top ten tuesday

Things Getting in the Way of Reading (and also blogging!)

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to participate in. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to The Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.

I’m picking up a prompt from a couple of weeks ago, that seems quite timely since I’ve not blogged in like 6 weeks again. Things Getting in the Way of Reading (and also blogging!)

  1. University I am doing a part-time distance-learning Classical Studies degree, I have just finished my 4th module (out of 7 – I started with an access module or foundation year). I study about 25 hours a week and my final assignment of the year was submitted a couple of weeks ago. I am actually taking the next academic year off for mental health reasons/to avoid burnout

  2. Work They insist on taking up 40 hours of my time every single week, which honestly is incredibly rude of them. But then they do give me the money every month which lets me pay rent, buy food and acquire all the books so I suppose it’s a good transaction. Shame they don’t pay me to read books! 

  3. Video Games I have a couple of games I play daily on my phone – Bermuda Adventures, Star Trek: Timelines and some solitaire games – but also absolutely adore cozy games on my Switch. I love Animal Crossing, Cozy Grove, Harvest Moon, Spiritfarer, Stardew Valley, Story Of Seasons… it eats up a decent amount of time and there’s no complaints, to be honest! 

  4. Housework Admittedly, I’m not the best at keeping on top of keeping my flat in order. Between work, school and ADHD I blink and there’s suddenly a ridiculous amount of laundry and dishes to do and all my floors need vacuuming and ARGH! 

  5. Spending time with Li We’re in a long-distance relationship, I probably only see her for about 10 days every couple of months so when we are together, we like to do things together. Although, there is also a lot of parallel play taking place so there are definitely times when I’m reading! 

  6. Watching TV One of my biggest hobbies, other than reading, is watching TV. I watch a ridiculous amount of shows, will try the 1×01 of pretty much anything. And as a result, am never up-to-date on anything. Well, I used to be until the pandemic but then all my shows had COVID-19 storylines and my escape stopped being safe. Right now, I’m mostly watching old old old episodes of ER – I’m most of the way through S4

  7. Blogging I haven’t had as much time as I would like for blogging and for bookstagram, but I do throughly enjoy doing it. I love talking about books about as much as I enjoy reading them. My plan for over the summer is to pick it up more again.  

  8. Cooking I love to cook, and on an average week I will cook from scratch probably 5 nights. It’s mostly pasta and rice dishes, and I keep forgetting that I have a slow cooker so that’s something I want to remember to utilise more often. I have a lil pile of cookbooks, plus there’s the whole internet and I tend to steal recipes from HelloFresh! 

  9. Spoons I live with chronic pain, along with having anxiety and depression, so there are some days when I am fatigued, stressed, having a bad mental health day and don’t have the energy to do anything, even sitting and reading can be too much on days when I’ve used all my spoons on just getting through the day
    If you don’t know about the Spoon Theory, click here to learn more

  10. My TBR Honestly, there are days when the sheer number of books on my TBR, books that I want to read… even the number books that I’ve started and haven’t finished/still have in progress, just becomes overwhelming and I have a little panic. 

sunday post

Sunday Post #4

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted at the @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead

Life
It has been a very busy – but very fun – week.

Wednesday, as I mentioned earlier, Li and I went to Exeter for the day. We went to the museum, Yo! Sushi, Waterstones, and Build-A-Bear.

Thursday I had my ADHD assessment – they said they had ‘no problems’ in diagnosing me and that some of my scores were ‘off the chart’.

I followed this up with a free taster massage at a place in town because my shoulder’s been aggravating me. It feels like there’s a huge knot and it’s resting on a nerve, making my fingers go tingly – definitely feels muscular. I went for the taster session because I’ve never had a massage before and I’m generally not a fan of people touching me, but I was in so much discomfort that I was willing to get it done. It was heavenly, I could move my neck and arm without things going crack, and I’ve already signed up for a full hours massage after payday.

Today is Li’s birthday, she’s streaming some Stardew this morning and we have a lazy afternoon planned.

Blogging
I have posted catch-up posts on Weekly Wednesday Blogging Challenge and Book Blogger Hop so I am now up to date on both of those – and hoping to stay on top of them, at least for a couple of weeks. I even managed a Stacking The Shelves yesterday.

This coming week I am aiming to stay on top of the Top Ten Tuesday, Weekly Wednesday, WWW Wednesday, and Book Blogger Hop. I also want to post some drive-by book reviews – I’ve read 25 books this year and have written nothing about any of them. I don’t know if I’ll do all 25, or just the 5 I finished in April.

Depending on how time-consuming work and study are, I would also really like to write a post about my thoughts on ‘classics’.

