Further financial faux pas and even more disasterous decisions

beanielou

Yah to alchohol freeness

moo2moo

Have spent an hour and a half packaging up E-bay items. Always takes far longer than I expect. Still waiting for payment for 4 itesms but the rest are ready to go. Managed to find enough stamps lurking in cupboards and drawers to avoid having to purchase any which is always good. Does mean I've used stamps from the presentation packs I aquired from the postie people but they're more valuable as postage stamps than they are in a drawer. In fact as a collectors item they're worth less than their face value which is just daft.

Have withdrawn £85 from Paypal. Still £30 of goods outstanding and a further £13 in postage. Am muchly impressed but v. bored of parcelling stuff up.

Meanwhile have spent £54 on coal and have ordered £180 of logs for delivery on Saturday. Cancelled the DDs riding lesson so that I can be here when they arrive and can stack them out of sight asap.

Am thinking I should tidy up a bit and wash up and shuffle laundry about before departing for a stroll with the pooches. The lure of a stroll between downpours is far more enticing than domestic drudgery though.

KAMH

Hey Moo,
I'm feeling for you, wrapping those parcels, as I've just sold all my son's megazords from the early 90's. I was terribly impressed by the prices I was getting for them but once the final listing fee had been taken and the robberpal lot had taken their cut, I wondered if it had indeed been worth the effort! I've just sold something else and offered 'payment by cheque' as an option but then will have to (sensibly) wait for the cheque to clear before I can despatch the item - which is obviously why robberpal is such a good option! I suppose anything is better than nothing and it helps to be able to clear unwanted things away but I feel like having a rant so I hope you don't mind being the recipient!!!!
How is your hair colour now by the way - faded yet?
x

moo2moo

Mmm. Hair is now a gentle shade of aubergine, whilst it has faded from the sort of purple that could be spotted by a blind person in a helicopter its now only noticable from 200 metres or so. Fortunately my boss seems to have accepted this as the norm although there are concerning things afoot. A fella who speaks in front of 400 people on a daily basis does not get his words mixed up although apparently he had several members of staff and the cleaners heaving with laughter when he asked where the lucious Mrs x was. Note at this point that as the person on the planet least likely to use the word lucious in every day conversation he ranks several rungs below the Pope. Added to this one of the cleaners thought he'd said voluptuous which kinda makes you wonder what he did actually say other than something that they either misheard as something else (not unheard of) or well ... ummm. Eeek.

Tried insisting on payment by cheque and even offering a 50p discount to those who did but that gets your listing turfed off flea-bay as you're not allowed to offer that as an incentive although Paypal regularly send out 5% off when you pay with Paypal discounts which is obviously not the same thing. No siree bob. Still waiting for three items to be paid for. Obviously all the ones that were the result of last minute bidding wars. Still if I can avoid wrapping them till Monday then that would be v. good.

Parents evening is finally over. Todays joys involve school photos and making sure the DDs exit the house wearing the same colour shirts as both blue and white are allowed plus making sure DD2 doesn't try to sneak past me with an overstretched elastic tie when shes supposed to have a proper tie it yourself one on. Fun fun fun. Have a delegation of 30 headteachers arriving for a 9am conference so parking will be even more mad than normal. Means I need to work major miracles first thing.

Challenge of the day is to persude several dozen people to knit a cake or bun each for the KS1 play bakery.... failing that I need to persuade a few people to knit a lot of cakes which is a considerably harder feat. May well abuse the PTA e-mail system to do this .... done whilst the thought was in my head.

School hols start today so will be venturing to a superstore in the civilised universe to stock up on food so as to avoid dragging the whingemeisters round at any point in the hopes of saving my sanity.

Cash flow is dire. Need to source £180 by tomorrow and a further £50 by Tuesday but most of my cash is in limbo thanks to my ingeneous idea of posting myself a cheque so as to shuffle money through the Halifax without very obviously shuffling money through the Halifax... who knows how carefully they look at these things. May well have to hope I can use the free part of my overdraft to dig myself out of this particular hole having first remebered how many places I've swipped my debit card recently as a few of the local stores seem incapable of processing things the same day they are paid for.

