Evening everyone, hope you've all had a good day. Well I can't believe how blooming cold it is. I'm hoping the weather warms up a bit as I want to go to Devon to see my son at Easter and thats only a couple of weeks away. Fingers crossed. Had a really late night tonight as I had to stay back at work for a staff meeting. Anyone who's ever had the misfortune to have sat through one of these will understand. Meeting starts at 3.45. Staff still fannying about and missing at 4 so the deputy has to go and round them up. Why??? The sooner we finish the sooner we can go! Talk about infuriating! So when we finally get everyone sat down to talk you have the same old ones who love the sound of their own voices and just wont stop waffling. Its their 5 minutes in the spotlight and theyre making the most of it! By half past four i've lost the will to live and i'm already thinking about what i'm having for tea and whether to take the dog across the road or down the fields. Quarter to 5 and theyre still rabbiting on, i've exhausted my daydreams and am on the verge of either falling alsleep or doing something drastic like setting off the fire alarm. If it wasn't so blooming freezing outside I may of been tempted. Ten to five comes and some people still haven't had their say but like me must be so desperate to get home that when the deputy asks if theres any other business theres an almost deafening shout of NO and a shuffling of chairs as they start to flee before someone else starts talking. This is definately one of the things that I won't miss when I retire. I haven't really told anyone at work that i'm trying to save enough money to retire at 50. I have this idea of just working quietly away at it then one day when they say those magic words "any other business?" I'll have plenty to say. Then as they sit with their mouths open I will shuffle my chair and leave. Until that day I'll just dream about it, about 20 to 5 on a Tuesday evening.
So what have I made for tea tonight? Well last night I decided that i'd make a chilli and rice so amazingly I remembered to take the mince out before I left for work today and thats exactly what I made. Its always a bit of a lottery of how it turns out as I bought some chilli powder from the farm shop and its like rocket fuel! The first chilli I made using the quantities I usually use was inedible. Well to us anyway and so I gave it to my sister who was very grateful and said her hubby loved it. I have no idea how he eat it? Anyway from then on i've experimented with half and then a quarter until finally I decided on somewhere between the two. For some bizarre reason its not an exact science but tonight I got it just right.
I've just seen on the news that they have given out heavy snow for tomorrow. I'm so pleased to hear that as its my turn to do a lunchtime duty. Great!. Guess i'd better make sure i've got my thermals on in the morning then. While I think about it I'll apologise in advance if I only do a very short post tomorrow evening as i've got to run my daughter and her friend to the theatre and then fetch them back again. They are going to watch the Bootleg Beatles. It will be the fourth time in as many years that my daughter has been to see them. The past three years myself and hubby have been with her too along with her friend but this year we are trusting them to go alone but with us taking and then fetching them back. They are almost 15 and once they are inside they know where to go so i'm sure they will be fine. Its that trust as a parent thing though. Like the first time you let them go to the shops by themselves but then follow them, hiding behind every hedge as you go so that they don't know you're doing it. They have had strict instructions not to leave the theatre and to ring me as soon as it ends and I will come straight to get them. I'm even thinking of going up to town and getting a coffee somewhere nearby about ten o'clock so i'm only minutes away when they do ring. Over protective? Paranoid? Me??? Don't know what you're talking about! Won't even begin to tell you what I was like when my other daughter went to university in Liverpool. The poor girl had to have the "don't talk to strangers, be careful on public transport, don't get too drunk etc etc" chat every single time she came home. And the day we went to drop her at the station on a dark winter evening to catch train back to Liverpool and I refused to let her sit at the station as there were a couple who looked remarkably like Fred and Rosemary West sitting waiting too. I said to hubby that we would have to take her to Crewe station so she could catch the train from there. He was really pleased with me as he wanted to get back to watch something on TV. He was even more pleased when we got to Crewe and I had this thought that F & R  may have got on the train and were heading to Liverpool too and yes you've guessed it I insisted we took her to Liverpool. So 2 hours later when we got home after a very sulky car journey I just kept getting dirty looks and a head shook at me. I reckon at times that he does have a point and I'm probably a nightmare to live with. Right i'll post you the pic of tonights tea before it got covered in pepper or brown sauce ( joking!) then i'm off to remake my bed before having a soak in the bath an an early night.

 Take care everyone.
Jules x