Further financial faux pas and even more disasterous decisions

moo2moo

Morning all. Sorry to disappoint though, I am not in any way famous, however should someone wish to pay me to write a best seller then obviously I'd give it a go. Not entirely sure theres a market for The Memoirs of a Dizzy Blonde Wanabee. Thinking more laterally though I could manage a column in a newspaper. I mean if Jeremy Clarkson can do it how hard can it actually be? Wonder if I could persuade the Torygraph to fork out a grand a week for the sole rights to "The Life and Times of a Slovenly Ho" possibly not.

Deposited the oiks with their grandparents late last night exchanging them for dinner and half an enormous chocolate desert. V. tasty it was too. Arrived home at something approaching the pumpkin hour (thats 9pm to the rest of the world) and promptly fell in to bed exhausted.

Must admit to a brief detour en route into the hallowed halls of Decathlon where I purchased several clingy tops with secret bras. Not because I've suddenly decided to take up yoga but because I'm sick of wearing sports bras for everything. Tis the downside to being both lob sided and generously endowded. Can't wear an underwire whilst playing tug of war with the puppy (an activity more commonly known as walking the dog) because I end up with great big red patches where the wires move too much. Not because the bra doesn't fit properly but because the effects of gravity make the bounciness so much more agressive and the bra ends up being thrown around when its contents go boinging around. Perhaps this is why sales assistants are always hell bent on trying to wedge me into bras named Doreen which look more like surgical trusses than the stuff you'd find in Agent Provocateur. Still OH appreciates the strappy tops. Poor chap walked in the door to find me vacuuming the stairs on all fours from the top down with the girls having a narrowly averted escape attempt. Hes v. easily pleased.

Did rather a lot of vacuuming now and only have two rooms downstairs left to go. Hairball no. 1 has decided to moult so no dount it will all need doing again today.

Plans for today involve the fated greenhouse although its been so windy over the past few days that I'll be amazed if its still in one place. Am tempted to concrete the lip on the base to the sub base in the hopes that a bit more weight stops it taking off once all the panels are attached. I have a feeling that this may well be easier said than done. Hoping to be home in time for a lat lunch with OH before he goes to work for a long afternoon. Note this is OHs definition of a long afternoon and involves being present at work for 5 hours whilst only actually working for 3 of them yet being paid for a 9 hour day. Means I get an afternoon to myself which I plan to spend walking the hairballs in the country park.

moo2moo

Whoo hoo. After a further six hours assisted by the Head, the vicar and one of the school governors I can now officially declare the greenhouse open for canoodling teenagers, pot smoking teenagers and the sorts of teenagers that enjoy humping in the school playhouse. Hopefully by spring there will also be space for the school gardening club in there although I need to build some sort of potting bench first.

Plans for today involve securing commercial bike racks to the playground and sanding and painting a wall. hoping I can stretch that out to fill five hours without too much difficulty.

Spent yesterday afternoon playing shoot 'em ups on the Wii before pootling into work with OH where I sat drinking coffee, eating the office chocolate stash and reading v. dubious mens magazines. Some of them were quite enlighterning, others just downright funny. The helpful buying underwear for your girlfriend guide had me guffawing out loud. T'was most scary to discover quite how many boobs they could wedge in between articles. Note the term article is used in the loosest possible sense of the word. Will now look at FHM in a whole new light.

Finally made it home at 9pm to an answerphone debate from the DDs informaing us, eventually, that they'd gone to bed. Scoffed take out for dinner which makes two nights in a row that we haven't cooked. Quite why theres still a ton of washing up remains a mystery.

Plans for today involve as little as I can possibly get away with once I've dealt with an enormous amount of washing. Have an inbox full of surveys to tackle but really can't be bothered.

In an ideal world I need to magic up all the x-mas gifts for my family and wrap them ready for dispatching with my parents tomorrow. Whilst its not entirely out of the question its not going to be quite that easy either. Will see if I can conjure up enough stuff from the stuff we have stashed.

mooomin

Not sure if this will be of use, but M&S have 60% off Disney DVDs and you can arrange collect in store for next time you're in the Big Smoke. I'm sure it's no help for the immediate festive issues, but might be there's something there for the DDs stockings.

Happy Weekend!

moo2moo

The DDs have hit that stage in life where they are officially too grown up for Disney. Suspect this will last until they are about 18 when suddenly its cool to own the entire back catalogue. DD1 is hoping for a giant house rabbit whilst DD2 has highlighted alternate and random items in the Tesco childrens gift guide. The list of stuff needed by tomorrow (cue maniacal laughter) is for those relatives whom I see at funerals, some of whom I haven't seen in several years and most of whom are still cheesed off that I didn't invite them to my wedding. Only a decase or so ago but I'm still reminded of it at every opportunity. They still insist on sending the DDs gifts and cash for birthdays so needs must. Besides which we're seen to be the rich relations, the ones with the sprawling dream house in the country, so theres no getting out of it. May well nip to the garden centre and chuck some bulbs in bowls (as I was planning to do well over amonth ago but never got round to) the alternative is tins of chocolates from the Co-op which are under a fiver at the mo. Am also tempted to gift wrap lots of homemade jams and chutneys but fear that may be even more ungraciously recieved than the chocolates.... perhaps a combination of the above in a multipronged approach is safest. Why is the season of goodwill such a headache?

moo2moo

Having a holy eek moment. Happened to notice that its 7:20. Since I am currently slobbing around in my PJs the likelihood of me being in work in 25 minutes time is pretty much non-existant, especially as the boiler has turned off and I'll have to wait for the water to warm up enough for me leap in and out of the shower asap.

peaceandfreedom

moo2moo wrote: »

Morning all. Sorry to disappoint though, I am not in any way famous, however should someone wish to pay me to write a best seller then obviously I'd give it a go. Not entirely sure theres a market for The Memoirs of a Dizzy Blonde Wanabee. Thinking more laterally though I could manage a column in a newspaper. I mean if Jeremy Clarkson can do it how hard can it actually be? Wonder if I could persuade the Torygraph to fork out a grand a week for the sole rights to "The Life and Times of a Slovenly Ho" possibly not.

