Pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again.

kissjenn · 6 April 2010 at 12:01AM

Pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again.

As 2010 began, work started with a vengeance in my house to let my dad (83 this year) move in. The extension is now complete, as is the kitchen, family bathroom and downstairs loo. The garage needs to be converted and a new shed built to allow the important “Garage Garbage” to have a lovely new home. The en-suite has died a painful death and slopping out is not an attractive non-penal morning activity so that’s being scheduled too. Finally new flooring, decorating and sofas are required.

Original budget was £80k but it’s looking more like £90k so I still need to find £25k to avoid cards etc. The job I had disappeared, so I’m also trying to find ways to make and save cash, find more work and run two other businesses. It can and will be done.

I gave up my OU course to concentrate on demanding job – the one that disappeared – so re-focusing my small brain cells on learning how to develop the business websites. Have found some great courses through Business Gateway which will give me an overview, but have succumbed to my usual panacea of better to have many books on the subject rather than none. Which neatly brings me to the renovation item I’d forgotten about; the change of use of my dining room to a library.

My careful planning last year to make sure that we were attending all OH’s hospital and Braille appointments has gone completely haywire so that needs to be fixed. Also Small Boy is about to sit his Standard Grades and is on exam leave for a month after Easter. He can’t actually remember which exams he’s sitting so that needs to be sorted out to. In his defence the name of the class doesn’t seem to match the syllabus but we can easily get him on track.

From last year’s diary kick-off we’re now down two cats. For the first time ever in my life they died in the house, just stopped breathing, no pain, no distress, simply alive and then not. This leaves us with the one we believe to be the familiar of Nosferatu, she weighs nothing and appears from the shadows to draw blood and then melt away. She has taken up residence in the office and whoever deigns to work is repeatedly smacked for using their keyboard. When we’re both there she has the ability to whack us simultaneously supporting the undead theory.

The husky has terrified the builder and the joiner and the plumber, only the physics tutor isn’t rounded up and held in the corner. Maybe she likes the more cerebral man.

So the new Tax Year heralds a New Year, New Beginning and New Start. As it says in the title “I’m going to pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again” (apologies to Oscar Hammerstein II).

New Year also means Resolutions, so to get me up to my birthday at the end of June I will

1. Do all the books for all 3 businesses.
2. Built the Websites for all 3 businesses.
3. Find the remaining £25k for the remaining renovation works.
4. Give Dad a moving in date.
5. Have completed a total of 200 Geocaches (currently at 150).
6. Create and document a set of processes for running the businesses to stop year end panics.
7. Achieve Powerseller and Top Seller Status for the Ebay Business.
8. Create and manage a comprehensive diary and to do system for the family.

Thanks for making it through to the end and for everyone who’s helped me get this far.