Financial faux pas and other disasterous decisions

moo2moo

*sigh* another day of snow and ice and minus 5 temperatures. Bored of the snow already. Too icey to sledge or walk anywhere not that I want to go anywhere but I don't have much choice. School is open again despite the roads leading to school being shut and covered in ice or both.

Walked to school in 40 minutes yesterday morning. Should I ever part wiht my car permanently this would be feasible on a daily basis would it not be for the minor problem of me being knackered by 3pm and dead on my feet by 6:30. Fortunately OH came to collect me in the landie but even that was sliding on the ice at 5mph with all the off road knobs and handles engaged.

Left the DDs at home with OH who appears to have survived unscathed although thats mostly because the DDs were superglued to their DSs for the duration pausing only to eat.

*Warning to cat owners with the DS game Imagination Zoo Hospital..... rendering first aid to the injured Gorilla causes it to purr which seriously upsets domestic cats whose heckles rise up followed by a rapid charge at the DS in order to kill. DD2 has the scratches on her arms to prove this. She'll be wearing headphones in future.

Pottered about for the day and got loads done in school just to kill time. Spent a happy hour clearing snow from paths with the asssistance of the head and the deputy head. Was relegated to grit scattering in the style of Disneys Cinderella (only with grit instead of corn) as the minions shovelled.

Eventually bored of being in school ventured to the next village to visit a friend for a catchup. Several hours passed and I realised I was really really late returning to school. Not that anyone had noticed I'd left. Suppose there is something to be said for spending the day clearing out cupboards after all.

Microwaved half of the previous days quiche and followed it up with 3 part baked cakes (nuked to death for safety) with lots of ice cream. Vegged out with a glass of wine and was sound asleep by 8:15 much to OHs amusement. I'm getting old. Managed to fit in a load of laundry along the way and OH washed up so its not like nowt got done around the house. Rather bizzarely the DDs didn't make as much mess as expected either.

OH is still investigating the cause of sudden oven death syndrome. Having dismantled it from the front he now needs to dismantle it from the rear which means moving it. We'll be doing that today (assuming I make it home during daylight hours) as its too heavy to move on his own. Have narrowed it down to a single part which is readily available for £30 but need to prove it is most definately that and that alone before ordering one which involves getting to the power supply behind it and removing yet more panels. All good fun.

moo2moo

Days to payday: 7
Money in purse : zero, zip, nada, zilch.
Money in emergency jam jar: As above and an IOU for £40 to the kids to replace their x-mas money.
Money in bank: £201.15
Money spent in January: £628.50
Money remaining of this months portion of the live on £20K challenge : £1038.50
Part used smellies used up and disposed of: zero, zilch, nada, zip

moo2moo

Yesterday wasn't a Flylady free day after all and there are more things to do today so in theory my list of catch up tasks are as follows:

Thursday - those frightening kids rooms and spare rooms
Level One
Clear away anything that isn't in it's place, clothes, toys, books etc
Spend at least half an hour doing something for yourself!!!!!
Level Two
Vacuum the floor
Dusting.. all those shelves and flat fluffy surfaces!! Don’t forget the light shade and curtain pole!!!
Strip beds, turn and vacuum mattresses!! and replace with fresh linen .. check if duvets need freshening up too!! Wash the curtains!
Level Three
Clean 2 windows
Tidy a chest of drawers/wardrobe/floordrobe!
Wipe any sticky marks off walls and doors

Extra Task List

1. Find 5 things to ebay/freecycle
2. Wipe the radiators, skirtings and window & door frames!
3. HHI
4. End of week fling!! grab a binbag and fill it with stuff to leave the house.. rubbish or charity shop or to donate to a friend!

Friday - Bathroom and Study/Pc Area
Level One
Clear floors of guff and stuff
Wipe down tiles in bathroom.. defragment your pc while doing this.
Level Two
Clean baths, toilets, don't forget the outside! and sinks
Clear any clutter from desk
Dust PC and desk and wipe off those cup rings!!
Wipe keyboard, house phone, sockets, switches and mouse etc
Level Three
Wash your bathroom mats, nets, clean blind/curtains, shower curtains etc
Empty and clean out all the upstairs bins!
sweep and mop and deslop the floors in these rooms.
Collect all the dirty laundry
Grab yourself a toothbrush and scrub the manky bits between the tiles
Extras

1. Wipe the skirtings, door and window frames in these rooms
2. Empty the cupboard and clean it out.. colour ordered bottles inside!
3. Fling all those empty bottles and tubes
4. If you have a shelf.. empty and clean it

Excuse me while I roll around the floor.

Ah thats better. Will have a go but I'm not holding out much hope. I'm still doing Mondays list. The house is getting tidier. Even OH has noticed. Mostly because he still can't find anything and because I keep tracking him down with armloads of his beloved treasures and asking can this go and this and this and this? And what about this?

