The Lurgy

Ugh, both DH and I had the flu last week - something I've never suffered from before and I'm still trying to recover.

I was supposed to be on a course last week - I did two days and then, when I got home on the Tuesday I felt so rotten that I went to bed early and ended up staying there until Thursday! DH was about three days ahead of me recovery wise which meant that he did most of the childcare. Amazingly, Lia remained bug free and thankfully so did my mother who was staying with us to look after Lia whilst I was on the course. We sent her home as soon as we felt able to cope though because I didn't want her catching it.

This meant that Easter was pretty much a wash out for us as we had to cancel pretty much all we'd planned. We did manage to visit friends on Easter Sunday as we were both feeling much better but Monday morning I woke up with and ear and throat infection that meant I was in agony every time I swallowed. However I'm three days into a course of antibiotics and am much better now - today is my first day back in work.

The downside of being sick is that no stitching or quilting has been done for about 10 days so I'm rather behind in my March goals. However I have been reading quite extensively and have managed to finish sixteen books so far this month! See, always a silver lining LOL.

We had a bit of a disaster early on this month as our boiler stopped working and the nice man who came to fix it informed me it is 26 years old and on its last legs. It hasn't been serviced or looked at for years and, although he did manage to get it started, we need to replace it and overhaul the system. Cue some expensive quotes from plumbers!

However my Mum has come up trumps with some cash to help us which means we're not raiding our savings quite as badly as we might have. We're collecting quotes for both the boiler and the garden and I'm hoping we can stretch the cash we have to do both. Mum had planned to give us the money so we could get the garden done completely but obviously the boiler is more important. I'd be happy if we can get the whole garden rotivated and the part we want as lawn turfed. Anything over that is a bonus really.

Also, I'm looking forward to creating the garden myself and learning a bit as I go along, if we get the whole lot done for us I'm not sure it would be anywhere near as much fun. The rotivating and turfing is the boring bit LOL. I'm also hoping we can get the garden done for the beginning of the summer as it'll be much nicer for all of us if we can enjoy it rather than spend the nice days looking at the mess it is now.

The clocks change here this weekend which means lighter evenings so if the weather improves I shall be out in the garden tidying up. We've got to weed kill round the patio slabs again as there's a whole bunch of new shoots coming up and I have to clear out four more beds so I can do some planting. Also, if we can paint the outside of the garage and clear up and paint the fence then the garden will look much better (plus it'd be a good thing to do that before they come and lay new turf right?)

So I imagine my stitching and quilting will slow down a bit for a while. I don't mind that as I do enjoy gardening, my only problem is that my bigger WIPs just won't get much attention. However, we're off to Greece for two weeks next month and I intend to take Sleigh Ride as my only stitching so hopefully I should get plenty done. I moan a lot about it not being a real holiday when I'm out there but I do at least get spare time when I can sit and stitch.

That's pretty much it I think - I can't believe March is almost over, to me I'm still somewhere around the middle of the month. Still, the best thing about March being over is that April is my birthday month so I will get a birthday discount order from Needlecraft Corner as my present. I'm already listing what I want but I shall reveal all in a later post when I've double checked with DH just how much I can spend!