Reasons to be cheerful: birthdays, Wii and more #r2bc

I do believe it is Friday which means I'm late, I'm late for a very important date! It is a good job this is one of the most laid back linkies on the Internet... Preparing for being back in a real job and a return to some pre-lockdown activities has caused me to get behind! Lots of these have been reasons to be cheerful though. I hope that you have some reasons of your own to share?

What do you have to do? Easy: 

1. Link up a post about something that is making you happy or grateful. It can be a list, photos or any way you fancy. 

2. Add the #R2BC badge (at the end of this post) onto your post or blog so that people can easily find the linky and join in too if they want to 

3. Share the love. This is the really important bit. Please don't just link and run, comment on at least a couple of posts and why not share with #R2BC too? 

I'll stop by all linked up posts to comment and I'll share on social media too. 

Meanwhile here are my reasons to be cheerful for this week:

1) Belated birthday celebrations

As my dad had to be quarantined after a holiday to Holland we only celebrated his birthday (and my daughter's boyfriend's) with a takeaway curry and a cake made by my daughter:

2) Wii fun

We are having so much fun on the old Wii. It does get temperamental sometimes as its an original so pretty ancient! I am finally getting the hang of Mario Kart - typically there was a disc read failure after I managed my first ever 2nd place:

3) Days out

Now I am mobile again we have had a couple of days out into the Lakes. One trip to catch up with a family friend staying in Langdale and one visiting Grizedale Forest. The sheep seemed please to see us:

Upcycling Bedroom Furniture

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Most of my bedroom furniture is either preloved or just been around for a long time! I can't afford to replace any of it but it is in need of some tender loving care. There are too many signs that it has been attacked by children or just suffered from too many house moves. I kept seeing so many lovely projects done with chalk paint so I decided to buy a can of Rustins chalky finish paint and have go myself. It sat on the side for a few weeks and then I finally got brave enough to try it on on small drawer front:

I liked the fact the only prep needed was to make sure the surface was clean - no sanding! It only took 2 coats of paint to get the desired finish. I just made the mistake of not removing the handle first and giving it a single coat of paint:

@lakessinglemum

Starting to chalk paint some furniture. What should I do with the handle? ##upcycle ##upcycledfurniture ##chalkpaint

♬ Lexi - Nik Makino

Having learnt my lesson I carried on with the rest of the drawers:

Tutoring

 

Lockdown had a big impact on my tutoring business. First of all I lost my GCSE English student as he was no longer going to be sitting any exams! Secondly all my remaining clients moved to video lessons via Zoom. This was a good way to keep up their momentum whilst learning at home. However, it is not as good as face to face lessons. 

One good thing about having all lessons online was a reduction in the amount of paper I was printing off as everything was electronic. Now that schools are back and I am going back to visiting my students all the papers are making a reappearance. I have spent a few days sorting through my papers from last year and planning for the lessons this half term:

Affiliate links Some of my teaching aids were a bit tatty so I have also been shopping for new place value cards and discs. I also supersized my white board to give more room for work. My trusty Usborne Junior Illustrated Maths dictionary will be accompanying me alongside CGP Maths books for my students to work with. Of course I now have the addition of a face mask and hand sanitiser to keep us all safe:

Things won't be quite the same as my students can no longer give me the occasional hug I used to get! Even so I am looking forward to helping them as they keep on with their learning.

Grizedale Forest Ridding Wood Trail

On Friday I managed to get a loan car so after a month of being carless we are finally mobile again! I need to be able to drive places to work and my daughter relies on me to get her around. Today she wanted to get out into some of the beautiful forests we have so I took her to Grizedale Forest. We had a bit of a fraught drive over as poor Sherlock was sick and then just as we were about to board the Windermere car ferry it broke down! So we only made it to the forest about 2:15 and then had a long wait to buy lunch.

All the delays meant that we only had time to follow the shorter Ridding Wood Trail and not the Grizedale Tarn Trail I had done in July. Luckily for us the weather stayed dry and at times it was pretty warm in the sun:

The route included plenty of Grizedale's famous art works. With it being all terrain route it also included a family orienteering route for younger children:

Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness

I happen to be a big fan of Terry Pratchett and a quote of his has been doing the rounds that truly resonates with me:

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms:

Since becoming a single mum 11 years ago I have come to discover how true this theory is! Being poor is so expensive:

• if you have a car it's old so costs more to maintain, it uses more fuel and the vehicle tax is higher 
• many social housing homes have prepayment gas and electricity - this costs more per unit than paying by direct debit
• as Vimes states cheap footwear and clothes are affordable to buy but need replacing more often
• if your wages and any benefits don't actually last out in any given period then you are stung by overdraft charges and credit card repayments
• essential white goods and appliances often have to be bought on expensive store credit which means they end up costing a lot more by the time they are paid for

Can you think of any other way that being poor is socioeconomic unfairness?