Further financial faux pas and even more disasterous decisions

chevalier

how about a green roof to improve insulation? or water butts for the grounds outside, or something.....good luck with the eco buffs. well done on telling someone about the vino thing. I take it granny is your mum not your MIL? But still nice to have someone else know.

Wow the cleaner sounds like she is worth her weight in gold. I would suggest making a booking for her in 6 months time or something....

Good luck with the flea bay. You have reminded me I must to some of that today... sight

moo2moo

Granny isn't exactly a relation of mine. My dad remarried after I'd left home so shes his wife but not my step-mum. She has turned out to be a surprisingly good friend to me and a fab Granny to the DDs.

moo2moo

Have just returned from a trip to a friends to collect my Approved Food order. What seemed like quite a lot on paper is way more in reality. Ended up spending less than anticipated since several items were out of stock, think thats probably a good thing.

£17.50 has resulted in 8kg of Sharwoods indian sauces which I intend to split into 20 smaller portions to freeze at a cost of 10p per standard jar sized portion and some ricotta sauce for a bit of variety. Also got 5 Morrisons flapjack kits and 7 kg of instant cake mix which will come in handy for school fundraisers. Further delving into boxes unearthed 15 dairy free milkshakes, 8 boxes of assorted Mr Kipling slices, 2000 freezer bags, 150ft of cling film, several gazillion cup-a-soups and Enchilda kits and quite a bit more besides. A surprising amount of it is still in date. Will definately be ordering from them again although not for quite some time.

Have run out of space to put stuff which will makes tonights Ocado delivery very interesting indeed. At least the DDs will have very varied lunchboxes for quite some time.

Off to make a start on the housey stuff!

chevalier

yeah to fab granny's whether they are related by blood or not! and yeah to AF orders. That sounds like a humongous amount of stuff. I too would be tasked to find space for that much kit. Still I have had to have another rearranging of my pantry as my mum kindly left something sweet out not in a container, and therefore I woke yesterday to ants all over everywhere BLEUGH.

Hope OH is being ok still

enjoy your evening
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moo2moo

OH is behaving v. strangely, for him anyway, hes trying to see the positives in life which is completely at odds to his normal outlook on things. He even helped with yesterdays Ocado shop in that he ferried some of the bags from the front door to the kitchen and selected the stuff he wants to cook for the next few days. That in itself is unusual as I usually get left to it. By 8:45 the essential stuff was in fridges and freezers and what little i could fit in the cupboards was in there. Left the rest on the worktop hoping to work miracles at some point today. The meat looks to be considerably better quality than that of Messers T and A for slightly less money. I could happily become an Ocado convert.

Woke up this morning to find the kitten hurling himself at the window so determined was he to catch a leaf stuck in a spiders web on the otherside of the glass. Its rather windy out but yet the DDs slumber on through the howls and the crashes and the bangs as various stuff flies around the garden.

Planning a v. lazy day today. Minialistic stuff at work first thing followed by doggy behaviour modification classes, coffee and cake rapidly followed by a spot of lunch, some tumble drier loading and unloading and a spot of money shuffling having managed to end up with £35 in my current account with almost 2 weeks to go to payday. Need to buy chicken feed and drop some stuff in at the tip although windy days aren't necessarily the best days to be doing that. The cleaner who departs for pastures new on Friday has yet to be replaced although my boss is confident that he'll have someone in place on Monday. Meanwhile shes off sick and looks like being off for the remainder of the week which means I get to do twice as much work as normal. Planning to wangle it so that this weeks extra hours are knocked off the hours I have to wedge in over half term.

Discovered that a friends fabulous homemade marmalade actually comes from a tin *shock horror*. Now have to find an actual recipe as I have 3kg of tinned grapefruit to do something with this weekend as well as 3kg of tinned apricots destined for jam... or at least I've assumed I can transform tinned apricots into jam... if not I'll be producing rather a lot of apricot based deserts.

moo2moo

Cheats Orange and Grapefruit Marmalade

Add 1 std tin of grapefruit to a tin of Ma Made (instant Mamalade in a tin). Crush the segments in your fingers, save the juice and use to make up part of the water needed and proceed according to the back of the Mamade tin, adding the grapefruit flesh with the oranges.