Plans for today:

• Move oven, wait for OH to decide which bit or bits are required and place them on order asap.
• Spend two hours doing Flyladyesque tasks.
• Evict several more spiders from their webs.
• Phone the DDs riding teacher and cancel Saturdays lesson. I can't imagine she'll risk her horses on the yard in this but you never know.
• Remind myself that I haven't DooYooed in over a week. Must get back to it but thats unlikely until OH returns to work as I get nagged enough for being at the PC as it is. Fortunately hes asleep at the mo so I can get away with a quick surf.
• Consider venturing as far as a supermarket to purchase bread, milk and firelighters. Not convinced this is my greatest idea ever but as all three shops in the nearby villages have had their stocks depleted I may have to. Especially as theres more snow forecast over the weekend. OH won't be happy if he has to drink his coffee black.

butler_helen

Morning Moo!

Just passing by and thought I would say hi goodluck with the flylady stuff... and travel safely.

beanielou

Take care if you venture further.
You have an amazing amount of money in the bank with only 7 days to payday.

moo2moo

I only have cash in the bank because I haven't been food shopping for almost two weeks, nor have I ventured further than school so no horse riding or activities of any form to fork out for. I also ingeneously timed the majority of the DDs to exit my account just before payday rather than just after. Sometimes I amaze myself with my stupidity.

ps. Cash in the bank also includes the £40 owed to the DDs so in reality is £161.16 available to spend

moo2moo

Its finally the weekend. Other than being perilously close to running out of chicken fee by the end of next week theres really no reason for me to venture any further than the postbox until monday and even thats looking rather dubious as my boss is talking about shutting school next week if ridiculous amounts of snow fall again as predicted over the weekend.

Just in case I made it as far as Lidl (the nearest supermarket) and purchased enough food to see us through at least another 10 days, although the DDs seem to be eating twice as much at the mo. Ended up with 8 pints of milk and 6 loaves of bread as well as 8 different types of sausage (OH chauffeured me as I'm too much of a wuss to drive myself) and two bottles of vino (now consumed, although not by me). Total spend £43.77 which included a months worth of firelighters. We still have a ridiculous amount of food available and it was only bread, milk and butter that we actually needed, still at least this way the freezers are well stocked again as far as OH is concerned. We have plenty of eggs although I can't open the nest box door thanks to the giant icicles blocking the way. Need to attempt to clean the hen houses out but can't get the big doors open, only the under floor ramps for the chucks are working.

Yesterdays spends:

£43.77 Lidl
£3 pocket money
£40 DDs savings accounts

Days to payday: 6
Money in purse : zero, zip, nada, zilch.
Money in emergency jam jar: As above and an IOU for £40 to the kids to replace their x-mas money.
Money in bank: £201.15 (yesterdays expenses not showing on interweb banking yet)
Money spent in January: £715.27
Money remaining of this months portion of the live on £20K challenge : £951.73 (need to pin OH down for his receipts to update this)
Part used smellies used up and disposed of: zero, zilch, nada, zip

moo2moo

In other more exciting news the new telly box arrived yesterday, the old one is awaiting disposal. OH did a super job of cleaning out the TV zone even going as far as removing the covers from the video and vac-ing inside that. Being a superstar the PS2 is also reconnected for the first time in over a year and I can once again play Simpsons Road Rage. Can't tell you how much I've missed it.

Didn't achieve much in the way of decluttering, did even less tidying. This Flylady malarky seems to involve twice as much laundry as usual so spent most of my time doing that. Caught up on hours at school so that I've squeezed in my normal 30 hours despite a days closure and so cannot be docked snow pay. Doubt I'll get overtime either but it will give me a bit more leeway if the DDs are ill at any point.

Horse ridingis indeed orf so no need to venture there although the riding school have built a giant snow horse and have suggested the DDs go to see it. Yeah right. I am that parent who said no and ruined their lives.

Plans for today are as mundane as always:

• chop up some wood for kindling as we've run out. Have a huge pile just waiting to be chopped but am not looking forward to it. Its a tad chilly for standing around outdoors with a handsaw.
• tackle the massive list of flylady things I haven't done yet this week. Fortunately there aren't any new ones for the weekend. Now that I've done almost every room once it doesn't seem quite such a mamoth undertaking as it did at the start of the holidays. Mind you I'm sure I said that last year and very quickly got bored of Flylady.
• Transform my legs into those of a supermodel. Currently they're remarkably like those of an orangutan.
• Update my spending diary from the couple of sheets of loose paper into my swanky new surplus school book, apparently the lines are too close together for current guidelines. No end to the number of those I can liberate saving me having to purchase one. Just need to get round to doing it.
• Do all the surveys in my inbox as at least one pays £3 immediately.

moo2moo

Surveys all done only one of which I qualified for. Still its £3 for under 10 minutes time. Discovered I have enough Piggy Points for a £10 voucher but they've stopped doing supermarket vouchers or anything else I'll use so I'm going to hold out for a £20 Amazon voucher hopefully by x-mas.

moo2moo

Bah. Have written my first DooYoo of the year for the only book on my bookcase which isn't in the DooYoo catalogue. Have saved it and requested that it be uploaded but thats unlikely to happen anytime soon. Pants.

Temperature indoors is barely reaching 10 degrees even with the stove going. Its too cold to type. Am considering ironing in the hopes it'll warm my hands up. Today is going to be a very long day.