Further financial faux pas and even more disasterous decisions

moo2moo

Slapped the neighbours with a very hefty bill for the deaths caused by the destructive dog. Will wait and see what happens. Am undecided whether to buy in a few 10 week olds and raise them to point of lay or to hatch chicks knowing that they won't lay until next spring. Chicks are the cheaper option but not if I have to buy eating eggs over winter. Descisions, descisions.. then theres the question of breeds. The DDs were attached to everything we had so want to get something completely different this time around. Just not sure what other than I want something too fat to fly which narrows the field quite considerably.

moo2moo

Turns out my denim splurge wasn't quite as outrageous as I'd feared. £18.94 got me two fabulous pairs of jeans, one with the potential to be fabulous once I've repaired them, one complete turkey which is OK for work and gardening and one under negotiation. Would have been considerably happier had they all been as described. C'est la vie.

At least that should be a great deterent next time my clickity finger feels itchy.

moo2moo

Two hours, £110 and several stroppy wobblies later we exited via the swooshy doors of Mr Ts laden down with a months worth of storecupboard staples, several months supply of loo roll and 2 bags of compost. The DDs have spent the afternoon potting up geriatric seeds left over from the last time I decided growing our own would be fun. Have planted a few of everything in the hopes that something will germinate even if its only salad leaves.

DD1 has very helpfully mucked out the chicken coops. Need to persuade the girls to amalgamate into a single house to keep them warm on cold nights. For the mo they're all heading for their preferred houses which mean several of them are home alone. The more stubborn ones aren't showing any signs of willingly aquiring new flatmates.

Two loads of laundry washed and dried. Gave up on mopping floors after the pooches went paddling in the pond.

moo2moo

I had a lie in!!!!!!!!!! Only till 6:45 but a lie in none the less. Feeling vaguely human in the way only a serially sleep deprived person can. Supposed to be at DD1s shooting competition by 10 which means leaving by 9 but DD1 is still asleep. Tempted to leave her until 8:30 and risk the wrath of her royal stroppiness for depriving her of sunday morning telly as she was exhausted last night.

Trimmed the flower spikes off the rhubarb with DD1s assistance and used the leaves from them to make rudebarb crumble or at least thats what she told OH he was having for dinner along with muchly reduced fresh fish chunks which we transformed into a potato topped pie that the DDs ate without complaint much to my amazement. Have a pork joint to roast for dinner tonight which will do for sandwich fillings on Monday assuming the ganets don't devour the lot and whilst the oven is on I need to bake cakes for lunch boxes.

No sign of sprouting seeds yet although DD2 has checked on them twice already this morning. Apparently they should be really big by now... that'll be the Jack and the Beanstalk effect then.

Finally got a sensible sized end of month clear it in one hit credit card bill. Tis amazing how minimalistic this can be when cars and various other expensive items don't disintegrate at random. Next months will be back to its usual rather large figure as OHs car is booked in for a service. Still its nice to know that we'll be able to clear a hefty chunk of the debt this month as our day to day living costs are lower than expected... just how low I haven't a clue about as I'm 16 days into the month but haven't made any entries into the spending diary at all and have lost track of the till reciepts.

moo2moo

Tis Monday already. Its gloriously sunny already and it feels like one of those days where I should be home pottering about the garden rather than at work slaving away not that I actually slave away... may use this as an excuse to weed schools flower beds now the daffs have finished. Will aim to leave before 10 to maximise the day at home. OH won't be home until much later than normal as instead of shutting his workplace and being stood down for the day on minimalistic time killing duties as he was told last night its changed shape and tripled his workload instead.

Plans for today involve a trip to the tip to get rid of the excesive amounts of debris generated by turning chicken land into a maximum security facility. Also need to do massive amounts of laundry as the pile is enormous although it feels like I've done nothing but laundry for ages, first load of the day is already on. Have a huge pile of ironing to tackle which can wait until a rainy day. Also need to clean the bathrooms and the kitchen and vac and mop and generally tidy. Its days like this that I really really really wish I had a cleaner although they'd probably open the door and quickly shut it again before running in the opposite direction.Still I did make a start last night by decluttering the PC desk not that you can tell as its still covered in carp, at least theres less carp than there was yesterday.

OH was v. helpful and popped out for milk yesterday returning with three carrier bags of whoopsied stuff for the freezer. The same freezer which was crammed to the point of maximum overload on Saturday. The DDs were most impressed at being instructed to eat ice cream mid afternoon to make enough space to wedge it all in. Need to BBQ soon though as its all the sort of oddball stuff that doesn't real constitute food unlees you're BBQing.

Forgot to make cakes last night so have to concoct something for lunchboxes today. Can't see pots of cold stewed rhubarb going down too well.

moo2moo

Ended up hanging pictures.. not quite what I had in mind but it turns out we're having an official opening ceremony on Wednesday and everything needs to be perfect by then which includes the chipped glosswork on two doors and several metres of skirtingboard. I forsee Tuesday being a very long day.

