22 Foxhole East

kerri_gt

f0xh0les wrote: »

Pot noodle has now been banned as not being in the spirit of D of E.
Packet noodles however, are still allowed (?)
2nd expedition is in a fortnight.

As Baden-Powell said It's all fun and games, until someone gets pregnant or something like that. I paraphrase.

Surely a pot noodle is more practical than packet noodles as they come in their own eating container and require no touching of food stuff to eat (they used to be a staple of my festival meals for that very reason - in the days before antibac gel :eek:) Unless its about cutting plastic waste?

f0xh0les

***Pot Noodle Update****

They have to be able to cook a simple meal I think. So boil in the bag rice and a boilin in the bag curry or something would be fine, then they can eat kind of communally, but if a pot noodle gets a hole in the lid - game over, well, pot noodle over, clothes, sleeping bag etc. Plus then they have to wash up their bowls and cooking bits. Can't do that with a pot noodle. It's all about responsibility and growing up. And god knows DS1 and 2 could do with a bit more of that.

Thank you for all your lovely words. I adore my boys, but they drive me mental, but at the same time I know I only own them for a relatively short amount of time, and surely it is allowed to be funny 'in the moment' rather than just in hindsight.

This is my antidote to fakebook and all those perfect families with kids that can dress in white and not be covered in 'god knows what the hell that is all over you' within nanoseconds.

My SiL cannot understand why I don't dress them in white.
- that is because she has a badly behaved boy cat who hates her, and no children!

Well, that and VPL and brightly coloured Justice League boxer shorts.

DS1 is sulking about beans on toast for tea. Apparently it is not a proper meal. He didn't hang about to help with the washing up though. I doubt he will faint through hunger, and if he did, as he would be on his bed anyway, no harm done.

Why should only step-mothers get to be evil?

f0xh0les

I just made another sneaky mortgage overpayment. I have robbed money out of the kids regular savings money pot, but it is £144.49 and it can go back in when the child benefit comes in toward the end of the month. So really it was borrowed, not stolen.

But now, I am in the £105s albeit £105,999.99

Just a little bit of mind trickery to keep me on the path of mfw's.

And baby plasterer cancelled on me again yesterday -he says he has not been able to work at all this week so far. I know it is annoying, but I have his money here waiting for him, and he is a nice person, if slightly unreliable - but then he is only 22 and not very together.

So, we will try again today, I may be prepped and ready to be plastered by tonight, but who knows? These things are sent to try us, and unless his arm falls off, there is no reason why he should not be able to do the job. The only unknown is the when.

Who would have thought a tradesman could be unreliable!!

wishingthemortgaheaway

Afternoon foxholes. I've taken a leaf out of your book today and mostly stripped the wall paper from our bedroom, just the ceiling (who puts paper on the ceiling????) and the very top bits to go when I borrow a friend's slightly taller ladder.

I've never done anything like this before!

f0xh0les

Wallpaper on the ceiling usually means a big crack somewhere.

Hopefully, in your case, they just liked wallpaper so much they put it everywhere and your ceiling is lovely. On the plus side, the ceilng paper usually comes off much easier than on the walls. - good luck!!

Baby plasterer will be here at 5 to prep the walls and will return tomorrow to plaster. He says. I believe him.

Right, kids to feed.

f0xh0les

Episode VII The Plasterer Returns......

Well, 5 days later, he returns with a mate and is busy plastering away in the living room.
I am in the back room with the (moved from the front room) tv.

I have been a busy little bee this week so far
* been to the tip and got rid of a load of stuff to be recycled rather than binned
* took better stuff to charity shops
* put up the hall mirror (£6 charity shop bargain)
* sent DS 2 off on camp
* rang elderly relative and made her day
* all after school sports clubs paid for and diarised (it is a word)
* furniture moved about the place
I have realised that tomorrow is only 4 weeks until the end of term .

Sports day x 2 is all on the same day this year (yay).

DH is away pretending to be a fairy or an elf or some-such-nonsense this weekend
which is also my birthday. So I am not holding out much hope of being pampered or adored, I will make my own cake, and probably be painting this plaster.

But I might not, I might go to the pictures, take the kids out for a meal, and then go out somewhere else for ice-cream. I don't know. I will see what mood I am in.

Older step-relative is getting more forgetful - she asked when my birthday was, something she has always known off the top of her head before, and during the phone call announced if she did not get her regular carer back (regular carer is currently off with her husband who is undergoing transplant therapy for another 9 weeks minimum) then she will put herself into a home. She is 78 and all alone, and just being around other people would do her the world of good.
She is getting upset by having very young carers come in at all times of the day, and her mealtimes are very disrupted. She has no idea what time someone will come in to get her up and wash her, or what time her lunch or tea will be, or what time someone will appear to get her into her nightie (one came at 6.45 last week). She is starting to think she is being treated like a child, but also cannot understand that the carers are low paid workers who are trying to juggle kids and school runs with the need to earn a living. Both are unsatisifed by this arrangement.
But this is not a thing that I can fix.
Also her new cleaner is rubbish but she will not use an agency as she has it in her head she lives in the middle of nowhere. There have been a lot of houses springing up in recent years, she is nowhere near as rural and isolated as she was when they built the house, but as she is housebound, she has no idea and is still living in 1985.

