Signs of Intelligent Life

The last quarter of this year is approaching too fast and I still have ALL THE THINGS to do!

#ORJENISE100 it's been slow for me this round possibly because it's intersected with a still busy period at work. I'm still a few days behind and will keep a note of the prompts I've missed and catch up in October. By the end I should have removed at least 200 items from my home and I am making inroads into eating down food stores and using up the toiletries mountain.

HOME: chaos still reigns in my bedroom and living room but I'm hoping to start on the bedroom today and get the first coat of varnish on the back door. There may be a bit of gardening or houseplants potting accomplished too. The ex was at the cottage last week so I did several loads of washing at his and I plan on taking the remains of anything that needs washing up to the cottage with me and drop it off for a service wash up there! I have fallen somewhat behind on #Project65days so on 1 Oct it will become #Project92days to see how much of my To Do List I can clear before 1 January.

HEALTH: knees still not happy. Really need to bust out the physio exercises and do them again. Also need to clear enough space to be able to exercise at home over winter as I'm feeling very stiff and inflexible.

LIFE ADMIN: slowly picking away at long outstanding tasks like a grown ass adult.

GARDENING/ALLOTMENTING: still have remaining winter pots to plant and allotment to sort!

COOKING/EATING: I'm tackling the coffee mountain and have begun to make it at home to take into work. Judging by the last week we'll soon be in porridge/honey season which means I can start tackling the honey mountain. I'm meal planning for the days I'll be at the cottage (tomorrow Sunday evening to Friday morning) so will be taking fruit/veg from home as I have things to eat up. I seem to have a ridiculous amount of fruit at the moment and may postpone next week's Oddbox to allow me to catch up.

READING/LISTENING: Not reading/ listening at the moment - possibly will tackle an audio book on the drive to Wales tomorrow.

WATCHING: Autumn shows are starting to creep back into the schedules. Not sure whether I'll be picking all my usual ones up this year. Trying to back away from both Doom scrolling and mindless viewing a little bit.

CREATING/LEARNING: still here -> summer has been nuts at work so hardly any time for crochet club or other creative endeavours.

CATS: all good.

VOLUNTEERING: we've not resceduked to end of season barbie yet but we do have a committee meeting Monday.

SOCIALISING: I went out with the allotment group (reps from all the sites I manage after their meeting on Monday). Went for one drink left the pub as it closed. Oops. Also met up with some work colleagues on Thursday and we went to More Than Human at the Design Museum. Interesting and now I have loads more photos on my phone. Totally forgot Thursday was the last Thursday in the month and missed my monthly Zoom with 2 friends. Thought I has another week...

WORK: I was invited to the meeting of the reps allotment group on Monday - they know I am under resourced and several things have not been done in a timely manner over summer because of this. I think it's a testament to how well we gave worked together since '21 that the meeting was not "you haven't done this" (which was very much the tone when I joined) but rather "what can we do to help - how about X, Y and Z" where X is an idea so simple I should have thought of it before and Y and Z will massively simplify some key processes, lightening my load and keeping them happy. I'm really happy they've gone from a group who were very disgruntled and finger-pointy, to being a lot more collaborative and having their own plans to do interesting and useful things. There was also a productive meeting last week around the small site which is being reclaimed by the cemetery and where we have you move 19 plotholdrrs and 4 charities to alternative sites.

As I didn't get up to the cottage during my annual leave I've negotiated working remotely for some chunks of time over winter. Heading up there tomorrow until Friday so I can get some uninterrupted work time as well as possibly a couple of slightly longer lunch breaks to tidy the cottage garden. There are less distractions there so planning on reading in the evenings and having a couple of early nights.