22 Foxhole East

apple_muncher

:bdaycake::bdaycake::bdaycake:Happy Birthday to DS4!!

f0xh0les

DH is actually a lot perkier today, he is quite jolly in fact, sitting on the sofa doing a pen and ink portrait of one or other of his mates from a photo. A lot more alert mentally, so I think I got it right on the iron thing. Sadly he is more flatulent than a fat labrador. Swings and roundabouts!



Forgot to take the cheque with me when I went into town this morning with DS3. Nevermind! Will try again on the 2nd. It just means that I will not be able to make any more mortgage over payments this year.

So I will end 2018 with £700 more on the mortgage account than I wanted, but still with no debts.

It does mean that I will be in all the 9's in January instead and I should just be more patient. I am not yet virtuous.



So now I am going to start at the top of the house, hoover all the way down, clean all the bathrooms and finish the laundry and I have asked DH to make pasties for tea tonight. He does a good pasty, my boy.

Tomorrow we are having a beef-style roast thing, but I am making it into a wellington instead, which invariably led to DS3 and 4 giggling we are going to eat boots for lunch, with roasties, parsnips, peas, corn, brussels, carrots and yorkies with gravy.

I am going to make pecan cinnamon rolls today, and leave in the fridge overnight to prove, and then whack them in the oven for breakfast tomorrow with my posh coffee prize win coffee. I will need something to sustain me.



Boxing Day lunch will be a retro 70's classic, gammon style roast thing, cut into 'steaks' with a pineapple ring and hand cut chips.

I am going to get so many !!!!!!?? looks from the kids. Love it!

Might use up all the leftovers on a pizza for tea on boxing day night. Can't leave boy with a fridge full of one or two people meals, when he is entertaining the kids on his own.

Right, the festive hoovering is calling me.....

f0xh0les

That is that over for another year!
All went well, (wheat meat) beef wellington went down well, with stuffing, roast potatoess, roast parsnips, roast carrots, roast onions, brussels, peas, corn and gravy. I have the smallest oven you can imagine, so it was a bit juggly at times, but it all worked out and I only spent an hour and a half in the kitchen.

Unearthed a light yellow king size top sheet, and doubled it over as a tablecloth (yeah, I don't own a tablecloth) which looked great once the flatware and the crackers were on it. Nobody would ever know.....
Everyone delighted with their gifts.
That's that done for another year.
Off to Norn Iron on Friday to be with step-gran, back on Tuesday, all ready to start 2019, albeit I won't be able to sit up with the kids on NYE, but will see them around lunchtime on the 1st with my brand new (paper) diary and I can do my money juggling with no huge expenses to have to account for as I want to do my car insurances before I go and whack it on the credit card until I come back. I have done a little search, and I have enough left over in the bank account to pay for it all outright in one go, and DH will pay back at some point.
This morning I am knackered.
DH lovely boy snored like a chainsaw all night long last night and the night before .

This morning I escaped around 6am so no point trying to go back to sleep. Did spend a bit of time at 2.30 wondering which kid would be less traumatised by waking up with me in their bed with them,(surprise!!) but kept on hoping he would shut up.

More coffee needed!
Hope you all had a lovely time with family, adopted family, friends or just pets (furry family). We had a great time, at mealtimes we laughed a lot with the kids, they are delighted with their loot haul, the house is still (relatively ) tidy, and I only put one load of laundry on to wash yesterday.


Looking forward to 2019 next week and hitting that £99,999.99 target figure asap.

crazy_cat_lady

Sounds like it's been a good one f0xh0les. So pleased you've all enjoyed it.

Kittenkirst

Sounds like a wonderful christmas Foxholes. Hope your trip to Norn Iron goes smoothly today and have a wonderful New Year x

f0xh0les

I would not recommend flying to Ulster between Christmas and New Year - there were some really hung over boys on that flight! It was early too, and they were suffering - thankfully it was only just over an hour long flight- but it was properly turbulent and there were turning-green people all over the place being given ice chips to suck while clutching sickbags.


