I'm feeling a wee bit tired today but luckily not sorry for myself! I had a busy, busy, time during the 6 days in Florida and managed to clean almost everything that I needed to! Failed to clean a bathroom slatted blind, a glass table (under the glass) and a big artificial tree in the master bedroom but will forgive myself and move on!
What I discovered (or rediscovered) was that I love cleaning and find it very therapeutic. Not that you'd guess that to be the case if you came to visit because housework is way down on my list of things to do. I don't place it as very important at all amongst the other things in life. But, if cleaning was my job, I would not be too unhappy, especially if I could have the same radio station playing that was playing constantly in the villa! It played soft rock and songs that I had forgotten I love and it was brilliant.
It wasn't difficult to get going in the mornings at all-the jetlag Bach Flower remedies were obviously doing their job. Bill felt guilty that he had to drag me out of the cupboards I was cleaning to get some food into me! Everytime he turned around I was cleaning something else-yahoo!!! I almost turned down the chance of going to 2 fantastic concerts in Tampa just so that I could keep cleaning. Am I bonkers or what??????
We didn't have any tickets but drove down to Tampa on 2 separate evenings to see Celine Dion and Eagles. It's the way to do it folks. Great seats at a fraction of the sale price! Although I am sure that sometimes there will be no tickets to be had, we were very lucky for both events!
Shopping didn't happen (except for things for the villa) but we did manage to pick up a pair of jeans each. Bill got his on the way to the hotel for our last night (the villa was booked-lucky people with the spotless house) and I got mine on the way to the airport. Can you imagine my face when I had to spend only half an hour in a huge mall full of fabulous stores. I could have wept!! The only saving grace is that with the pound being so weak nothing is very much of a bargain and so I wouldn't have shopped even if there had been time.
Our journeys were hitch-free right up to the last minutes when we were supposed to land and didn't. We watched the plane doing circles on the seatback-monitor (a bit like an etch-a-sketch drawing) and then the captain announced that we may have to land in Glasgow because of the icy runway at Edinburgh!
Rather than panic (I was landing at 7.30 and teaching at 10am) I decided to send the situation some Reiki and expect the best and we landed in Edinburgh on completion of the next circle-Wew!!! And again I say that there's something to be said for cosmic ordering!
The kids coped well without us as did grandad with them. It hardly seems like we were gone at all and it's a good thing to know that they can all be so independent in our absence. It's really easy to think that you have to do everything for your kids but we need to realise that it's not doing them any favours to mollycoddle them till they are into adulthood. They need to gradually take on the cooking and cleaning and laundry for themseves so that they will know how to do it all once they leave our nest. They might pout a bit about having to do it or when you make them walk instead of offering them a ride but we need to be able to take their moods in our strides if we are to encourage them to be all that they can be.
Perhaps next time we'll take them with us to cook and clean and paint for us-very good practice, I think. And we could supervise from the pool???????!!!
Well, signing off now and planning an early night to catch up on all the missed hours of sleep over the last week.
Wishing you all a safe time in the snow if you've got some (as usual we've none and we get so disappointed with their constant promises of loads!!)
Lxx
Posted on Wed, February 4, 2009
by Linsey Denham