Happy Wednesday – and welcome back to the 5 minute coffee corner. I am officially 30!
I have had the best 30th birthday ever. I spent my actual birthday in the most beautiful place, a campsite at the bottom of a valley in Snowdonia National Park, on a lake surrounded by hills. Miraculously, the storms that were forecast all week never arrived, and Friday and Saturday was spent with the most glorious weather. We spent Friday relaxing and drinking refreshing ice-cold cider and eating delicious food next to the lake. Saturday was spent chilling out, kayaking on the lake and I finally did SUP yoga, something I’ve wanted to do for such a long time. Honestly, lying on my paddle board in savasana was the most relaxing feeling in the world, and I felt so content to be outdoors and in such a beautiful place. Snowdonia is a dark sky park, so I spent time in the middle of the night outside of my tent in the dark silence, gazing up at the stars. I saw some falling stars too, which was amazing! I loved every minute and am so excited to go back there again.
After camping, I arrived home and my in laws had turned up with a shower of beautiful, thoughtful gifts and home-made birthday cake, so I felt very spoilt. The benefits of working from home mean I can work from anywhere, so I travelled to Liverpool and spent the next few days at my family home in Liverpool (where I’m currently writing this from!) eating out every night with family and friends. I have been so spoilt with beautiful, thoughtful gifts and my mum decorated the house – there’s still ’30’ balloons everywhere. I’ve loved turning 30 and it was better than I could ever have imagined!
Anyway, I’ll stop boring you with birthday buzz, and get to it!
Reading
Stray Dog Kept Visiting Hyundai Dealership, So They Hired Him And Gave Him His Own ID Badge
This week’s read honestly made my day when I read it. Really, the clue is in the title, so rather than assume you can’t read and summarise it, I’m going to let you go ahead and read it. Make sure you do – those photos of his little face will make your day!
Watching
Kids think they are meeting their “new teacher”
This video had me crying with laughter. It’s a compilation of parents pretending to their children that they’re on a call with their new teachers, then filming the kids’ reactions when they see what I assume are stock Google photos of peculiar looking people. It was so cute seeing some of the really well-mannered kids trying to remain polite and not react, but all of the reactions were hilarious. You absolutely need to watch until the end, because the final reaction melted my heart! I know it might seem a little mean as there are actual people behind the photos being used, but it really is funny and heartwarming seeing the innocence of these children.
Listening
There was absolutely no doubt what this week’s song was. On Friday when driving to Snowdonia, the boys had gone ahead to put the tents up, so Jen and I had planned to stop at McDonalds for some breakfast about halfway into the journey. I figured it’d be a good time to break for a coffee and food, so I planned it out and knew which one I wanted to stop at. I set my sat nav up with the postcode of the McDonalds and off we went!
Now something you should know about me is that I am horrendous at trying to follow a sat nav, I honestly think I’d do better following the road signs. James has kindly installed a phone holder into my car right at my eye level, so I can’t even claim it’s because I don’t have the sat nav easily viewable in my line of sight, because it’s literally right there.
Anyway, the sat nav was telling me that the McDonald’s was close, so I followed the turn off away from the motorway. Except it wasn’t the turn off. I took the wrong exit off the motorway and ended up on a windy, narrow, country road in the middle of nowhere (which conveniently was called Smithy Lane – Smith was my name before I got married). We were looking for the golden arches, and perplexed as to why the sat nav seemed to be taking me further into the countryside. James had predicted that something like this would happen, and I found it hilarious how right he was. Realising that we definitely weren’t en route to McDonald’s, we accepted that we’d somehow gone the wrong way and found our way back onto the motorway, ready to have another attempt at finding our destination.
Back on the motorway, I’m driving along the same route I’d already driven and made a mental note of where I might have gone wrong so that I didn’t do it again. I followed the sat nav again, and applauded myself for managing to follow it properly this time, when I found myself BACK ON SMITHY LANE! I was gobsmacked. How had I managed to do it again?! Jen thought it was the funniest thing in the world and recorded the entire thing, which gave me so many laughs when I watched it back. I could not for the life of me figure out how I’d managed to do it again, and after getting stuck on the same narrow road behind a woman walking a load of Pomeranians, I finally got myself back to the motorway for a third attempt at finding McDonald’s.
The whole time this escapade was going on, Abba – SOS was playing on the playlist and honestly, I couldn’t think of a more appropriate backing track to our adventure! If you’re wondering, I almost took the wrong turn for a third time, but swerved back onto the motorway when I realised what was happening. We made it to McDonald’s and a coffee was definitely welcomed! SOS indeed.
Word of the Week
I’m stealing this as it’s actually Jen’s favourite word, but it came up a lot at the weekend. It was really strange, but everything felt so serendipitous – the weather was supposed to be stormy and it was glorious, we got an amazing camping pitch in a fairly empty field, we managed to get a kayak with no queuing and onto the SUP yoga class with no issue! There were so many other things too, it was a weekend of serendipity.
So that’s all from me this week – a day late because there’s been so much going on. I’ll see you next Wednesday when the 30th celebrations will have calmed down and life will have returned to normal!
Have a great week ahead!
Reflect and Introspect 