Coffee and chocolate

miggy

I really don't know, Muffy. I think Ani's thread has been quiet but not deserted so I hope things are okay. I haven't heard anything personally.

Still haven't got out in the garden unless you count a brief foray to look after the rabbit and fetch in a plant which needs to go back on a windowsill. I got as far as shutting the computer down - then started it up again!

Well, the washing has finished now so I'll put it on the line before the weather changes its mind then I have some errands in town. I've just been offered a sleep shift at work which will pay me some extra. Timely.

miggy

Guess who got swallowed by the tunnel called 'work' and is just emerging for a lungful of air before going in again?

That sleepover shift... I was supposed to finish at 8am. Then it was 10am. That was before I got to work.

Long story short: when I got in I found two of the clients were down with a D&V bug :eek: and one of the staff was off with it too. Then before I even got as far as the sleep, there was a call from my line manager (did I mention she went home at 4pm to catch a few hours' sleep before coming in to do a waking night at 9?). Anyway she must have had less than four hours' sleep before her phone went off and she called us to see who could cover for another person off with D&V. While I was talking to her my personal phone went: a third person down with it and could I cover part of her shift?

The upshot was that the colleague who was with me and I covered all yesterday till 9pm. When our line manager came in it was fairly clear to me that if she wasn't already ill it was only a matter of time, so I asked her what she was going to do if she fell ill overnight. The obvious answer was to wake the sleepover person. Whether she's done that I don't know - I'm in again at 6pm for a waking night and the same again tomorrow. However clients are now recovered and hopefully the first staff member to go sick will soon be clear, and next week someone is back from leave... just hoping I haven't got it, of course.

There's also someone else off sick for another reason - probably 5 of 12 staff on the sick now!

Of course all this work keeps me away from the shops (I took Mr S cheapy smoked salmon - 90p discovery! - to work to make sandwiches before all this started, and discovered that even smoked salmon, cream cheese and salad sandwiches are boring when eaten for three out of four meals! Oh, and when I got home, Dh cooked salmon in sauce. )... oh, yes, it keeps me away from the shops, though I did buy some end-of-day mark downs on the way home. So far I've also notched up a lot of extra hours: even if nothing untoward happens before the end of the month, I'm on track for nearly three weeks' extra pay! Just as well after all the Uni spending.

And on the way home there was a strange, rather sad thing. Someone had dumped two pet crematorium bags next to a public bin. I know the nearby vet and it isn't likely to be their doing, but I took the bags and left them by the vet's surgery, reckoning they at least would know what to do with them and hopefully sparing passersby from unpleasant discoveries. The place they were left was somewhere very public so lots of kids go past, not to mention potentially the previous owners of the animals (one of the bags was open so they might have recognised the poor beasty inside).

miggy

Well, I made it back here eventually.

I think the bug has passed me by, though there's now an evil cold going the rounds and I'm less likely to escape that. Work is now using two agency staff as another F/T person is off sick, making two who are likely to be off-rota for some significant time. At least the sickness bug is probably over and done with.

I've done my normal night shifts over the weekend, too.

DH is making progress with the decorating at home so I an sitting in a sea of confusion: mostly books that had to come out of a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. They'll never all fit back so I need to look through (a few at a time as I'm not good at this) and decide what can go. I'm wondering about selling on Amazon or something? I've only ever used Ebay but I don't think that's the first port of call for people wanting to buy 2nd hand books.

There is a whole heap of cookery books - they're not going anywhere fast! In fact I was given two lovely ones last Christmas which I've never even properly looked at: life just gets in the way unless I make time so in started pouring over one last night (DS2 had the computer, thus forcing me to do something else!). some lovely stuff...

I have so far managed on the reduced food budget though DH hasn't cut down his half of it and I didn't have any major buying to do last week. My idea was to save DD's share of it and pay it over to her, but at the moment she seems to be eating out rather a lot and that doesn't fit in my ideas of reasonably frugal living, so I haven't actually sent her anything! The positive part is that she gets on really well with her flatmates and they often cook for all of them by the sound of it, which is lovely. then they go out for the evening/night! I suppose it's still Freshers', so she's not necessarily setting the stage for future patterns.

The deluge has dried up, or is in the process of drying up: I expect it will be foggy later. 8.5cm of rain over two days, and that's on the sheltered side of the house! Oh, and I can't find my wellies.

No real plans for today apart from laundry and seeing Mum - and picking greengages if there are any left.

MuffinTops

Hi Miggy,
Lots of work for you recently? It's nice to hear you're back on the good side of the tunnel though.

Regarding second hand books, I sell a lot through Amazon so if you want any hints, tips or general help then please ask.