I will go over there with the kids this summer, it might be her last in the house.
But she needs more than me going over there 3 or 4 times a year.

f0xh0les

Waiting for plaster to dry is actually even more frustratingly boring than it sounds.

But I think it is now dry, I am not going to spend my birthday weekend painting though.

Oh no. I have plans! DH has just left for his weekend away, he seemed to think my birthday was on Wednesday, he has left presents for me for Sunday, but as he is back on Sunday night, I told him I would open them when he gets back, but not to worry if we were not here whenever he gets back, at whatever random time that will be (harrumph!).

So, I thought I might try and open the living room fireplace back up. It has been bricked up and plastered over, so I thought I might do a spot of excavation, we have to have it lined before we put the fireplace back in, I rescued one not long after we moved in - £80 - from a man who was ripping his out for a log burner. So, it will all be in preparation for that momentus event.

So, me, dust sheets, bolster chisel and a hammer, tomorrow morning, be there.........or be somewhere else.

Morrisons gave me a big bar of chocolate for my birthday - I got a till spit on my last shop that said Have a happy birthday, £1.34 bar of choc, any flavour, free.
I got rum and raisin. Have not had that for years!

Swapped my £19 a month EE mobile bill for a £4.99 a month TPO sim, and have got 2 at £3.99 for the kids. 600 free minutes and 600 free texts a month and some data, but they always use wi-fi so for less that my montly bill, I have all 3 of us sorted out, £5 left over, and 10% of the bill goes to a charity of your choice (wateraid for me, mosquito nets for the kids). I think it is absolutely criminal that I have to pay £9 to unlock a phone! For goodness sake! The phone is 7 years old, it is not the latest model, and I paid a contract on it for four years before passing it down to DS1 eventually. Anyway, now it is all sorted. We are able to be in contact with each other without the excuse of running out of credit.

I was going to go into town and spend my £10 M&S voucher, and they kindly sent me some 10% off vouchers for my birthday - yay! but I am going to do that on Monday, when I go to put my birthday cheque from step-gran into the bank - no point spending on parking twice, although I am down to my last £60 in the bank until child benefit comes in on the 25th, or the birthday cheque clears.

I have enough food in for the weekend and lunchboxes on Monday.

Most of the laundry is washed and dried, but neither folded or ironed, so I have to get on with that as it is taking over the kitchen.

I have had an idea. No one else knows - so what do you think?
I have a sofabed. It is from 1KEA, it is L shaped. I have this idea, if I get some hardboard and upholstery foam, I could split the L, The long bit of the L is the exact right size to go as a chaise in my bedroom - thus negating the need to buy a small sofa to put in there. It would also be very easy to cover, so I could make it look quite fancy, and much less 1KEA functional.

The other part of the sofa bed, has the under drawer pull out bit, is exactly the right size to put in the alcove in DS4s bedroom. It would look great, but it also means dragging the bl00dy thing up two floors to the top floor to check to see if it is ok. The only cost would be replacement hardboard for the two new 'ends' from the L shape and a bit of foam. Drill holes, bolt on, job done.

Which would then mean getting some kind of seating for the back room. which I am having problems with. there are doors in 3 of the 4 corners and one leads from the hall and another into the kitchen. So I don't want it just to look like a 'walk through' space. I want it to work as a room in itself.
But that is going to take much more thinking time.

DS2 comes home tonight, so around 6 tonight, picture me with 2 kids in the back of the car on the school car park waiting for a coach to turn up at an undisclosed time, the kids were all told not to take their phones with them, so they cannot call to let us know when they are due back, or of any delays.

DH has restricted his Xbox again to 2 hours at weekends. and has deleted his other accounts, and of course, he will not get the fallout from it as he is away. The cunning swine.

I also have lots of silly little niggly jobs that need doing to finish stuff off.

I have re-glued some seams of the wallpaper that came away after the paint wet the paper. so now it looks good again. Good old pva. Nobody would ever know.

I think I am going to go and trawl some charity shops this afternoon before I go on the long school run today. I have 1 to get at 3.15, 2 at 4.15 and 1 sometime around 6, possibly.

Anyway, by 8pm I hope to be back home, with everyone fed, or close to being fed, with an alcohol free beer in my hand, and all my children in the same place (until the first argument).

Have a great weekend, whatever you are up to.

wishingthemortgaheaway

Do school not use a text messaging service to update parents on eta of school trips?

f0xh0les

They do if the school office is open when they are travelling, but if it is closed, basically you are on your own.

Plus they have probably forgotten to factor in the 3 day Eid festival in the park in central Leicester that is going to be hell on all traffic from today until Monday.

wishingthemortgaheaway

f0xh0les wrote: »

They do if the school office is open when they are travelling, but if it is closed, basically you are on your own.

Plus they have probably forgotten to factor in the 3 day Eid festival in the park in central Leicester that is going to be hell on all traffic from today until Monday.

Ridiculous. Sorry, where I worked a member of Senior leadership team stayed in the office until the School trip returned in order for messages to be relayed. My classes were the only exceptions, but that was becuase I was the only member of slt to actually teach a class that went on late trips and I knew how to send text messages, using the school system from my phone.