Word of the Week

Word of the Week 22 – Not Going Out

May 29, 2020 by Anne Sweet 10 Comments

Hello and welcome to the home of Word of the Week. A nice and simple weekly linky, with everyone welcome to pop by and share. The idea of the linky is to reflect back on your past week and share it with us. It’s great if you can sum it up in a word or phrase, hence giving us your Word of the Week. My phrase this week is ‘not going out’ and you can read more about that below.

I’m not totally strict on using just a word or phrase. But please try to stick to the theme of summing up your week.There are not too many rules with this linky, just remember to read at least another couple of posts in the link up after adding your link. I will read and comment on all posts and tweet them out for you. I also have a Pinterest board devoted to Word of the Week and I will add posts to Mix Please add the badge below to your post so that others may find us and join in. If you comment or tweet then please use the hashtag #WotW

Word of the Week is open from 6am on Friday Morning to 12 noon on Monday. Plenty of time to join in!

If you are unfamiliar with the Word of the Week linky then please feel free to ask any questions. New linkers are always welcome, we love to hear what you have been up to in the past week.

MY WORD OF THE WEEK – Not Going Out

not going out, image shows a woman from the back walking in the countryside

Last week I was feeling stressed because of not being able to leave the house, the kids having issues with getting on with their school work and the worry of Star going back to school next week.

Well, the last one was settled for me because the school phoned to say they couldn’t accept Star back. It’s half term so no work for the kids this week which has made us feel much more relaxed. But I still haven’t been out.

Have you ever watched Not Going Out? I’m not a huge fan of sitcoms but Not Going Out has always managed to draw me in, I think I must have a secret (even to me) crush on Lee Mack or something. It started in 2006, and although it was cancelled in 2009 it made a comeback in 2011 and is still going strong. My favourite episode has always been the Escape Room, but the Halloween special last year was so good too. It’s totally daft, but it’s just what life feels like right now.

As for not going out, I don’t think I will be going anywhere anytime soon. I can’t believe what a mess this country has become. With no clear rules, everyone has made up their own. Life is returning to normal for so many, but for us few with medical complications, life will be staying very much the same for a while. I’m staying home.

If I though that for one minute that I could trust the British public to carry out the suggested/requested idea of track and tracing contacts if COVID19 touches their lives, then maybe there would be a chance of defeating this. But, honestly, I have no faith. If those who make the rules can break them then others will too. But to be fair, it’s not as if a lot of people have not been breaking the rules all along anyway.

I can’t blame people being wary of the app. the technology that can track the virus. I can’t blame people worrying about their privacy and who’s hands their personal information can end up in. I can’t blame people wanting to go out and earn a living, meet up with their friends and family and get on with life. But, COVID is still out there, it’s still a threat. And I don’t want it touching me or my family. So. I’m not going out.

Now, it’s over to you. What word or phrase sums up your week this week?

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Word of the Week – Stress

May 22, 2020 by Anne Sweet 11 Comments

Hello and welcome to the home of Word of the Week. A nice and simple weekly linky, with everyone welcome to pop by and share. The idea of the linky is to reflect back on your past week and share it with us. It’s great if you can sum it up in a word or phrase, hence giving us your Word of the Week. My word this week is stress and you can read more about that below.

Word of the Week is open from 6am on Friday Morning to 12 noon on Monday. Plenty of time to join in!

If you are unfamiliar with the Word of the Week linky then please feel free to ask any questions. New linkers are always welcome, we love to hear what you have been up to in the past week.

MY WORD OF THE WEEK – Stress

a white piece of paper with the word stress written on it in red pencil.

How’s your week been? Did you know it was mental health awareness week this week? I used to keep track of awareness weeks and promote them when I could. At the moment it’s hard enough keeping track of what day of the week it is.

Our household is not your typical household. We have four adults and three children living here. That’s seven people! But, if I’m honest, this lock down seems to be working out okay. Different sleeping patterns mean that we are not all under each others feet all the time. The younger kids get to do what they want when the older kids are not around and vice versa. At first I stressed that it wasn’t healthy, but it’s working so I’m not thinking of it as broken and I don’t want to fix it anymore. Basically, the last couple of weeks have been quite peaceful.

So why the stress?

I guess I’m feeling bored and just want to escape this house. But I can’t. Not only am I most at risk, I can’t go alone and no-one else seems willing to help me. I found somewhere nearby we could go which could be fairly quiet, but no-one else seems to want to do anything other than sit on their screens, or play their games, or get off their backsides. Yes, my family have turned into lazy slobs! The Little Man is the only one who gets any exercise in the garden and that’s not for very long. It’s not much fun playing on your own.

