It seems like a long while since Sherry and I were discussing her taking redundancy and us possibly moving to a lovely country cottage in Ireland, when in fact it’s really only been a couple of months. However there is no escaping the fact that so much time has passed in a blur it is quite frightening. We are still toying with the idea of moving, however with all the uncertainty in the economy at the moment we are just biding our time until we feel it’s right to make a move. The one great thing that has come of her redundancy is the fact that we get to spend so much more time together, and seem to enjoy eachothers company so much more. I did wonder if we would find it a bit much suddenly being thrown together, but of course my fears were unfounded. If anything we have got closer as a result of it which is wonderful, I think it is because we are just more relaxed with our time together and seem to appreciate eachother more, whereas before it would almost be a case of forcing ourselves enjoy the time we were spending together no matter how tired or stressed we were as we knew it was only a matter of hours before we’d be off our separate ways joining the daily grind.
On the downside we do seem to be very good at spending money these days, which isn’t actually a problem but when you look at the months spending sometimes it’s a bit like “wow, honey we really need to reign it in a little”. I have to say that we have had some one-off expenditures like the garden decking and the annual membership for the wine club, which are both sound investments in our eyes. I can’t complain, even with all the gloom and doom that is being bandied around in the media, I can’t help but smile to myself while feeling like life is good.
Some friends of ours recently joined a wine club and we have been lucky enough to help them sample their first delivery, there was an introductory offer of some sort that meant they got a mixed case of 12 bottles of wine for a bargain price. Never one to turn down the offer of wine I suggested that if they brought the wine we would provide suitable food and we could make an evening or 3 of it. The wonderful weather we have been having lately meant it was a great opportunity to dust off the bbq and have a bit of a “sending off” for our old patio, soon to be usurped by the fabulous decking we have talked ourselves into having done.
A few evenings of succulent fish & chicken washed down with a crisp refreshing white and melt in the mouth steak (the only way to eat steak is medium rare off the bbq) washed down with a fantastically heavy red we had all agreed that the wine club was a great idea, so much so that Sherry and I decided to join, which meant our friends would get a free case of wine of their choice for recommending us – win-win all round! It seemed only right that we share our introductory case with them as they did with us, so more bbq’s and excessive wine drinking ensued, then of course their free case of wine arrived – we were laughing that the wine club was successfully turning us into alcoholics and that was how such clubs stayed in business as we made our way through yet another delicious bottle of Chilean Merlot.
We are waiting for our first order to come through, and I have to say I am thoroughly looking forward to it’s arrival. We always used to pick up a couple of bottles of wine with our weekly shop, but this feels different, you can sit and sift through the seemingly endless selection of wines at your own pace and once you have placed your order the short wait for delivery seems to add to the excitement of it all – wondering if you have picked a good selection, or whether you will have a total clanger in there. We are still having evenings of wine sharing with our friends which is great as we get to try wines that we wouldn’t have necessarily ordered, and find are definitely going on our list and likewise for them. It seems so far the wine club is proving a good investment, I am already looking into suitable wines to christen the new decking with…..
Sherry and I decided, influenced of course by numerous TV shows on the subject, to re-design our garden. Now there isn’t anything really wrong with the garden as it is, but in our wisdom we agreed that perhaps some decking would be nice, not the whole garden, just part of it and we can set up a nice seating/bbq area for the summer. Seeing as we already have a big pond in the garden, we thought that maybe we could look into getting a bridge put across the pond to reach the decked area – after all, it’s been done on the TV shows.
I’ve never been a big fan of garden centres, with their funny smell and awful piped music, but Sherry has always loved meandering round them choosing new plants and various other unnecessary things for the garden, however now we have a real project on our hands I was looking forward to going, after all this was proper gardening, in fact more construction than gardening and I was looking forward to seeing what new tools I might need for the job. We had a slight disagreement over which centre we should go to, with Sherry finally agreeing that we would really need to go to a bigger centre that would hopefully have a decking section where we could find out what we could and couldn’t do – I think the clincher was when I pointed out there was no point having lovely decking with a pretty bridge leading to it if no-one could get to the decking as the bridge wouldn’t hold an adults weight.
I’m still not a big fan of garden centres. Somehow they managed to take all the fun out of my new project, making it more gardening than construction – don’t get me wrong there is some heavy work to be done, but it just doesn’t seem as appealing any more. We are going to have to get someone in to do the bridge over the pond – while I could have undertaken it, it seemed very complicated and I just couldn’t face the stress that would creep over me every time someone crossed it “are they going to fall in? Is it going to fall down and leave us stranded on the other side?” those kind of thoughts, we haven’t made a final decision yet, but it wouldn’t cost much more to actually have someone do all the decking, I would just need to do the prep work, which is basically ripping up the garden that is already there and leveling out the ground. If it means I don’t have to go back to a garden centre any time soon I might just take the offer up.