Day 72...

I had decided to follow the lead of blogger Snoskred in doing a “photo an hour” post today. It all started well enough first thing...

My now-habitual start to the day in this new normal - first brew of the day and getting some Instagram posts done while still cosied up in bed. It’s definitely one of the things I will miss when  early starts begin again. 

8.30am - morning walk. Again, something that I think we will both miss. I do fairly often find time for a walk before heading to the office in the morning, but rarely more than a mile or so - most days currently we’re managing 3 or so miles before heading back ready for MrEH to start work Monday - Wednesday, while for me....

...9.30am is time for breakfast, and my second brew of course. ALWAYS tea here - I’m not a coffee fan at all - the closest I get to coffee is the occasional mocha which I quite enjoy. This morning breakfast was some granola with Greek yogurt - I don’t “do” cereal with milk, this is as close as I get to cereal + dairy! If the weather is good enough I always gravitate to sitting outside as well - and the wonderfully soothing view from the balcony.

A little later I walked into the kitchen to see this...

Yes, it’s been tidier - so 10.30am got designated kitchen tidying and cleaning time - dirty stuff into the dishwasher or in the case of the pans and knives, washed up by hand. Fruit and veg waste outside ready to go into the compost bin, then a thorough clean down of the worktop, plus a clean of the hob.

By 11.30am it was all done and looking oh so much better! It’s three years since we got this done now and yet the difference still amazes me. It cost a bit but was honestly worth every penny - the room is a joy to work in and makes us smile - it is also far easier to keep clean, and although the earlier shot belies it - tidy, too! 

 A good chunk of housework deserves a reward, so on went my running kit and I fired out of the door to get some miles in. As I had time, and rain wasn’t forecast, I headed for the river - so often my default!

Weather not as good today, but regardless this is a route I always love. A long downhill first mile gives a nice confidence boost and a decent pace - then I switch to unstructured run/walk intervals to avoid the hillier sections destroying my knees. Just two short busy road sections and one quieter one, the rest of it is all either on old roads - now cycle tracks, through Old Harlow, along the river itself or in the Town Park - glorious. Home today via Aldi, and back in time for lunch....

Weekday lunches have been kept nice and simple - a sandwich or filled roll, a handful of baby tomatoes for me, packet of crisps for MrEH, and then some fruit. I’m not much of a daytime snacker which I have always been quite grateful about - but I certainly find that eating a good lunch helps with this. 

Lunch finished, and time to get some photo processing done while sorting out my new FitBit. As I mentioned last week, after over 3 years of daily use my old  Charge 2 developed several cracks across the screen. It still works, but I was concerned that it will be a lot more vulnerable to water ingress in the rain, so decided to move swiftly for a replacement. The new model recently released is a lot more money mainly for a feature that I don’t feel is currently good value - it has inbuilt GPS for tracking walks and runs - but this comes with a trade-off of drastically reduced battery life so I felt it would effectively be useless to me. Instead I moved for the previous model - the special edition version which gains me FitBit Pay (another feature now standard on the newer model). A saving over over £30 on the purchase price though - at £99 it was fractionally cheaper than I paid for the last one - if this one gets me a further three years of use I will feel that was money well spent! 

I lost an hour here somewhere along the line - it was filled with wrestling with the tech, processing photos, sorting out washing and a few other jobs. Mostly wrestling with the tech though - I struggled to get the phone to accept the new FitBit, I think because it had connected to the iPad already without me realising it. Eventually I installed it on the iPad first, then finally the phone played ball.

And that was when it all went wrong. I forgot the rest of the day! I had good plans too - dinner was a lovely looking plateful, we played a game his evening....sigh. Maybe I will try another day - I had a feeling this might happen!

Robyn