What Jeremy Clarkson has is a great way with words. Love him or loathe him, he makes an interesting read and often his Sunday Times column makes me laugh out loud.

Moo, you also have a great way with words and I for one would love to read a column on "The Life and Times of a Slovenly Ho".

Have you ever heard of NaNoWriMo? It stands for National Novel Writing Month - the idea is to bash out a 50000-word novel in a month. No editing, no fine-tuning, just 50000 words down. I'm giving it a go, it starts on 1st November. You don't need a plan, you don't need a plot, just start writing and see what happens. I can see you coming up with a great Bridget-Jones style work. More info here:
http://www.nanowrimo.org/

moo2moo

It sounds fab but sadly there simply aren't enough hours in the day as it is. I struggle to do the things I should be doing mostly because I spend so much of my day doing other things. Things like playing Meeno, a card game loosley based upon Uno but using a standard deck of cards with randomly fluctuating rules, created by DD2.

Today has already flown by surprisingly quickly. The bike racks are fitted, one very very very small wall has been painted, actually wall implies an area of great size whereas the wall in question is barely 8" wide but will need at least another coat tomorrow. Also managed to gut my office in as much as a room without windows or seats can be classed as an office. Chucked out three bin bags of stuff and came across half a dozen surplus hanging baskets so will be pootling off to the gaden centre at some point today to transform them into x-mas gifts with the aid of a festive bit of tinsel. Have also come up with the simply superb idea of shoving jars of chutney into wine bags thus making them look slightly more appealing than anything else I've come up with. Since I have loads of wine bags salvaged from previous gifts this too should be v. cheap and painless to do.

The aim is to purchase the essentials for under £20. Under a tenner would be even better but somehow I think thats a tad unlikely..... however never say never.

moo2moo

The garden centre was a nightmare. After wandering round aimlessly for 20 minutes past forests of Christmas trees and enough fairy lights to give the Blackpool Illuminations a run for their money I finally made it past the giant amazonian rat and the assorted snakes to the pathetically small bulb section. To put this into context this is a multi-award winning garden centre occupying several acres with a covered store marginally bigger than most out of town supermarkets with the bulbs crammed into an area which would narowly scrape being classed as a disabled toilet had it actually got walls and a toilet in it. Still rummaging around paid off and I managed to purchase minature daffodils, crocuses (perhaps croci?) and snowdrops plus a huge bag of compost with a mere 4 pence change from £20. Crammed all 160 bulbs into four baskets and two bulb bowls that were lurking in the garden. Suppose value for money wise its really not bad. The recipient of each bulb container is also getting a Crimbo cake and a bag of jams total cost about £8 per gift. Not quite as cheap as I was hoping but its still not astronomically bad.

Managed to unearth enough books from the stash to sort four childrens gifts plus a birthday present. To date our total x-mas expenditure is in the region of £150 which covers OHs family and mine with the exception of my parents whom I'll need to sort a few stocking fillers for but as I have £25 of Boots points following my recent shopping spree I should be able to get away without putting my hand in my pocket. After that theres just OH and the DDs to go. Hopefully another £150 will get them everything they desire. Probably not but a girl can dream.

In even better news turfing all the x-mas gifts out of the cupboards has assisted in the decluttering process as I now have much space to put stuff away. Will need to get my bum in gear this afternoon in order to transform this place by 7pm which is when Granny is due. Eeek. Still haven't tackled the laundry pile although I have added more to it and its perilously close to toppling.

OH is back in twonk mode and rambled on about me being more bothered about the aunts I never see than I am about him. For about an hour of my day this was indeed the case, I thoroughly enjoyed planting the bulbs and would do more of it if I didn't think puppy or the DDs would trample on the shoots or dig them up whilst excavating whatever is of interest at that particular point in time.

Today is my final day of peace at school and a day I'm planning to use to scrub floors with the giant vibrating floor scrubbing machine. Tis a v. lazy way of passing a few hours whilst the end result is spectacular... for about 24 hours till people trample all over them. Still it pays the bills.

moo2moo

Would be nice to report that I've spent the past hour doing useful things but I haven't. I've been avoiding housework by reading diaries and randomly escaping into the lives of others, anything is more fun than the ironing.

May well need to restart FlyLadying again *sigh* as it seems to be the only way I actually manage to get stuff done. Off to chuck the remainder of yesterdays laundry on the airer so that this morning doesn't feel like its been a complete waste of time.

peaceandfreedom

moo2moo wrote: »

Would be nice to report that I've spent the past hour doing useful things but I haven't. I've been avoiding housework by reading diaries and randomly escaping into the lives of others, anything is more fun than the ironing.

May well need to restart FlyLadying again *sigh* as it seems to be the only way I actually manage to get stuff done. Off to chuck the remainder of yesterdays laundry on the airer so that this morning doesn't feel like its been a complete waste of time.

Well, you got up early which is waaaay better than me. I hauled my sorry a** out of bed at 10am which was really 11am old time. :eek:

And I've done nothing of note except pick up a freebie bag of cooking apples, drink coffee and ready the Sunday papers.