Still at least I get a lie in tomorrow although this guarantees that the logs will be delivered shortly after 7am whilst I'm slobbing around in PJs.

moo2moo

Today is DD1s birthday. Not that any of us would have been allowed to forget as we've been reminded on a hourly basis for the last few weeks. Cue a dinner table conversation that went:

Its my birthday tomorrow...... deadly silence followed by an "is it".... "did you know that?" ... "I didn't now that" conversation".

The next enquiry centred on gifts "Have you all got me presents?" ..... more silence "I didn't know"... "don't look at me, I didn't know" followed by a v. loud whispered conversation with DD2 about toilet rolls and sticky tape and perhaps being able to make something asap... of course this degenerated into a discusion on the things readily available within the house that could be gift wrapped. Useful things, obviously, so toilet paper, kitchen roll and dog biscuits featured heavily. We were reminded by her ladyship that the issued gift list did not feature any of those items and a hamster was her number one priority. Being a v. helpful child DD2 set to work armed only with a toilet roll innard, several felt tips, scissors, glue and sticky tape to create the perfect hamster, disappearing briefly to brush the dog so as to make it authentically hairy. DD1s assistance was enlisted to get the expression right but she was made to promise to pretend she was surprised to see it when it had dried enough to be wrapped for "someones" special birthday present. Its fair to say at this point that the child in question is as bonkers as the rest of us.

moo2moo

I have numb hands and feet and am rather bedragggled looking and its only going to get worse. Have shifted about a tenth of the log delivery from the drive to the log store which means I have another 4 1/2 tons to go. At the rate I'm going thats about 5 hours of lifting and shifting and stacking.

Meanwhile Granny has had her third change of mind of the week. First I was dropping the DDs off with their Grandparents on Thursday, then I was meeting them half way Thursday evening. Now she wants me to meet her half way Friday at some point. Of course I can magic up childcare for an unspecified period on Friday and I can be at work when I'm supposed to be there and yet still manage a round trip to Yorkshire without anyone noticing me nipping out for half the day. Why is life never simple.

On the plus side all my e-bayers have paid up... which means sneaking out of school to go to the Post Office on Monday because I am not making a fifteen mile round trip to send some parcels from the only Post Office in the area that opens, briefly, on Saturdays.

moo2moo

Spent yesterday being drenched by the monsoon that centred over my house. Does mean all 5 tons of logs are now neatly stacked ready for use. Unfortunately it also means the ground floor is covered in mud where my small sticky assistants kept nipping in to the loo but forgetting to remove their wellies as they did so. Lots of mopping will be required later today.

Spent a considerable amount of time playing Just Dance 2 which has the potential to be more fun than Just Dance but seems to be much slower paced and considerably harder. Where the original involved lots of jigging about on the spot this one requires movement of 6 feet in all directions. Rather more scarily it has a duet option which involves two people doing completely different things without crashing into each other, jabbing someone in the eye with the wii-mote or kicking the dog. The choice of songs is utterly awful... in fact abysmally dire would perhaps be better... who on earth wants to pretecd to be a zombie to the Monster Mash (apart from DD2). Am rather enjoying the Bollywood stuff though. Have not yet been brave enough to try the "sweat" mode though. All the songs I was expecting to be great are disappointing whilst thouse that you think what the heck is that on for..... are actually more fun to do. If I didn't already have it I wouldn't be rushing out to buy it based upon my first impressions. I may reconsider though once I get the hang of it.

Ventured forth to Pizza Hut for DD1s birthday dinner. Was pleasantly surprised when the food arrived tasting of something other than bland cardboard. Of course nothing ever goes quite right there and so within 5 minutes of our arrival our drinks order had arrived three times. OHs pizza appeared without anchovies and so he was offered them cold in a bowl as a side dish... mmmm... appetising. Having declined this he ended up with a free desert instead. Of course. Thats logical then. Won't be complaining when I have take out chocolate fudge cake for breakfast though. Didn't realise that the kids would be free so got away v. lightly... well as lightly as you get from somewhere like that. Both the DDs were pleasantly stuffed and DD2 was ecstatic when she discovered the unlimited supply of pickled onions at the salad bar and happily trumped her way home emiting vinegary belches. Delightful child.

