EH - Keeping on track. (AKA focus Woman! FOCUS!)

EssexHebridean

Well last night was NOT, in the end, soup & bread, as we got caught up in vile traffic on the way home and ended up stopping for Fish & Chips. Traffic this week has just been filthy - it's routinely taking us nearly and hour and a half on the way into London (20 miles, to put it in perspective!) and so far every day this week MrEH has had to get the tube rather than his preferred (and cheaper) overground route. Thankfully he's not got a travel pass at the moment - he was intending to renew with a weekly one on Monday but so far there's been no point!

To add to my grumpiness our delightfully antisocial upstairs neighbours are being a pain again - I was woken just after 1am by their toddler performing his favourite trick of running from one end of their flat to the other stamping his feet. If they'd still had carpets down this would be less of an issue, however as the first thing they did on moving in was to take them up and lay laminate flooring... :eek: MrEH went up there in his dressing gown 20 minutes later when it was still going on, and let's say that the riot act has been read - it went absolutely SILENT immediately after, so fingers crossed. We've now decided that we will now make a formal complaint to the council if this carries on too - just because they don't choose to sleep at night, that gives them no right to stop everyone else doing so!

So today will mostly be plodding through I think - and revisiting the Soup & Bread plan for tonight! Or possibly chicken and pasta....we'll see!

cazmanian_minx

Feel your pain with the toddler They may well be in breach of the leasehold agreement with the laminate - I know when I bought my top floor flat, it was written into the lease that the floors must be kept carpeted (though we did get written agreement from the freeholder to put sound-insulated laminate down in the bathroom, because carpets and bathrooms aren't the best mix...).

If it's a term in your lease, it's very likely to be in theirs too and you can ask the freeholder to make them change it back to carpet.

EssexHebridean

Sadly it's not Caz. By coincidence we know that their lease and ours are identical, and the first thing we did when the problem first emerged was to check that possibility. Would have made life a LOT easier...!

Absolutely agree on bathrooms not being carpeted too - urgh!

EssexHebridean

On "other matters" - the replacement pan for the bread machine arrived yesterday. Hurrah! It was at about the point that I handed it to MrEH that he mentioned the fact that we were all out of bread flour... So for lunch today I will be making myself a toasted cheese & tomato sandwich with cheese (and tomato) brought from home, and some of the bread that is handily enough usually to be found in the office kitchen. Lunch that includes cheese is never a bad thing. There will be more of that to come too as bread flour comes from either Lidl or Aldi and I won't get to either until the weekend!

Pippilongstocking

What if they got a giant soft hamster type ball for the toddler. That way when it silently rolled up and down the corridor it won't disturb you.

Poor guys. Noisy neighbours are not much fun.

Hope you're got some bread flour..........fresh bread,,,,,,yum!

Cheery_Daff

:rotfl: :rotfl: about giant hamster ball Mind you, they're quite rattly - you want one of those zorbing things

Mmmm, bread

EssexHebridean

Bread flour was indeed purchased!

Hamster balls indeed! :rotfl: Frankly we'd be happy with it just being given some slippers, and some discipline!

Well SUCH a constructive sort of weekend! Friday the weather really didn't invite going out at all, being grey and dreary, so I went as far as the bins to take some rubbish out and spent the rest of the day doing little Ninja-style FlyLady attacks on the flat - a bit of tidying here, some dusting there, interspersed with decluttering some recorded TV off the Sky planner and sorting through some more of my photos from the airshow season. The weekend, thanks to the weather, continued in a similar vein - although Mum and I did get out for some failed Christmas shopping on Saturday. Shouldn't be that difficult to buy a wallet, and a gents washbag, should it... :mad:

Yesterday involved a trip to the charity shop in the morning - two HUGE bags of stuff that had been sitting in the spare room delivered there, and a smaller bag of books for people's christmas presents brought back. Essentially "free" as we spent the last of the money we brought back from the food show unspent. There might have been a book for me sneaked in there too, and maybe a £1 DVD... Then popped to Waitrose in the afternoon - cash neutral buying of christmas-type food mostly and cash neutral thanks to the money still remaining on MrEH's Long-service award voucher from work. :T More clearing and tidying at home, too - the front room looks SO much better - it's astonishing how just dealing with an area that you've been putting off tackling can make such a difference.

Now back to a fairly standard week. 4 days work. Meals all planned:
Mon: Omelettes
Tue: Fajitas
Wed: Macaroni cheese
Thu: Moroccan lamb rice or couscous
Fri: Curry (from the freezer)

Might make the macaroni tonight so the flavours get going properly. Might also make double quantities and pop the others in the freezer to give us a head start for next week. We've got some cured meat - sort of bacon or parma ham style but quite peppery - that we bought at a food show a while back so I'm going to finely slice some of that into the cheese sauce too, and there will probably be some of that for the omelettes tonight too, along with cheese and mushrooms. Yum.

Will aim to do a 15 minute burst of Flylady type stuff each evening this week too. Might not happen tonight if I'm doing cooking instead but we'll see. I admit it - I'm starting to be won over! Also got to pop to Westfield one evening to have another go at finding the wallet and washbag. That will probably be tomorrow, I think - I'll skive off from the office an hour earlier - I can easily make the time up - and hopefully not take too long.

Spendiness this week:
MrEH's car got fuel this morning - £40
More christmas stuff but that's all saved/budgeted for
IF I go to Lincoln on Thursday my car will need fuel, but at the moment I'm thinking I most likely won't. otherwise it will be the New Year now before mine will need more.

starnac

Pippilongstocking wrote: »

What if they got a giant soft hamster type ball for the toddler. That way when it silently rolled up and down the corridor it won't disturb you!

Love this idea. Think maybe you should suggest it to the parents!

My sister lives in a flat and whenever we go there I am very conscious of the noise my kids make so I'm always going on at them "don't jump on auntie's floor" "stop running around" "talk quietly" but then my sister doesn't actually care as her neighbours have very loud parties that go on quite late so she likes my kids jumping around. Especially if it's early on a weekend :rotfl:

EssexHebridean

Yes...oddly enough we're marginally less bothered if we make noise early on weekends now...as upstairs are generally still well asleep then. So long as we can be sure that next door are up and about...! :rotfl:

Christmas shopping last night had at least a degree of success as I finally managed to find MrEH a wallet which was the style he uses, and wasn't either patent leather (yes, really) covered in cartoon characters (he's 40-odd, not 14) or emblazoned with a large and chavvy "designer" logo. John Lewis could have offered me several that would have ticked the boxes above but for a price tag of £50 or above. :eek: Managed to find one for half that in an independent shop so that ticked all the boxes. :T Still no washbag though.

Just looked at the weather forecast for tomorrow and the wind's meant to be horribly gusty so I'm definitely not heading for Lincoln. That does have the advantage of meaning that I keep my working week as normal and retain my Friday to myself. Hurrah for that. Need to make use of it doing some christmassy odds and ends I think.

Banking checked. CC is looking high but that's expected. Joint account is looking slightly better than this point last month so that's happy news.
MrEH's company have managed to screw his pension contributions up for the past year and more. At some stage this is going to mean a lump to be paid back - but as yet they've not got around to telling us how much, or when, just that "it will not be in the December payroll" - this suggests they are currently expecting it to be taken back in one lump so that should be an interesting sort of month! :eek:

Currently musing on the idea of making January a "use it up" month - we've got a storecupboard full of food and really ought to do something with it. Hmmm.

starnac

Re Mr EH's pension. You need to pay a lump back or they do? If it's you then that's a bit wrong to expect you to stump it up in one go!