Life Begins at ... 35?

Cinny91

Lovely to see you posting again, Tete

Good on you for taking the leap with work, I'm sure something positive will come your way because of it. Enjoy your break in Paris too, I think it's one of those cities you could visit countless times and never get sick of.

I love a bit of Live Well for Less too, it's shocking the amount of money people just spend on stuff but I'm sure if they came to my house they'd be able to pull me up on something. What is it you're crocheting? I've started knitting a jumper but it's very slow going, mostly because I do a row and my eyes have thoroughly glazed over and sit wondering if it's too early to go to bed.

Tete_en_l'Air

So does anyone else do that thing where you go on holiday and spend a lot of time thinking about all the things you're going to do to get organised when you get home?

That was me a couple of weeks ago in Budapest (highly recommended city break - so much to do, DELICIOUS food!), but I came home and the cat was really poorly. I thought I was going to lose her and I was distraught, but after some sizeable vet bills and lots of TLC she seems to be getting back to her normal self, slowly.

So I haven't been around here for a while. I got myself into a bit of a rut of not seeming to be able to get anything done and was just sitting about listlessly, panicking about all the things I wasn't doing. I realised I probably had some form of depression and, not wanting to go down the road of drugs, I started seeing a counsellor.

She was great and when I blurted out my life story in our first session she said, "Well I'm not surprised you're struggling to fill in job applications with any enthusiasm". And just that bit of sympathy worked wonders! She advised me to give myself 'permission' not to do things that I didn't want to do. This was brilliant advice (she worded it better), and I found I was actually making little bits of progress now that the pressure was off (hanging new curtains, mowing the lawn, etc.) and I finally had the courage to give up my evening class job (though my students got in touch to ask for private tuition, then I had to say no to that as well!).

On the other hand, I haven't applied for a job for weeks and weeks, and my healthy eating went completely awry. But coming home from holiday with nothing looming on the calendar has me in the mood for sorting myself out once again. Maybe I can make this thread title work if I get my life sorted out before I turn 36??

Things I want to achieve today:
- Stick to SW
- Drink lots of water
- Make meal plan and shopping list for next week
- Round up library books
- Renew Gran's blue badge
- Check who owes what for holidays and send bank details
- Put together planter thing for the garden
- Two loads of washing
- Deep clean kitchen
- Deep clean living room
- Mop hallway
- Hoover stairs
- Online course homework
- Have a bath

I left the house in a fairly nice state before my holiday but being so upset and stressed last week meant I let everything slide and the kitchen is currently piled high with mackerel-encrusted bowls

Here we go again...

Tete_en_l'Air

Well the garden planter has been postponed as it's started raining three hours ahead of the forecast, but not before I'd spread all the parts across the lawn

Now to start on the kitchen I suppose, joy.

Tete_en_l'Air

Waiting for the floor to dry, and giving myself a break. I don't know whether I mentioned on this thread before but I've been reading a book on cleaning called Unfck Your Habitat - it's brilliant for people like me whose houses are a hovel because, conversely, they are perfectionists (ie there isn't time to clean/tidy to the standard you want, so you end up doing nothing at all and living in a tip). Anyway they advocate a 20/10 policy - 20 minutes focused cleaning followed by a ten minute break (mandatory). I'm not quite following that today but I do think breaks are important.

Right, the washing machine has just finished so I'll get that first load hung up and put the second in.

Savertobe

On wallpapering - find a video online they are very helpful. Its not easy to do at first as you need to develop a technique - watch the videos and follow their advice.

Good luck

Tete_en_l'Air

Thanks for the advice Savertobe, I actually bit the bullet and got a decorator in in the end though! Youtube vids are brilliant, I'm always using them for crochet stitches!

[STRIKE]- Two loads of washing
- Online course homework[/STRIKE]

Didn't do so well on the old list the other day, and yesterday went to pot with one thing and another. I have two whole days to myself now though so I want to make a dent in it:

- Stick to SW
- Drink lots of water
- Make meal plan and shopping list for the rest of the week
- Send parcel back
- Round up library books - books taken back but still searching for one CD of an audiobook. Nice Librarian renewed it for me though
- Renew Gran's blue badge - this was a massive PITA. Did it all online then rang to clarify something and they were like, Oh you can't do it online. Appointment booked for Friday. Wasted about four hours on this in total.
- Check who owes what for holidays and send bank details
- Deep clean kitchen - I am halfway through this in fairness
- Another load of washing
- Deep clean living room
- Mop hallway
- Hoover stairs
- Hang picture
- RSVP to party invite
- Send minutes
- Training rota
- Have a bath - got the water on!
- Put together garden planter - it's too cold and wet for this today though!

starnac

Hi Tete. Just catching up on your diary. I've subscribed now so I won't lose you again

......woah! :eek: That sounded very stalker-ish! :eek:

Tete_en_l'Air

Hi Starnac, lovely to see you!