Second load of washing is on the line. Wet bedraggled and very smelly puppy is wrapped in a blanket drying off and warming up. Shes discovered the pond.

Have decided an amendment to the list of things I covet when debt free is required, most nobably the inclusion of a greenhouse and the time to grow all the things that I could grow quite happily were there another few hours in each day. Perhaps if I spent less time on the PC and more time doing things thats a possibility. So my new improved target is to reach payout on all the survey companies and ween myself off those which do not have immediate payouts. Ideally I'd like to have this done byt he start of the school summer hols but realistically payout with some of them is several years away. Even if I half the volume I do now that should help. I'll miss the money but some of it is just too tedious for words and the payout in relation to the time spent is pathetic.

moo2moo

Why do men try to be helpful and fail so miserably? OH hates gardening. So when he greets me with a big grin and muddy hands I usually brace myself and think calming thoughts. Turns out he did a spot of weeding yesterday. Not the sort of weeding that requires removal of the roots but the yank it and chuck it in a heap on the ground method so that the seeds can disperse and self seed which in a way is rather fortunate as theres the vaguest of vague hopes that the clematis will grow back. All four of them. It should be noted that the bindweed is still running amock alongside them. Turns out he thought he'd dispatch them prior to flowering. Noooo silly boy. Still could have been worse. At least no power tools were involved.

Made a start on the house yesterday doing 2/3rds of the ironing, vacuuming the floors and rearranging the kitchen. Also started to remove moss from the top patio and rearrange garden furniture so it looks more like a garden and less like an assualt course although its taken the DDs several months to get their circuit right so no doubt I won't be very popular. At least once thats done I can mow the lawn which is becoming more and more overgrown. I didn't realise just how much grass the chickens chowed each day. No news from the neighbours. Will give them until Friday and then send a rather more strongly worded letter giving them however long I have to give them officially to pay up before I take them to small claims court. Not impressed. I'd have been more than happy for them to turn up, apologise and offer to pay a proportion of the amount. Anything other than pretend it hasn't happened.

moo2moo

This mornings very exciting developments include the presence of multiple green shoots poking through the soil of the seeds we planted on Saturday. The DDs are ridiculously over excited and already asking when they'll be big enough to eat.

OH is a very excited little boy too. Hes found a second hand target pistol at a sensible price and is treating himself to that. Its more than covered by the overtime and away trips hes done recently. need to keep reminding myself that theres far more to life than debt busting. Theres not much point being debt free and miserable when we can become debt free over a slighly longer period and still have some fun along the way. Its a MSE compromised purchase anyway as he half wanted to apply for his firearms certificate and then purchase a firearm and the asscociated gubbins which would eventually have totted up to six times the cost of the pistol so this is much cheaper and more practical long term.... however since this is his second pistol will need to remind him that a boy can only shoot so many things and just because the singlies at the club have a dozen pistols and just as many rifles does not mean he'll get away with any where near that many no matter how creative he becomes at storing them.

Took Houdini the puppy out for a short walk on a lead complete with full body harness. She did remarkably well but was v. skitty when a tractor went past. Will need to take her somewhere much busier v. soon to get her used to cars asap whilst shes still at the inquisitive stage. Won't be today though as I've got road safety classes in two hours and tons to do before then... which is precisely why I'm surfing away... at times I am my own worst enemy.

moo2moo

Yesterday the sky came crashing down and the world came to an end... or at least you'd have thought so when OH arived at school to collect the DDs and tell me that we'd lost the phone lines and with it his ability to spend the day playing the on-line version of Call of Duty 4. Reported the error to BT who had it fixed within no time. Turns out in transferring our line rental to another company they'd inadvertantly cut us off for a whole 25 minutes. Outrageous... at least OH thought so. Normality had resumed by the time I arrived home and many thousand more ficticious commando marine snipers were dead. The DDs were happily rampaging around the garden in their PJs palying ball with hairball no. 1 and the four-legged fiend.

Today sees the use of my time machine whereby I will be at school all morning doing last minute things in preparation for todays grand opening ceremony to which I have a personal invite. Have to escape for an hour or so to collect OH from the garage as its the start of MOT season and remember to get back early to do all the things I normally do once everybodys gone home whilst they're still there. Its going to be a very manic day. Still we like unpredictably mad days. They make life fun.

OH meanwhile has achieved the amazing and has triple booked or possibly even quadruple booked things for the weekend the schools break up. He has a friend coming to stay, someone else coming over to go hunting, my parents are over for a day in the middle of it all and then he drops the bombshell that his brother is coming to stay uttering the fabulous words "I didn't think we had anything on that weekend"... did I mention hes working all weekend too?

mooomin

Does every man play this infernal game? Mr Fresian got told yesterday that this week we're commencing negotiations around how often he plays it. He seems shocked that seven days a sodding week is unacceptable...