Coffee and chocolate

miggy

I realised I'd saved an extra 45p more than I though in yesterday's shopping so that's gone to my grand total which now stands at er... £351.98 saved since the challenge started.

Today has been quite good - slept till nearly 10.30 which means I'm about up to date with sleep especially if I can get to bed fairly soon. I've done three loads of laundry (making the most of being able to dry it out of doors), done a little bit of gardening, DS2 helped me move the rabbit hutch, threw out a couple of pairs of broken shoes as a contribution to getting the house decluttered, made a couple of phone calls and sent off DS1's passport for renewal. Oh, and visited Mum. She mentioned possibly selling her house! I never thought I'd hear that. Apparently she's been thinking about it. I told her there's no hurry and not to do anything just yet with the market as it is. I'll see if she mentions it again but she's pretty good mentally at the moment and I had the impression this really was something she'd thought about at least a bit.

I rounded the day off by making a big batch of bread and DS2 has been helping me eat it. I really need to use up the catering packs of bread mix and as I'm getting low on brown bread this seemed preferable to buying more. Since the breadmaker went caput all bread making has been by hand which is no hardship as I can knead dough while reading MSE but I just have to organise myself enough to do it. Then I have to resist it enough not to put weight on but as I said, DS2 is helping with that.

Erme

Get a magimix hun!!! Simple...can do 101 more things than the BM..

I have a prob with my new vol job....It's right next to TK M*....whoopsie (mega whoopsie) £70 on a new suitcase (needed since end of last year) and finally a leather organiser bag (big enough)..gigi..but no flap

And the new e-cig (girlie variety) came today

E

miggy

So you're a happy Erme with a new DF date?

TKM is a downfall of mine too... and I didn't manage to get any of the bags I was after on Ebay, but I dare say I can cope with that.

How was the new volunteering job? Apart from location, I mean!

miggy

An odd sort of day today. I woke up with that feeling of 'Oh, no, I don't want to have to do something that has to be done today' but there was nothing on my mind. Odd. The day's continued that way, with a bit of underlying edginess and anxiety - nothing bad, just strange.

I expect it's a combination of things: I've been having late nights and that makes it worse. I fell out with DH yesterday because he threw out some magazines - even though we'd agreed they could go - but because I wasn't in control of it I got agitated. I'm one of those people who builds things round themselves in order to protect themselves or keep undesirable events or people at a distance but at the same time it distresses me because I don't like to be seen as messy / shabby / unsocial / you name it, and I would love to be able just to have people round. I'm therefore waging a rearguard action on the clutter, but never enough to make much difference.

In addition we've arranged for our friends to come to stay in a few weeks and that means I can't just shift things round, I actually have to make a real dent in the clutter. Hence, albeit distantly, the alarm bells are starting to ring.

I've also felt recently that DH is less relaxed (not about the clutter - that's ongoing!) This lunchtime we were talking to DS1 and his g/f and DH said the prospect of his job coming to an end is weighing on him. We will know in a few weeks which way that will go. Basically everyone loses their jobs and has to be interviewed for a lot of recreated posts in a sort of musical chairs in which we already know there will be 20% fewer hours than at present. So I guess that one hangs over us more or less till then, but it may be more difficult as it approaches.

Anyway: money. DH has done the spending today so that's an NSD for me. No word about the new bank account yet. DH fetched a piece of furniture back from the menders - it's an antique which has been damaged almost since the day we moved here and there wasn't the money to repair it, but now it's back in place and I'm so pleased. The whole room looks better for it - but the difficulty is that it has a full length mirror which only looks good if I don't stand in front of it! :eek: Yes, well... I really do need to lose weight and I really do need to take a long, hard look at what I wear. Either that or morph into a mushroom, because that was the general impression I got from the mirror.

DH tidied the shed (brave soul) and discovered the crush in there has broken the wallpaper stripper (can I say that on here?) but he also dragged out carrier bags of newspapers from my mum which are now mostly donated to the vet (they use them in cages for sick animals).

I've chucked out a broken purse and a very worn fleece - that's a start. Off to do a bit of piano practice now - something nice to do that builds to a better future.

Lemon_Tree

yay for doing a little decluttering, i do from one extreme to another, either i'm chucking everything out or i'm rearranging things. I'm also very like you that i'd love to have people around but i feel that the place is too cluttered to be respectable. Obviously at the moment it's a non starter what with everything being in boxes, but with moving from a one bed flat to a three bed house we won't be rattling around we'll still have lots of stuff

miggy

Lemon_Tree wrote: »

i'd love to have people around but i feel that the place is too cluttered to be respectable. Obviously at the moment it's a non starter what with everything being in boxes,

Well, if you have time, now might be a good time to ask people round - while you have every good reason for the place not being perfect! I'm sure people will understand that moving means things aren't normal.

Three beds instead of one! It's quite a jump - I hadn't appreciated this. I bet it will be fun having all that space and deciding where to put things... then starting to fill up the gaps!

I could do with some of that chucking out potion or whatever does the trick... I'm a born re-arranger but DH gets worried if things move much! (Perhaps it's time I got my dolls' house out ).

miggy

I found this about the effects of stress - it could be un-nerving if it didn't make such sense to me as a stressed person! Not that I'm majorly stressed right now, but there's low-lying stress and not so long ago it was a huge problem.
The other reason it isn't stress-inducing is that there is a solution included - and it's nothing to do with money, families or any of those things we think need to change (even if they do).

miggy

A lovely sunny day - church in the morning, up to the moors with DD, DH, DS2 and DD's b/f's dogs in the afternoon (where we kept meeting people one or another of us knows - love the moors, so lonely ) then home for a pot roast with all of the aforesaid plus DS1 and his g/f. Afterwards a game of taboo.

And an NSD to boot.

MuffinTops

Hello Miggy, sounds like you're having a wonderful Sunday.

Well done on starting the decluttering. We really do have very similar goals in life with wanting to slim down the clutter and ourselves. Hopefully the milder weather will give us both a boost.

Take care.

miggy

Thanks.

'Interesting' evening - why don't I just do a crash course in plumbing?! :rotfl:

I forget how much I've written about this but the sink got blocked last week and we took the U bend off and cleaned it out. When put back together, it leaked.

I had another look at it (we seem to keep missing the friend who has fixed other plumbing mishaps in the past) and saw there was a seal that had been pushed out of shape and was letting water out, so this evening we took it to bits again, sorted the seal out and tried running water through only to find
a) we had cured the leak
b) we now had a different leak and
c) the pipe is blocked somewhere further down.

I've cleared as far as I can reach down the pipe (we do a lovely line in gunge ) so it looks as though DH will have to get the ladder and undo the pipe where it leaves the house above the kitchen! We're saving this for tomorrow.

I did take the opportunity to clean the sink though, and the floor around it, so even though it doesn't work, it looks less dismal.

I will be buying washing soda more often... seems like a good idea somehow!