I’m also feeling the stress of school. The kids have done pretty well keeping up with their work. We’ve had a mixture of good and bad days/weeks which is to be expected. But, I feel the stress of making sure they are doing some work at least. Star is year 10 and can go back to school in June. But, although she wants to, the risk is high with vulnerable people at home. Also, she wants to go back on her terms, she wants to know exactly what hours she will be doing and where she will be taught. And none of that information is not forthcoming despite my asking. I guess the school don’t know themselves. But Star can’t cope with not knowing and we have just one day to decide if she is going in or not.

Maybe next week will be less stressful being half term?

Now it’s your turn, what word or phrase sums up your week this week?

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Word of the Week 20 – Blurred

May 15, 2020 by Anne Sweet 6 Comments

Hello and welcome to the home of Word of the Week. A nice and simple weekly linky, with everyone welcome to pop by and share. The idea of the linky is to reflect back on your past week and share it with us. It’s great if you can sum it up in a word or phrase, hence giving us your Word of the Week. My word this week is blurred and you can read more about that below.

devoted to Word of the Week and I will add posts to Mix follow Please add the badge below to your post so that others may find us and join in. If you comment or tweet then please use the hashtag #WotW

Word of the Week is open from 6am on Friday Morning to 12 noon on Monday. Plenty of time to join in!

If you are unfamiliar with the Word of the Week linky then please feel free to ask any questions. New linkers are always welcome, we love to hear what you have been up to in the past week.

MY WORD OF THE WEEK – Blurred

Everything this week has seem blurred. We are all in the same boat where one day seems just the same as any other, but sometimes the edges seem to get even blurrier.

I can’t believe it’s Friday today, it seems like I only just published last weeks Word of the Week! How can time go so quickly when you are not having fun!

This week has been blurred because of a shopping mix up. Last week I couldn’t get a slot at my usual supermarket until Thursday, but we shop on Mondays so we needed food. So, I found a slot at a different supermarket and we ended up with two shops, both expensive and the food planning went to pot.

Then I went to do my food shopping for this week and because I’d not had my shopping until Thursday I had to wait seven days until I could order again…arrgh! I didn’t want to do the same as last week so I ordered a basics food box and we made do with what we had. The main shopping comes today and boy we have nothing left, we are even out of coffee! (We do have tea bags though!) I have done a full weeks shop though, so now I’m going to change my shopping day to Friday. I bet that causes confusion for a while.

Days Blurred

Apart from the food, I’ve been feeling each day blurring into the next. Our routine has slipped. The kids are getting lazier and don’t want to get dressed in the morning. What’s the point if they are not going out? I’ve let them get away with it providing they did their school work, and then got dressed after lunch. But I want that routine back again. They don’t get dressed until lunch times on the weekend if we are not going out, I want weekdays to feel different.

We have been keeping up with the school work but even that’s becoming a blur. Primary learning day after day is quite frankly boring. Now I know I couldn’t have ever been a teacher even though it was an idea once upon a time. I have to admit though, I’m pretty sure that some of the maths my Little Man has to do, I didn’t have to do in primary school. I’ll be getting him to do my accounts soon.

The teacher’s call regularly and it’s become a blur as to who’s teacher I’m speaking too. I’m easily confused, I can’t even remember my own kid’s names how am I supposed to remember their teachers? Apparently, Star is now in Year 11 despite not finishing year 10. She may or may not get to see her teacher before the Summer break. The Little Man may or may not be going back to school before the Summer break, but his poor teacher was in tears when she rang me and we talked about it. She thinks it’s too soon and is having to take her baby girl back to nursery so she can return. As for Boo, well, no-one knows if she’ll be going back but her trip to France has been cancelled. We expected that.

Blurred Messages

So life is just a bit blurry right now and everything is just so not clear. We don’t know what we are supposed to be doing, working, not working, going out, not going out, going to school, not going to school. I don’t like uncertainty and I’ll be happy when we can see clearly again.

Now it’s your turn, what word or phrase sums up your week this week?

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Word of the Week 19 – Playing Games

May 8, 2020 by Anne Sweet 9 Comments

Hello and welcome to the home of Word of the Week. A nice and simple weekly linky, with everyone welcome to pop by and share. The idea of the linky is to reflect back on your past week and share it with us. It’s great if you can sum it up in a word or phrase, hence giving us your Word of the Week. My phrase this week is playing games and you can read more about that below.

devoted to Word of the Week and I will add posts to Mix Please add the badge below to your post so that others may find us and join in. If you comment or tweet then please use the hashtag #WotW

Word of the Week is open from 6am on Friday Morning to 12 noon on Monday. Plenty of time to join in!

If you are unfamiliar with the Word of the Week linky then please feel free to ask any questions. New linkers are always welcome, we love to hear what you have been up to in the past week.

