22 Foxhole East

f0xh0les

4km in 30 minutes. Sweating and wheezing and panting the whole way but it got done and home, bath and cool down  and then the top 2 floors have been cleaned, hoovered and the sheets changed and beds remade.  All before 12.00.  So leftovers for lunch to clear out the fridge - we have 1 portion of Irish Stew, 1 portion of cauli cheese, some rice to be re-fried, some tofu stew and spiced rice, so everyone can choose from the accumulated dishes and the fridge gets ready for cleaning and sorting before ys shopping on Monday.

We are down to less than half a packet of cereal.  The 2 eldest are eating a pack a day between them, with their midnight snacking.

Delivery due on Tuesday.  It is still a secret.

Right, enough of this, I need to heat stuff up and feed people.

f0xh0les

The house is clean and tidy (to the kitchen door), some furniture has been moved around a little.  Glass tv stand has moved from the 'charity pile' to ds1's bedroom, the hall is much tidier now, the books are all going to the specialist book c/s on Monday, so they will go into my car tomorrow in readiness,  I have found a metal shelving unit half the width of the one stood in the bath in the downstairs bathroom, and I have built it.  I will put it in place (next to the bath) in the morning and swap out the stuff left on the one in the bath, and dismantle that and put it in the shed until we get the roof space sorted, and then it can be shelving up there. Then the bath can have a jolly good clean, and once again it can be called a bathroom - which will be essential in order to get the main family bathroom fixed and working properly.  See - a plan!  Plus I need to be able to convince DH to go through his boxes of $hite.  Look! there are but a mere four of them!  or somesuch. 

Anyway, found an mdf sheet in the bathroom the right size to be a makeshift shelf  to add a tiny bit more storage in an alcove - it can sit on top of both skirting boards, so a no drill solution to a tiny problem.

I need to be able to remove a sofa from the living room for dh's surprise on Tuesday, but that means I need somewhere I can put it.  The back room is the simple solution to this, however the back room is currently host to 5 bikes, a sideboard, 2 shelving units and a makeshift desk which is actually a round dining table with one of the flaps down so it fits against the wall.    I think I can move one unit into the living room, with the 2 chairs, but himself needs to be able to set up his bike on the rollers in the back room,  and that cannot happen without moving the sideboard - I think.  Anyway, the bikes need to go back into the shed, and as soon as I do that, the kids will want to ride them - this is the way things work in this house, I put it away, they want to use it,  I leave it out, they ignore it.  Out of sight, into mind.

I have emptied so many plastic storage boxes since lockdown, that the shed is full of them, so a big old tidy up is needed before the bikes will fit.  And I have zero impetus to spend a happy couple of hours in a flippin' shed!    But I think it is going to have to be done sooner rather than later, and I am free for quite a bit of next week, I can't put it off any longer.

Leicester city is still in lockdown, the county is not.  Those shielding and over 70 are being asked to stay  home until 7th September, and the over 70s are shouting back,  'I'm using my common sense Boris so I'm going out' or 'I need an eye test, so I am off to the seaside to get one'  etc. 

The c0vid tent was back on the park's car park setting up again this morning.   We are down to 2/3rds of the level we were at when we went into lockdown, but we are still the 3rd highest rate in the country.   And now the pensioners have been on day release for a week, and they are not going back in again willingly (not that I believe they actually were - from the stories they have been telling about how they have spent their time decorating and tiling their kids houses!)

crazy_cat_lady

My goodness you are going to be one busy bunny f0xh0les! Lots of things to do, and a plan moving forward as well. Enjoy!

f0xh0les

The golden thrones arrived flat packed (I had forgotten they do that) so I put them up just before lunch time, and have packed the other sofa flat while dh has been in meetings all day.  I have so much cardboard that I am going to make storage boxes for a cube unit we have.  I will start with the small 6 cube unit as the experiment, and then might do more, depending on how far the cardboard stretches.    DH might even clean up his corner now.  He loves his new chairs.  Total surprise.   Might mean we keep the living room tidy more often!!  It does look 'grown up'.

Only got a very small haul at ys o clock last night, but to be honest I have so much food in the house, it will do me good to clear a few shelves for the rest of the month.  I have a loaf of squashy white bread, and an 18 pack of waffles in the freezer, so I can do sausage beans and waffles with toast for those who dissent to eat the grown up food (like mushrooms and spinach with gnocchi) I found filo pastry and shortcrust slabs in Herr R0n - I have 4 big bags of ys spinach in the freezer - spanakopita here I come! Perfect diet food that does not taste like diet food.

