Autumn Blues

This is pretty much the weather we've had this week and our poor grey squirrel troop are getting soaked when they come to feed, poor wee guys! They look like drowned rats! I'm glad we're feeding them so they will be nicely looked after this winter but the little beggars have gone through 11kg of monkey nuts in about five weeks!!! I'd post a photo but I'm done with battling blogger over inserting images. We do love watching their quirky antics and they actually 'tell' us when there is a cat in the garden or something upsets them. They're getting quite tame and I love sitting in the garden to talk to them as they feed! They seem to listen and can understand what we try to tell them sometimes. They have kept me sane this summer. At the moment we definitely have five, possibly six but we haven't sighted all six together so we can't be sure but we regularly see four or five at the same time.

For those of you not familiar with Dave (above), he is a furry pumpkin toy that I rescued from the shelves of Asda many years ago, giving him safe harbour from psycho pumpkin eaters every autumn! Dave is very much part of the family and will be co-hosting Spooky Booky Month with me, here at the Book Cave. Dave loves horror books and we hope to be reading a few this year and enjoying a break from Covid reality together! 

A few of you have been asking about the Goodreads Group and if I'm giving up the blog as I seem to keep changing my mind each time Blogger messes me about. The short answer is I literally don't know what I'm doing right now. At the moment I have opened the group and set it to private. I'm moving over all the blog posts I want to keep which is still a work in progress, but I need to edit and update them all and move them into the right folders and things. I also have to construct a directory of book reviews for the genres featured on the group. I'm still in two minds about opening it up to others to join as doing that would be a ton of work every day and I need to be sure before I decide. At the moment it is a good free storage device and it's easy to copy and paste whole blog posts over in seconds-minus the graphics! I hope to do a full update on what is happening at the group soon.

As for Blogger, I'm just not wanting to use it much right now, at least until it sorts this graphics mess out. Jeez I'm so sick of that, and having to switch to 'normal' every time I want to leave a space...stupid Blogger! I'm sorry I haven't been around much over the last two weeks. Part of it is losing the motivation to do posts on the new Blogger, which is frustrating because I WANT to connect with everyone! At the moment I just can't face complicated posts with lots of graphics because of all the hassle. I'm still lurking on your blogs, posting comments there, answering comments here and doing a few posts each week but it just isn't the same. I had big plans for lots of lists and book tags and fun things for October that have been shelved due to Blogger issues.

I don't feel like reading, yet it isn't stopping me buying a pile of books this summer. Yes they are all books I want but when your TBR is going up again it is depressing. I'm also fed up with the state of my room. Every time I go in and out I fall over something or knock something over. The plan was before winter, I'd get the room sorted but I have so little energy, the very idea of it knackers me. I need to clear out the shelves of the big TV unit my dad built for me and get rid of stuff I'm not using. That would clear some floor space for me and give me space to store books or dvds. But here's the kicker...to get the room back into a decent living area, I'll need to remove a whole bookcase so the other bookcases can all be put against a wall and my chair can be used for reading instead of as a clothes hanger. 

*shudders with fear* 

The idea is to clear out the crap from all my bookshelves with a double depth (a row of stuff in the back of each then a row at the front) by getting rid of old VHS tapes, guide books to places I'll never visit, maps, unwanted books etc. Then I can get books I've read in the back out of sight and the TBR lot at the front. The idea of removing a whole bookcase scares me but I need to do it to get control of the books I own and give me space to sit in my chair in read or have space to play my Wii. It sort of has to be done and one of them does have a broken shelf, so it would be the one I'd get rid of. But first I need to do the TV unit some night. *groans* My dad and I are also buying in plastic storage boxes to replace all the cardboard boxes that we've been storing stuff in as spiders seem to love those boxes. Yuk. 

In spite of the virus restrictions, life is going on as normal. I'm getting all of what I need from Asda delivery and Amazon delivery or the odd trip to the local shops maybe once or twice a week. We are approaching winter, desperate to avoid both the virus and the flu, keep taking care of our squirrels and each other, and stay warm over the winter as we watch dvds, read etc. I'll take a nice quiet time thank you. 

 

Talk to you soon, stay safe.

Chuckles