Project 52 2020 week 37 – blue skies

This week was the first full week back at school and back at work. The week went pretty quickly – it’s strange how some weeks feel like they drag and others zoom by. Onto our week 37 for Project 52.

Sunday turned out to be a nice sunny day. We’d organised for N to play a bit of tennis with 2 friends from tennis, 2 usual culprits and one who has just moved up to their tennis group, who’s been playing a lot at the club over the summer with N. They played for about 25 minutes, then headed to the park, while one mum did her running, while the other 2 of us sat and chatted. The boys spent 2 hours together playing. Then a quick stop for lunch before N wanted to go and play at one of the boys’ houses. We headed there in the afternoon, and they played with nerf guns and on the trampoline, while I had a tour of their garden and we sat outside. It was such a lovely day, although it felt very luxurious having that much time to enjoy friends and the sun.

On Monday N was back in school again. The drop offs and pick ups are very efficient now, with single kids being picked up first, siblings 5 minutes later, and walkers or cyclists let out 5 minutes after that. It must be so hard for new parents coming in and not being able to meet fellow parents – by this time when we were reception, us mums had already been organising a night out, and we’d met already at the summer settling in session. N came home saying his knee was hurting, so I emailed school to pull him out of PE for the rest of the week in the hope it’d be better for the weekend’s match.

Another lovely day on Tuesday – we’ve definitely been treated with the good weather. Just a normal work day and school day.

Wednesday, I had a breather enjoying the garden while I worked. I don’t do enough of that, usually working pretty much through apart from pick up from school.

On Thursday N moaned his throat was hurting a bit and his tonsils were a little up on the right. We had a Meet the Teacher teams call, to let us know expectations for the year and homework etc. It was funny to see the parents online instead of face to face. As the annual meet the teacher is always straight after school I’ve never been to one so it was nice to experience it.

Friday N wasn’t feeling good and his tonsils were up with some spots on them. We decided to keep him off school, and he ended up having a 2 hour sleep. Thankfully his knee was better, but he wasn’t going to be able to play in the tennis match. I popped down to tennis training without him in the evening to see if I could find someone else to replace N in the team. There wasn’t but I was there for an hour chatting to various parents. I love tennis for being able to meet new people outside of school. They now have a full tennis group of 8 children, which means they can all play on doubles court together in training. Hopefully the group will be split into age/ability as it’s a mixed orange and older green group.

Saturday I had an early hair appointment complete with mask wearing and a hairdresser with mask and visor. My first cut since January – my appointment had been 2 weeks into lockdown, so it was very tangled and straggly. It’s been cut a bit shorter than I’d wanted, but it does feel so much nicer. Hopefully I’ll now shed a bit less hair than I have been doing although can’t now tie it up.

I also checked out the new food hall place in the shopping centre. It’s only got half the stalls filled at the moment, but is like a posh indoor market with good quality food, farmer’s market style. There’s been a lot of moaning in the local Facebook group because of the prices, but there’s a Lidl coming to the town as well as there being all the supermarkets except Asda, so it’ll be nice to have somewhere with good quality local produce in the town centre, as well as the farm shops outside.

Then it was the first orange tennis match in the afternoon. It was a beautiful day for playing in the sun. N came along to help set up and take scores. Our 3 players were all playing their first ever matches and they did a good job against match experienced players. They all got the hang of playing doubles, better understanding on serving and scoring, and did some credible playing. All said they enjoyed it – it’s just a shame we have 5 players, one of whom played at number one but came in after people were already booked in for matches, so this was the only one there was a gap for her. If there are any more illnesses, then hopefully she’ll get to play. It was weird not having N playing but still captaining, but I do love doing it. I think it was good for N to watch his team mates and the other players play. It’s good for him to recognise things that each of them could improve on and hopefully relate that to things he needs to work on too.

Hopefully he’ll be much better tomorrow and then be back on form for school on Monday.

This week’s Project 52 photo was taken of the blue skies at home. I love my widescreen option on my phone, it makes the sky look so immense compared with the trees.

Posts this week (I had a lazy week) were:

• Strawberry and cream fudge recipe
• Wasgij A Purrfect Escape solution
• Crispy loaded potato skins