative , I made Hannah change into her netball kit, which we had fortunately brought with us as she was going straight there, and give JR her dry clothes for travelling home in. Sorted Dropped Elaine and JR at the bus, took Hannah to netball, and now Bob has taken her to athletics, before, hopefully, cooking dinner.

Great day all round, and the BEST day of the year is just round the corner, when the clocks go forward. I love this time of year.

Didn’t stop raining all day today. Although I usually work on Wednesdays, I was off today, so Hannah decided to stay home as well, and we had a lazy start to the day, with her hopping into the space when Bob went to work. We dozed, read and chatted till about 8.30, when I finally prevailed on her to get up and make tea , and then we snuggled some more.

Day was slightly ruined at that point by a very distressing/annoying/irritating  phone call, which upset me for most of the rest of the day, although Elaine has now talked some sense into me, and feeling rather better now.

Anyway, Hannah made lentil soup (my favourite) for lunch, and we did some bread dough bashing – so much more therapeutic than the breadmaker in difficult situations, I find, and I chucked a casserole into the oven for dinner. She did some pages from My Pals are Here, and then we had a bit of a chat about how stressful she finds writing. She has reached the stage now of wanting to do something about it, but just feels overwhelmed by her almost phobic response to it. I showed her the “just write” technique I use when I’ve got writer’s block on a commission, and she was amazed to cover two sides of A4. I think it also helped her to realise that even *I* get writer’s block – I hadn’t appreciated that she didn’t realise that some days I could throw the computer out of the window – she thought I could *always* do it. We’ve used the analogy of building a “writer’s muscle”, so she is going to write a page of something every day, with no worries about content, grammer, spelling, handwriting or anything   – just filling the pages.

I the afternoon, the GPS arrived, so we messed around with that for a while, and Hannah watched some old videos we’ve got of theC4 Series of the 1990s house, while I looked for puppies for sale (no luck, though)

This evening, we’ve all lego-ed and built our dream home, complete with training suite for me, Cavy Palace for the Piggies, swimming pool and trampoline for Hannah, and a gym for Bob. I wish.  I then buried my head in my book, and Hannah trashed Bob on her LeapFrog globe. When we got that, I really thought it was overpriced but it still comes out regularly after about 5 years.

Hoping the weather will be better tomorrow.

Still very taken with the novelty of Bob having public holidays off. yesterday he of course had to go and pick his Switch card up, and his dad phoned in a panic to say his toilet was blocked, so he planned to carry on there. Hannah decided to go with him, and so I thought I would do a long walk. According to my pedometer, I did 11 miles, though I did stop for tea and scones at one point, I was so knackered. Partly as I had decided to do rough walking rather than power walking though, so was wearing walking boots and a rucksack. I do like thinking time though. I like being with people, but I really do need time by myself to talk to myself, re-charge, and think creative thoughts Got home just a few minutes before Bob and Hannah. Bob was looking a bit pale, and went to the bath with a nailbrush for a long time LOL. I believe it wasn’t simply a mattter of wielding a plunger However, he did recover enough to make my favourite Saturday night dinner of courgette risotto, and we all vegged in front of the TV.

Today, Hannah got up and watched some history videos that we’ve had for ages, and did some maths. She then went round to her friends for a couple of hours, and Bob and I had a walk along the beach, and talked about life. I know its soppy, but I do really still love that man after 25 years

We all arrived home, and Hannah did the 3 foot high pile of holiday ironing. I felt slightly guilty as the living room was like a sweat shop by the time she was finished, and it took her about three hours. I doubled the ironing rate, and paid her £10 for her MOTB find, since she’d essentially done 3 weeks worth. As she also put it all away as well, worth every penny!

Tomorrow she has another friend coming for the day, and an overnight, so the plan is the farm park, so long as firend brings suitable warm clothing, as it’s FREEZING!

This one. It’s the one Elaine has, and it seemed to work fine, and was recommended by both by Tiso’s and the geocaching forum I looked on. Bob had initially been keen to get something a bit better, so he could use it for serious hill walking, but the Tiso’s man recommended that we didn’t spend more within the Garmin range – he didn’t reckon they were significantly better as you spent more, and we should stick with the entry model. To get something like Bob wanted, we were looking at about £300, PLUS all the map software, at about £50 per area, so really prohibitively expensive. Plus I didn’t want to get something so expensive that I would (I know myself so well!), always be worrying about Hannah losing/breaking. So Bob is sticking with his OS maps and compass for now, and he can always use this to set waymarks – if he can get it off Hannah! And to be honest, I wouldn’t risk myself in serious terrian with only GPS, in case the signal failed, ran out of batteries, dropped it in a peat bog etc – I would still want OS and a compass as a back up, and I suspect Bob would as well, so it seems daft really to invest so much more money for mapping and electronic compass.

We went out today to look for a GPS at Costco, but they didn’t have any, so ordered one from Amazon. Annoyed we didn’t buy it in the US, but never mind. Bob also bought new walking boots in Tiso, which was good, and left his switch card in the payment thingy there, which was bad. He was at Tesco at home before he realised, but fortunately we caught them on the phone while they were still cashing up. Fortunately they hadn’t got round to reporting it to the bank, and they’ve just put it in the safe for hom to pick up tomorrow. Which unfortunately means not only another trip to Glasgow, but also that I will be exposed again to the new Brashers I had tried on today and decided to resist. I do so love Brasher boots