My Word of the Week – Playing Games

It’s been a bit of a weird week this week. Does anyone else think time is flying by in lock down, or is it going slow for you? It was a bit of shock to think that we have been stuck at home longer than the entire school Summer holiday already.

This week I decided to treat my kids to some time playing games. The Little Man had a game, Scrap Mechanic, on his laptop and the girls had, My Hero, Justice Two (or something like that) on the Switch. I also decided to revisit a game myself and I’ve been playing The Sims. The eldest two have been playing some prison escape game and Graham has been playing Uncharted Four.

They are all very different games so it’s been a whole week of computer gaming and maybe that’s why it’s gone so fast. Time flies when you are gaming that’s for sure.

Of course we have still been home educating too, but we get an extra day off today, Yay! The Little Man is still working the hardest, but that’s probably because he has to do all his work under my supervision. I’m trusting the girls to work independently.

Other than that we’ve had a couple of nice days and managed to get in the garden for a little while. We picked some dandelions from the garden last weekend and made some cookies with the petals. They were delicious but the kids were not keen to try them because they had flowers in them. I tried to explain that sugar and flour comes from plants too, but they still only had a nibble. I have strange kids!

That’s all from me this week, let me know what word or phrase sums up your word this week?

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Last week my word of the week was Challenge

Word of the Week 18 – Challenge

May 1, 2020 by Anne Sweet 13 Comments

Hello and welcome to the home of Word of the Week. A nice and simple weekly linky, with everyone welcome to pop by and share. The idea of the linky is to reflect back on your past week and share it with us. It’s great if you can sum it up in a word or phrase, hence giving us your Word of the Week. My word this week is challenge and you can read more about that below.

devoted to Word of the Week and I will add posts to Mix Please add the badge below to your post so that others may find us and join in. If you comment or tweet then please use the hashtag #WotW

Word of the Week is open from 6am on Friday Morning to 12 noon on Monday. Plenty of time to join in!

If you are unfamiliar with the Word of the Week linky then please feel free to ask any questions. New linkers are always welcome, we love to hear what you have been up to in the past week.

MY WORD OF THE WEEK – Challenge

Life itself is a challenge at the moment don’t you think? This week I’ve decided to highlight some challenges good and bad.

Let’s start with a good one, Captain Tom reached his 100th birthday after shooting to fame with his own challenge. He walked 100 laps of his garden and wanted to raise £1000. He ended up raising more than £37 million*, had a number one single, a new best friend in Michael Ball and several television appearances, what looked like a million birthday cards and a brand new medal for his collection. Well done Captain Tom and I’m pretty sure your birthday yesterday was your best one to date…well worth waiting 100 years for! (*if you read this earlier you may have noticed a missing zero, so I’ve put it in words instead 🙂 )

On a much lower level, my Little Man completed a challenge for a school project and made a video. I filmed him making a healthy meal and he took the film and edited it into a short 20 second clip for a ‘swipe it right’ challenge. He was demonstrating a school value ‘determination’ in that he is determined to eat healthily while in lock down. They are going to put all the videos together to make a longer version. The teachers have already made theirs.

My challenge was a little different, trying to carry on day to day activities with a four day headache. It wasn’t a migraine, so not debilitating, but it certainly was difficult just getting things done. I even had to let the Little Man have a day off his lessons and just watch some BBC Bitesize instead. Thankfully, I am feeling much better now.

I’m so grateful for BBC Bitesize at the moment. They really have stepped up to the challenge of helping our kids stay interested in school work. I teach the Little Man each day with the resources sent by his school, but the older two are having much more difficulties in understanding their work. By logging on to BBC Bitesize it’s given them just enough challenges to start doing their work and I’m sure they won’t fall far behind now.

We’ve also been challenging each other with board games. I’ve played loads with my youngest children, while the older ones are playing computer games. I think it might be time for a Mario Party, or maybe a Mario Kart Challenge. I’m also challenging myself by learning BSL online and when I get the time I will figure out the final moves of finishing the Rubiks Cube. I used to be able to do but it’s been a while. (A very long while)

The final challenge is staying home. I’ve not been out myself, nor have any of my family but Graham and that’s only when really necessary. But, I have heard that people are finding it more difficult to stay at home, there are more cars on the road and more people out on the streets. I just hope they are keeping their distance. This isn’t over yet and no matter how hard it is we need to keep this virus under control. It’s so sad to see the number of people of dying each day. I guess another challenge is figuring out what is really going on, there are so many conspiracies flying around. People need to understand that no matter what, this virus is real and it’s killing people and we need to stay home to stay safe and keep others safe.

My challenge to you is to come up with a word or phrase to describe your week this week and share it with us all.

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