moo2moo

Whoo hoo its Friday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! At long bally last I might add. Its felt like it would never be the weekend. My cleaner leaves today, her 45th birthday, so need to whip up a card a wrap the box of choccies that Granny brought over last weekend. I'm not going to eat them, I much prefer chunky bars to boxes of air, always feel disappointed after opening a box of chocolates since half of them are guaranteed to be full of slime or coconut or random nasty things. The big wigs are having a pow wow later this morning to go through the mahoosive pile of application forms which will take all of two nano seconds. Council policy requires us to interview a minimum of three people for each position which means phoning a bored friend and bribing them with biccies to make up the numbers. FOr a time of crisis when the world is strapped for cash I'd expected significatnly more applicants than we've had. In fact I expected slightly more choice than woefully unsuitable person A or option B who doesn't do loos. I've already got one of those... why would I want another? Meh. Its not even like we've got the time to readvertise which is truly pants. At least it will make the meeting rather brief or at least it will if the boys can refrain from launching into golf stories and sitting round munching bikkies like they've got nothing better to do with their day.

Having escaped the evil clutches of the biscuit munching board of Governors I anticipate my day being rather windswept since its been blowing a hoolie for days. DD1 managed to convince herself that there was someone walking on the roof, calmed her down and persuaded her that it was only the wind rattling the slates but agreed to leave her door open so that the hound from hell and the kitten could keep her company. Found the kitten in a death grip under the duvet. Puppy had wandered off to her usual position with her bum wedged firmly on OHs pillow.

Got into more trouble than normal at behavioiur therapy after the hound eyeballed an Aikita and gave it a complex. She also barked once at a previously frightened German Shephard which decided the correct response was to lunge whilst gnashing teeth and foaming at the mouth. It was issued with the red card and sent home whilst our punishment was to be the demonstration pair for the morning. Rather amazingly she behaved herself and did everything first time. Was most chuffed right up until I ended up staring at the ceiling with a face covered in slobber, at least I did get told my growl was very assertive even if the rest of them were killing themselves with laughter at what was most obviously a frequently used string of expletives which had the dog sitting next to me licking my hand in a rather pathetic way with a waggy rear half and the sort of posture which says U-oh mummys a bit cross with me so I'll pretend to be a really well behaved hound.

Have a mahoosive pile of laundry to get through today and a small mountain of stuff to fold and put away from the last couple of days. Still have shopping to put away but have yet to find anywhere to wedge it.

Think I'm in for an evenings peace as OH is planning to go to a martial arts class to see if he enjoys it as much as he used to. Planning to spent far too long jigging uncoordinatedly up and down attempting to play Just Dance on the Wii without the demonic daughters sniggering too much.

moo2moo

Sssh I'm home considerably earlier than planned. Had the briefest of brief meetings with the governors who were on top form. We rattled through the forms at warp speed and discussed the merits of both candidates, v. briefly I might add, theres only so much you can say about someone who writes under relevant experience "none"... I mean its a cleaning position for !!!!s sake even writing I take pride in the shininess of my kitchen sink would have been something. Left them making phone calls. Hoping one or other of them results in someone starting on Monday even if its only temporarily otherwise my life is going to be hell.

Meanwhile my cunning plan for the weekend is thusly:

Friday - whirlwind of domestic drudgery followed by much Wii-ing and chocolate consumption... must remeber to snaffle a pan from the kitchen before leaving work

Saturday - Freezing my tits off whilst standing in the most windswept of windswept fields whilst the DDs trot round the aforementioned field. Quick forray into a supermarket for several cans of instant marmalade and rather a lot of sugar in anticipation of an afternoons marmalade making. Need to unearth the jam jar stash before starting though as it would be rather disasterous to make several more jars than I actually have. Planning to give everyone homemade jams and marmalades for Christmas - shockingly early to be forward planning - bet we've eaten it all by then.

Sunday - Potentially a long walk with the hounds since its pointless taking DD1 shooting in the wind. Will wait until the day itself to decide whether walking is an option because the whingemeister (aka DD2) is likely to blow away. Alternative plans involve books, blankets, log burners and hot chocolate.

However before I commence my assualt on the house theres the small matter of unearthing a tub of ice cream to accompany the lemon and ginger sponges that were surplus to requirements after yesterdays chinese new year banquet. Its a hard life and all that..... perhaps this goes some way to explaining why I've gained 1/4 stone since my last visit to Grannys.

chevalier

maybe the postive MSE energy is rubbing off on your OH. Or maybe the lack of vino is giving him time to think about his behaviour. Even if he isn't going to come and and say that he has been a prat to put it mildly, doing nice things might be his way of saying sorry?

love your stories of the hound. they do make me laugh (and sometimes snort coffee) I still giggle at the idea of the dog drinking the wee!
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moo2moo

Alternatively he may well have realised that hes not likely to get his leg over anytime soon and this is having more impact than anything I could ever say or do.