Cooking
I always cook more when I’m at Li’s and this week has been no exception! My meal plan runs Saturday through Thursday, so thinking back to last weekend:
Saturday – Sweet & sticky chicken noodles
Sunday – Honey & mustard sausage traybake
Monday – Cheesy tomato risotto
Tuesday – Mango chicken couscous

I really want to get my food blog back up and running again, so I can share recipes and ramble excitedly about food!

Reading
This week I have finished The Queen Of Nothing and Diddly Squat: A Year On The Farm.

I have also been reading From Memory to Written Record: England 1066 – 1307, The Hanging Tree, The Night Watch, and Skandar & The Unicorn Thief.

I’m about 85% through Skandar so should finish that this week and the next one is due out at the end of the month

Studying
I am now 87% of the way through my module which is a little bit terrifying! There are only 6 weeks left until my End of Module Assignment is due.

I’ve just finished a unit of work on Childhood in Ancient Rome which was actually really tough because there was a whole section on infanticide and exposing children.

Next week’s work is on mass entertainment in Roman life – gladiatorial shows, chariot races, and plays, and the social aspects of them: which social groups attended the shows, where they sat, and how they reacted to what they saw

My next assignment is due on the 27th of April and is 1300 words arguing either for or against the statement Ultimately it was wealth that determined social status in ancient Rome

Watching
Masterchef came back this week which makes me very happy. Star Trek: Picard continues to be fucking fantastic. It’s been a very disjointed week so there hasn’t been a whole lot of TV watched to be honest, other than a couple of Midsomer Murders while working.

Next week I’m hoping to catch up on a couple of shows – Carnival Row, Grace, School Spirits, Spencer Sisters, and A Town Called Malice. I’m 4 or 5 episodes behind on each so that shouldn’t take too long. There’s also the last Celebrity Bake Off and this week’s episodes of Race Across The World & Masterchef and the Picard finale!

sunday post

Sunday Post: The Queue, lots of cooking, and finally finishing something

The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted at Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news, recap the past week on your blog, and showcase books and things received.

It has been quite a slow, but also sad week. I haven’t mentioned anything about the death of The Queen here before but the monarchy is a special interest of mine, and while part of me has been enjoying watching history in action (and discovering I know the words to the Proclamation!), I’ve also been mourning for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Part of me wishes I could have gone down to Westminster Hall to pay my respects, but while my agoraphobia is starting to ease, just seeing that many people in one place (and no one wearing a mask) is giving me the heebie-jeebies.

Then there’s The Queue. Yes, there’s an accessibility queue for those of us who are unable to stand in an 18+ hour queue (I sometimes struggle to stand long enough to do the dishes), it’s limited and available slots fill up quite quickly. I have, however, spent the last couple of days utterly fascinated by The Queue from a sociological perspective. I also think it’s one of the most British things we could do to honour our late Monarch, and personally find the number of people going to pay their respects to be incredibly moving.

It’s also been the 7th anniversary of my mum dying this week, so my emotions are all over the place.
For example, last night, I discovered the layout of a 2023 planner I wanted wasn’t going to work for me, and the level of sadness I experienced for that definitely felt out of proportion.

Other than that, I’ve been doing a lot of cooking again this week – which reminds me, I wanted to work on the layout for my cooking blog and properly figure out what I’m going to do with it.
Monday I made us Tomato & Courgette risotto
Tuesday was Crab & Lemon spaghetti with peas
Thursday was Slow Cooker Pork with cheesy mash
Last night we had tuna steak with a citrus rub and garlic butter crushed potatoes
I really love to cook!

I had some lovely Book Mail this week – I bought myself a paperback copy of Peter Ackroyd’s History Of England: Foundation when I realized I didn’t want to give the library their copy back. And I also got myself a signed hardback of Dan Jones’ Essex Boys – which was quite the dilemma, actually! I don’t usually like hardbacks, so I was planning on getting the kindle edition, then buying the paperback when it came out but then WH Smith had the signed hardbacks for £8.49

Speaking of books, I’ve actually managed to finish a handful of books, so there should be another round of mini-reviews coming this week. I’ve finished Anne Rice – Interview With The Vampire and Heidi Swain – Summer At Skylark Farm, and I’m on track to finish Mary Beard – Pompeii, Mira Grant – Chimera, Kate Kinsey – How To Be A Healthy & Happy Submissive AND Stephen Law – Philosophy next week!

I’ve also been listening to a lot of 80s/90s soft rock this week (forever my favourite genre) and I shall leave you with my song of the week which is Def Leppard – Photograph