Oh did I mention I was 12.1 this morning? wheeeeee!  My new measurements are  33.5 - 37- 41  so still a human pizza slice!  But I lost half an inch off my back and 1 inch off my waist last week. So even if I only lost 1 extra lb, the tape measure does not lie. Went out and ran our 4k again while it was windy and grey, and then as soon as we got home it became horrid and sunny.  So I am very glad I got up and did it.  I was less glad I was not 12.0 at the end of it.  I did find that terribly unfair.

Anyway, the yellow armchairs are great,  I am at £4.98 with p/a with £2.20 pending (nearly another 2% of the armchair fund).  My heart rate monitor strap thing no longer works! Boo! and I have had to tell the child tax muppet about dh's payrise, and so I am getting spurious payments into my bank account with no idea of how much I will be getting regularly (if anything).  So I will need to log on to the YouWhatGuv? site and find out what they are going to be.  No point waiting on the letter, it might be another 3 weeks until that hits the doormat.

The kids are being fractious and argumentative all day long, and have started answering back.  13 days til 3 go back.

S-i-L has a birthday at some point this month   DH can't remember when it is,-he said twenty-something so I have bought her an enormous bar of D4iry Milk and cards from the kids.  Will post tomorrow after my 2km kiddie run with ds4.  He has piled on the weight in the last month.   It might just be he is about to grow a foot, but he is going to get teased if he goes back to school like this, so it is a  2km run in the morning every other day until he goes back.  If nothing else, it will be 20 minutes where he is not eating!

I bought a 2021 diary yesterday for £1 from some place that sold birthday cards and is blue and yellow. 

I tried to get rid of my 4 bags of books at the specialist book c/s, but they were closed.  Boo!

Lunch was ys hummus with ys bread and ys tomatoes.  We had a ys W1cked lemon cupcake (they were yellow) and I gave DH a bunch of sunflowers (see a theme developing?).  Supper is ys beansprouts with ys carrots, a ys aubergine, ys broccoli and many many ys mushrooms and a ys spring roll.  The chinese leaf was full price. The rice comes in a 20 kilo sack, so the ys is practically built in compared with buying it in smaller quantities.

I am beginning Operation Use-It-Up for the rest of the month.  I need to seriously live within my means if I am still to be buying 3 x school shoes and 3 x trainers. 

Step-gran has asked me to get her name tapes to start to sew on to her clothes, 'just in case'.  She knows she cannot continue like this if her head stays dizzy. 

f0xh0les

Oh and for those wondering how the Friday Leicester Lockdown Review went - it did not. It was postponed until Monday.

If you were wondering how the Monday Leicester Lockdown Review went - it did not it was postponed (again).

Does not look good, does it? maybe Wednesday will bring more news.....

f0xh0les

Oooh, Matt Hancock says the outdoor pools in Leicester can reopen from Wednesday!!  

The only problem being Leicester does not have an outdoor pool. 

Cheers Matt!  

The Tax Muppets have dropped me down to £7.08 a week from now on due to DH's payrise.   DH worked out he would be £70 a month better off with his new salary, so they have dropped the credit by £120 odd  a month.   It makes little sense to me,  They did put £11 into my bank this morning though.  Oh well! Easy come, easy go. Best hit p/a. 

kerri_gt

Perhaps Matt is going to build Leicester a new pool too 🤦‍♀️ muppet indeed.
I love reading your posts F0xh0les, think i have your lost  inches here, I've had a week of 'if its not nailed down i am likely to eat it' coupled with not a great deal of doing (although i did spend the weekend catching up on chores from when it was too hot. House hoovered,  floors washed, bedding changed, bathroom cleaned to within an inch of its life, polish polished and a batch of cooking too so I've not been totally inactive).
Glad the chairs were a success, hurrah! I do think the yellow one looks fabulous and would love one with our blue sofas but sadly no where for it to sensibly go in our living room.
Felt a wee pang for step gran. She sounds a total PITA but  there's something quite sad about getting to a stage as an adult where you have to think about name tags on clothes like a small child again. 

f0xh0les

I can get a tattoo! or my nails done ! (I have never had my nails done in my life).  But apart from that, Leicester has still got a stupidly high infection rate, but the Eat Out to Help Out has caused  crowds of people waiting outside the  restaurants on London Road, and now it has a special police power granted to fine people who want to take up Rishi's   half price food deal.

in_need_of_direction

The outside swimming pool comment really annoys me.  It shows just how detached decision making muppets are from reality 

kerri_gt

so the gov want to fine people for taking up a gov initiative...w@nkers 🤦‍♀️