How has it been two weeks since I last posted here? Time flies! My gran has been taking up a lot of my time recently, she is becoming extremely needy and it's always me she calls on. No matter how much I do for her it never seems to be enough and I'm torn between wanting to maintain reasonable boundaries , and then feeling guilty about it. But my uncles and cousins don't feel guilty about only seeing her once a month so I don't know why I do when I'm round there four days a week at the moment!

Anyway. Looking back at my to do list above, I'm pleased to report that most of it is done. The planter isn't - where has the nice weather gone? I've spent a lot of this weekend on my roman blind for the kitchen. It's all sewn up now but I had a right job hanging the rail - I've currently got it screwed to a plank of wood, which is now jammed up against the lintel on piles of books, waiting for the glue to dry. Fingers crossed it works because if it doesn't I'm going to have to get someone in and that would not only mean financial expense but also that I've wasted a whole weekend on it. Even if it does work, I still have to attach the fabric and work out how to make it actually function

I'm still out of action on the running front. It's ten weeks today since I sprained my ankle and although it's fine to walk on, anything more is still painful. I'm going to get waxed today so that I can go swimming - I'm starting to really feel like a flump.

My to do list today is:
- Send parcel back
- Buy wedding card and birthday card
- Birthday present
- Pick up parcel
- Wax
- Complete paperwork and send
- See gran (BRIEFLY)
- Yoga (putting this on the list because my friend is on hols and I'm more likely to be lazy without her)
- Wash up and clean kitchen
- Put clothes away

Things I want to get done this week:
- Vets appt
- Find library audiobook CD!!! (Where can it be??)
- Get blind hung
- Paint small side window in kitchen and hang blind there
- Mow lawn
- Apply for the several jobs I fancy
- Get in touch with employment agencies
- Start on sorting the spare bedroom

Lots to get done as ever, and as usual I'm procrastinating over one thing I don't want to do (paperwork!) so I'm going to jump on that first with the old twenty minute rule.

Tete_en_l'Air

Again it's been a few weeks since I posted and I've not really made any headway with anything. This diary really is a reflection of my mental state right now: bursts of productivity and lots of ideas and to do lists, followed by long periods of total inertia.

My gran has been poorly and in and out of hospital these last 2-3 weeks so seeing to her has taken up a lot of my time and energy. Last week I spent five days with her basically making sure she was OK, her house was OK and sorting bills and life admin for her; so consequently my own life and house are now in total disarray. She's in hospital at the moment and will hopefully be coming home today so I need to get a wriggle on if I want to get anything done for myself today.

My sprained ankle is STILL painful. I went out with the runners on Sunday and just walked five miles, just to get some exercise, but I'm clearly still walking oddly on it because my hamstrings are killing me now, so moving about is painful, which makes me even less inclined to do housework or anything else! I've started a short course of acupuncture but I haven't felt a difference since the first session tbh.

Something that is still hanging over me is the flaming lost audiobook!!! I'm convinced it's in the house but have searched high and low and it hasn't turned up. I'm loathe to just tell the library I've lost it and pay a fine, because I know it's going to appear somewhere really unexpected like a knitting bag or something in six months' time. I'm thinking of buying a copy to replace the one missing CD and take it back to the library, then when I inevitably find the missing CD I can sell the full set on. There's a copy on ebay at the moment for £25 which I suspect is a lot cheaper than the library would charge to replace it from new.

A couple of good things I HAVE managed to do since I last posted: I managed to finally hang the blind on the main kitchen window - it took a LOT LOT LOT of wrangling but it really finishes off the room so I'm pleased; and I cleaned the pond out!! A full-on, total overhaul. It desperately needed it as I hadn't touched it since dad died and he hadn't done anything to it for a while as he was too poorly. I completely replaced all the water, removed about three buckets of sludge from the bottom, added a natural stone liner over the black plastic one, cleaned the filter and got the fountain working, and added some new plants. It all looks a bit 'new' now, and there's still a few things to do, but it's a huge weight of my mind and the fish look so happy zooming about in the clear water.

Right, it's half past eight. I'm going to clean the kitchen, then call the hospital for an update, then hopefully I have time to clean the living room before I have to do anything gran-related.

I'm going to try to keep posting here more regularly. I do think it's a good motivator to get my thoughts down somewhere, although it could be seen as yet another procrastination tool!

Tete_en_l'Air

As predicted, most of this week has been taken up with my gran. She's home now and much better - she's back to just complaining about restless legs in the night so that's a good sign, although she's called a doctor out about it today. I think she maybe has unrealistic expectations of how an 82 year old is supposed to feel day-to-day. She said all she wants today is a newspaper so I'm going to do my washing up now then pop round for no longer than half an hour to drop that off.

I want to spend today making the most of the sunshine by... painting round the bottom of the house (it's mostly horrible pebbledash with even horribler flaky brown paint on the bottom five or so bricks - I have some nice grey masonry paint and I'm hoping that will lift the overall look of the place despite the ugly pebbledash which would be extremely expensive and messy to do anything with), building my plant shelf thing that has been on my list for weeks, and putting wood protector stuff on that and the trough thing I built.

I have an acupuncture appointment at 4pm so I need to get a wriggle on if I want to get all of this done!