Hopefully the novelty of her different life is the reason for her eating out and once that all calms down she'll be craving home cooking and vegetables.

We've had a lot of rain in London, and a few little areas of flooding but nothing too bad. Did you see the photo in one of the paper's today where a house was standing on it's foundation stilts because the ground around it had just washed away??? Scary times.

Anyway, lovely to see you're back through the work tunnel and finding time to go through the cookery books. Maybe you should have a little tester session and invite us all round?

miggy

Definitely been a bit wet round here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-19718288

miggy

I have got very little done so far today thanks to finding a place I can play jigsaws on FB... and make my own... well, there's a couple of hours flown by!

I've come over here to make a list and focus.

Muffy, thanks for the offer of help with Amazon - I'll definitely bear that in mind as we just have hundreds of books and not enough space. I've only got as far as a couple I don't particularly want, so far, and at the current rate it will take a very long time to list anything, but I think Amazon will be the way to go when I do get there.

MuffinTops wrote: »

Hopefully the novelty of her different life is the reason for her eating out and once that all calms down she'll be craving home cooking and vegetables.

I'm sure the novelty is part of it - that and the fact they haven't spent all their student loans yet! I think that as a flat, they cook shared meals though and one is a vegetarian so it's looking as though they are getting the home cooked AND the vegetables! I know I didn't do nearly as well in those far-off days of my own studenthood (is there such a word?). She just has a culture of eating out... that can't last on a loan... can it?

MuffinTops wrote: »

We've had a lot of rain in London, and a few little areas of flooding but nothing too bad. Did you see the photo in one of the paper's today where a house was standing on it's foundation stilts because the ground around it had just washed away??? Scary times.

Yes, I really feel for the people who lived there.

MuffinTops wrote: »

Anyway, lovely to see you're back through the work tunnel and finding time to go through the cookery books. Maybe you should have a little tester session and invite us all round?

Oh, now you're talking! I've been watching Bake Off, too. Anyone for virtual strudel?

miggy

I was going to make a list, wasn't I?

Search for greengages
Clear area under stairs
make a cake
sort dried laundry
put summer clothes in loft
replace clock batteries
Come back on computer

miggy

I'm making very little progress though the clocks are now working and I can't find any greengages.

miggy

Not much progress made on the list though some clothes are sorted and a small amount of understairs clearing has been undertaken.

I will confess to spending £10 in S*perdrug and 47p in Wilkos, then going grocery shopping with DH and DS2, which came to about £15. Lentils for tomorrow, then. I did get two lots of steak mince at 70p each and a sandwich and cake marked down to 65p altogether, which will be lunch tomorrow and hopefully stop me living off rubbish.

On a good note, I had an attack of feeling I could cope with some paperwork for Mum and have sent off a payment to her cleaner, the electoral role for her house (though I think I've probably already done this) and a questionnaire from the care home dated April. :eek: I suppose I've had it that long but I don't remember it. I was able to throw out quite a bit of paperwork, but there's still loads untouched.

miggy

Oh crickey, October already! DH is about to have a Significant Birthday and while the kids are making plans, I actually haven't done anything.

I have been working, and when not working, DS2 has had the computer. I can have it when he's at school but in the evenings he 'needs it for homework'. I know for a fact that this includes Facebook and Skype. The Skype calls are probably to a girl in the Med somewhere who he has been calling a lot recently... I think she must have been at his school at some point but any questioning is likely to result in walls going up, and parental nerves can be slightly calmed in that if she's not in the country, there's only a certain amount happening, even if that means I lose computer time.

I'm at work again tonight and tomorrow night. Why? Two people are off - well, for this week it's three - and they are trying to manage by having two agency people helping out. The agency people seem okay, and in fact the one I worked with last week is very good, but they are used as little as possible. There is bad feeling at work - I for one think one of the absences is constructive dismissal - so as ever I'm keeping an eye open for something else.

Family news: DS1 is in Morocco, DD has got into a cheerleading squad! (She still has tryouts for dance and gymnastics: hope she gets time for work. Her course starts today...)

DH has completed the papering on the most complicated wall of the dining room and moved the bookcase back in, so I have installed my cookery books there, which is much more practical than where they were before but displaces huge numbers of books which are now homeless.

Work on the understairs space has inched along.

We went on a microwave-buying trip on Saturday and ended up buying quite a lot of food as well. We had odds and ends of money left from previous weeks' budgets so this was used to supplement the week's food money so although it was a technical overspend, in practice we are okay. We had budgetted £80 for the microwave but found one we liked for £49.99, so that's what we got. A good make and large enough for our needs (which includes stashing the remains of a roast when there isn't enough clear space after Sunday lunch).

I think that's it for now...