Me on Monday 2024 Week 2

 Things are getting a bit more normal aren't they?  Decorations down, people back to work and children back to school.  Christmas already seems a long time ago! How are you this Monday?  If you are visiting from England you are probably still feeling the effects of the storm last week, oh how I long for spring to arrive.

Checking in my book of Brian Bilston poems I thought I would share with you an excerpt from his poem for tomorrow, 9th January.  On that day in 1902 New York State passed a bill to ban flirting in public in order to protect young girls and women from unwanted attention.  His poem is called "Be Alert, Not a Flirt" - here are a few lines from the verses.

"Please be aware that flirts

are known to operate in this area.

You are advised to keep your longings with you at all times.

Kisses have been stolen

and bottoms pinched

while there have been reports of 

batted eyelids, and grazed arms ..."

So unless you are prepared to pay a $25 fine, be careful when out in New York!

These long lost laws and rules are amusing aren't they?  My friend once lived in a lovely old cottage in a very rural location.  They put in a planning application to add some gates across their driveway to keep the children safe in the garden.  It was turned down due to there being a restriction on the property that there had to be room in front of their cottage for a horse and cart to safely turn round in a full circle unobstructed.  I think it had been many a day since a horse and cart travelled down the lane to their home but they still had to redesign the front garden!

Last week was a week of trying to get my head round the fact that it is now 2024 - it takes a while to get used to entering a different year onto online forms.  This Monday finds me getting back to our normal weekly routines and boy do I need to get back to doing my Zumba class.  The good news is that the osteopath has said she doesn't need to see me again following the injury to my back at the end of September.  I've been seeing her every four weeks and I am now much more aware of how I move to protect my back.  How long before I slip into bad habits though?

I also found a delicious new recipe, proper comfort food and really easy to make.  It’s called Chicken Barley and I would recommend it if you are looking for something new, you can find it here https://www.nigella.com/recipes/chicken-barley.

The jigsaw that I shared on Friday is now complete.  

In the end it wasn't the sky that was the most difficult, it was the ferns in the bottom left corner - onto my next one now, which is one of the Wasgij puzzles.  They can be pretty tricky as you don't actually know what the picture is that you will be making.  All you have to work it out is a picture of people opposite and you have to guess what they are looking at.  

It seems from the weather reports that the heavy, continuous rain of last week has passed on and we now have a period of dry but cold weather ahead.  I much prefer that - how are things wherever you are this Monday morning?