Poor old step-gran is just wearing out. She is huffing and puffing now as she gets out of breath while just sitting down. So I put up with a lot of rudeness, and cleaned her house properly (her cleaner is shocking - she bought a new toilet brush 2 months ago, and only realised this week it still had the plastic on it - never been used!). Anyway, there is not a speck of limescale on anything anymore. All taps shiny and all plugs draining properly. All lids loosened and the fire set ready in the grate in case the heating goes off over winter. All filing and correspondence sorted, and all banking explained.

She did make me laugh though.

She usually comes down with a mystery illness the day before I go - it is traditional and goes away quite suddenly when ignored- so when I got her up on that day, I was not surprised when she announced she had nearly died the night before - she said she knew she was not right when she could not get her slippers off to get into bed, which was followed with a long pause as she had to catch her breath, the drama of the moment was broken, however, by my giggling and asking her how many people in Norn Iron were killed by willfully disobedient slippers? Cause of death doctor? Tight slippers. Classic case.

So she had to up her game, and claimed shaking legs, and head pains, and dizzy spells, but not enough to call out to me, and as I had checked in on her 20 minutes after she went to bed and she was fast asleep, I was not worried. So she said I could have walked in and found her dead this morning - unlikely as she was on her second round of toast and lime marmalade and not looking at all ghostly - I replied that I would leave that shocking outcome to whichever carer ended up finding her, and she said she would much rather die when I was in the house to find her. As I only had 24 hrs left before I left, I told her she had better get on with it if that was her plan. Apparently she did not mean this visit. She is planning on dying during a future visit.

So I was stuck in the house with the ticking clock, that chimes every quarter hour, and every time I left the room she turned the tv off at the wall, and there was just silence until 4pm until she gets her daily dose of Ben Shepherd (she does not like Warwick Davis or Agatha Christie so there were pretty slim pickings until June Whitfield died on Sunday). Anyway, her freezer is fuller than it was, and she has a lot of things that can just be re-heated or ping-ed. Which was pretty clever of me as I was not allowed outside the front gate in the 4 and a half days I was there.



Then, when I got back to the airport on this side after a flight with some still very merry people after last night but luckily no turbulence, there were no buses from the airport. At all. So I had to ring DH who manfully came and rescued me from the airport and made it there in only half and hour. What a star! He did come in my car though, admitted he has not driven his car since I left, and that I needed to buy petrol now. Small price to pay, a tank of petrol would still be less than the price of a time and a half taxi from the airport.



So I am safely back home again, impatiently waiting for the banks to catch up. and update the mortgage account so I can see if I can get to all the 9's.



And if anyone knows where I put that big pack of batteries so I can weigh myself on the bathroom scales, can you let me know cos I can't find the blimmin' things anywhere and they cost £4. Grr. Step-Gran's scales said I have lost over half a stone since the start of December, but I will not believe it until I see it on my own set of scales..... with a dead battery.

Oh well, DH is at work tomorrow, I need to sort 2 x car insurances (aiming at under £500 combined) and breakdown cover, and a cupboard inventory tomorrow when DH toddles off back to work. The house needs a bloomin' good hoover and I want to clean the kitchen floor cos it is disgusting.



Happy New Year lovelies! Welcome to 2019.

apple_muncher

Welcome back to Blighty!

crazy_cat_lady

Happy New Year f0xh0les _party_
I did have a bit of a giggle at the way you deal with your step gran she sounds like a character
Good luck with finding the batteries and getting into the 9's.

mark55man

Have fun, and looking forward to reading your £99K post when it comes very very soon

f0xh0les

How on earth can these banks take my dd's the day after the bank holiday, but cannot update the mortgage interest??
My mortgage bank is being taken over by VirginMoney. Really hope they are more efficient, they just sent me a message to tell me all about their new app for sending a photo of your cheque and it will be in your account within 2 days. Which sounds marvellous after having found a couple of cheques with step-gran that are over 6 months old and I fear she has lost her ground rent for that term.



So I cannot update my mortgage total yet due to the bank still being rubbish.