22 Foxhole East

f0xh0les

All bills out now. 

Just transferred £250 to savings pot#5 - it gives me £80 a week to feed everyone and do transport - filled up the car end of Dec, so no problem with that for a while.

Right, off to herd 2 kids.  Funnily, I lack motivation to go out into the cold and dark, or to put clothes on.    Brrrr

mark55man

Its getting light now so hopefully your motivation returns to normal - my first drive into work at 7am yesterday was so depressing.  My stay in bed today inclination was thwarted by the heating going off as the batteries had run out of my controller box.  It made bed more tempting, true, but I needed to get up and sort it as it was 15.8 and for this household that's a bit parky

haven't used the word thwarted for ages don't know where that came from but its a good word.  will use it more often

f0xh0les

Ha! my heating comes on at 7.10 so the house is warm when I wake up the kids, the heating goes off at 7.45, so when we all leave the house at 8, it is cooling anyway.  DH turns it on  when he gets up if he is working from home.  It is off from 21.30 - 7.10, it keeps people under their duvets

mark55man

I am softer (and more southern obviously) but I put ours on for a burst at 6:30-7:30am to warm the house up then have a low target for the day just in case it gets cold but with a boost now and again.  in my house its electic that's the expensive one not so much the gas for the heating 

kerri_gt

Still pretty dark here at 7.30am - and so cold - brrrrr! Bought a Primarni version of an Oodie in Dec (bought a friend one for xmas too) and it is keeping me toasty and removing the need for the heating to be above 18 degrees atm. 

f0xh0les

Did some much needed food shopping.  First spends this year. Need to keep it frugal this month. So I bought...

2 boxes of chicken style strips (2 meals) £3.50

bag of mince (2 meals) £2

other brand of mince (2 meals) £1.50

bag of hoisin duck style shred (1 or 2 meals) £2.50

Huge cauli ( already have a half left in fridge - 1 meal) 79p

8 frozen sausage rolls ( school packed lunches sorted this week) £2.50

6 ys schnitzel (1 meal) £3

4 pots of ice cream (79p in Her0n)

Huge bag of onions £1

crate (8) of soya milk £4.72

Kilo of oats  75p

2 x Anch0r butter (expensive, but worth it) £1.50 each

2 x 9 ys crumpets (20p each)

2 ys loaves of bread (20p each)

6  bars of Frys raspberry creams for 78p  (apparently a seasonal food now)

Bag of flaked almonds £1.29

Will not need to put my nose into a  food shop until next week Monday when more lunchbox sausage rolls will be needed.

1000 tw1nnings teabags arriving this afternoon (half price due to having Happy Christmas on the packaging) £21

Still have parsnips, 12.5kg of (19p) spuds now in a brown cardboard sack, 3 bags of (19p) sprouts, an aubergine, 2 lettuces, 5 tomatoes and a few carrots knocking about in the fridge to use up from pre-Christmas food shop.

Took all the sad apples yesterday, and half a jar of mincemeat and  have made a huge apple+ one lonely pear crumble.

The last of the sherried fruit went into a cinnamon sponge batter to make a  lovely accompaniment to an afternoon cup of tea / lunchbox, or if warmed for 30 seconds, lovely with a blob of ice cream as a pudding. Job done.

The small precinct near the kids' school is now charging for parking, which I think may well kill it stone dead - apart from people who are less mobile.   I am already thinking where I could possibly park for my charity shop fix.  Not going to spend £3 for the pleasure of doing the circuit of 9 charity shops and possibly not buying anything.  Bah Humbug!!

Baileys_Babe

Blaby had a good range of charity shops last time I was there (late 2019) I used to park at Aldi to do my grocery shop, then a tour of the charity shops and I could always pop to Waitrose for anything I couldn't get in Aldi. 

f0xh0les

Right, DS2 now has 2 new primarni sweatshirts - he refused point blank to go shopping during the holidays, so I abducted him from college at 12, took him into the city centre, put £1 in the meter for 1 hour of parking, and we went to one shop. 

Hennes is not where I left it!! Which is worrying, as it was my 'go to' shop for anything I could not find for the boys in a c/s. So Primarni it had to be.

Old Keir has tested Covid+ again - he had it in October, same as me, which is worrying.   My test this morning was C-, will take another one before going anywhere near volunteering tomorrow.  Knackered, but have to do the return leg of DS4 school run in 5 minutes.

crazy_cat_lady

One of my year 11 kids emailed me today to say he has covid again - having caught it the week after my ds had it at the end of October. Seems weird how quickly it's going through again. I just need ds to stay covid free another 2 weeks so I can get him vaccinated. I am doing a LFT every day and still nothing so long may that continue.
Oh, and as for dark mornings - sunrise here tomorrow is 8.26am. No wonder I can't get up...

f0xh0les

It was light and bright by 7.50 am down here @crazy_cat_lady , proper daylight - still took me 10 minutes to scrape the windscreen and clear the fog in the car though. -2.  Brrrr!

I think the October round of Pox was probably the tail end of Delta, and now the more infectious easy to catch Omnicron is sweeping through everything, and everyone is catching that now. October illness is just soooo last year, ya?

Did the meter readings, baked sausage rolls,  took 2 kids to school, froze my bits off, came home and am still trying to defrost my hands and feet with a nice cup of tea and central heating before heading out to unheated warehouse conditions for a spot of festive fun and recreational frostbite with one man down due to C.    It is now -1 degrees, shame I cannot feel my toes.