Packaged up the last of the E-bay tat. Hoping the scales at the Post Office are feeling generous as two of the parcels are borderline 1kg, the difference a few grams makes equates to almost £2 per parcel.

Plans for today involve much domesticity in the form of a spot of jam making with the last of the Elderberries and the kilo that lurks within the freezer. Hoping I can find a recipet hat utilises over ripe kiwis thanks to the DDs insisting I buy them and then refusing to eat them at school because they make too much mess. Also want to have a bit of a play with some bread dough if I can figure out where I hid the yeast.

Am vaguely thinking I should bung some more tat on flea-bay. I still have a large box to shift. Will be v. pleased to see the back of it but can think of several more fun hthings to do with my time... gouging out my eyeballs with a teaspoon being the first one on my list rapidly followed by the iroing and scouring the toilet bowl.

moo2moo

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAghhhhhhhhhhhh.

An explanation follows.

Five years ago one of OHs colleagues announced he was shortly to leave the employ of the company and move to Cyprus. He purchased a gas guzzling monstrosity specifically for this and spent much time viewing properties eventually purchasing a place in the South of France some three years later. Confused? It gets worse. He moved his furniture out there and most of the contents of his house a trailer load at a time over a period of several more years. Dogs are chipped and travel over there regularly for holidays. His UK house has now sold so hes definately definately leaving this time, really he is, even though his wife has just bought a new car and is looking at rental properties close to where she works... and so OHs boss has decreed that the x-mas bash will be a combined leaving do in a hotel a gazillion miles from anywhere where overnight stays will be obligatory. Oh yes hes really thought that one through. Not going is not an option even for the poor suckers that have to be at work at 5am the following day which means taking two cars to the middle of nowhere and finding a babysitter who will stay overnight. Simples. Worse still is the thought of having to be hold a conversation over breakfast with the tangoed Barbie who happens to be the bosses current bimbo. I can cope with her when I'm sufficiently mellowed on vin rouge but clap cold sober when she starts on about Colleen Ronney like shes her next door neighbour.... Colleen says this and Colleen says that... bet shes only ever seen the woman on the pages of Hello!

Rant over. Normality resumes. Hopefully they'll change their minds and go for a curry before attempting to pull school children in a nightclub like every other year. Always fun since OHs boss is usually targeted by other men... nothing to do with his floor length leather gay-magnet flasher mac.... honest.

pennywisepoundstupid

Oh moo you really are funny, i'm off to buy just dance 2 today for DD as she has been going on about it for weeks, have to say i love the first one, hope i'm not going to be too disappointed.

moo2moo

and then I discovered Cossack Dancing and my thighs ache! Seems Just Dance 2 has some redeeming features after all.

In between jigging up and down waving my arms about in the air like an extra from The Wriggles I did actually do some productive things, not many mind. Salvaged what few Elderberries remained in the hedges and amde seven humungous vats of jam. Bunged the apple cores and peel in the freezer temporarily whilst I went in search of damsons which turned out to be stealth sloes surrounded by enormous great spikes. Took an eternity to pick a bucket full but we perservered and chucked them in the slowcooker with the apple cores for the afternoon. Bunged the contents of the slowcooker into muslin and suspended it overnight in odrder to extract as much juice as possible. If I get a move on I should be able to transform it into jelly before despatching the offspring to Pony Club and heading off to work. Think the volume of plasters used to patch up the DDs outweighs any money saving made by making sloe jam though. Not a clue what sloes taste like, I've only ever had them in gin before. Incidentally OH is rather miffed that the sloes won't be used for alcoholic purposes as apparently hes rather fond of sloe gin. Figure he doesn't need any encouragement thoough so I will resist.

Floozie's spendy elves enjoyed their brief trip to Scotland and unexpectedly turned up on my doorstep. I can't think of any other explaination for my sudden obsession with bidding on Weird Fish jumpers on E-bay. Perhaps they're feeling a bit jet-lagged at the mo because so far they haven't managed to make my frivolous clicky finger function correctly, either that or the other bidders have a more extravagent version of spendy elf in residence. Harry Potter has a lot to answer for!

Plans for today involve a large erection. Apparently by lunchtime I should have built a greenhouse armed only with two cheap and nasty adjustable spanners and an octogeneraian assistant. Am not holding my breath!