From debt to freedom...

Buffythedebtslayer

What an utter knob. Blimey. 
Good on you for not rising to him being such a tit. 
Hope he lays low for a while. like I dunno, ten years!  

Honeysucklelou2

Thank you VelvetFreak, Janb5, Cherryfudge & Buffy.  Thankfully I have had 2 days with no unwanted visits and I feel so much calmer and relaxed.

I am rejoicing today and feel so very thankful. Last year, I had an engineer from a local company come to look at the boiler. For the last  3 winters, it will turn on, but immediately locks out. If you press the button to release the locked out state it works for a minute, if you’re lucky, before locking out again. The engineer last year, said that the boiler was too old to be able to get parts for it and I needed to get a new one. Unfortunately I’ve not been able to save £100, never mind the few thousand I’d need to replace it, so we have been relying on the woodburning stove to heat the living room, which it does well, but that doesn’t heat the rest of the house. It has also meant using the immersion to get hot water, which has no doubt contributed to the huge electricity bills. I’d bought a couple of portable plug in oil radiators to try and get some heat into the bedrooms.  Yesterday someone  who lives nearby came to take a look at the boiler...and fixed it ( need the bouncing star jump emoji!). It turned out to be a part that I’m not entirely sure about, but he had a spare one and got it going. Last night the radiators worked and we were warm throughout the house 🥳🥳🥳🥳. So warm in fact that one of the  dogs started panting. It’s been not working for so long I had forgotten that we have a thermostat on the wall until it was pointed out to me 😂.  So thankful.

Good news and not so good news on the gardening front. Good news is that the lettuce seedlings have emerged and are fast becoming a forest in the seed tray! Not so good  is that one of the younger, bouncier dogs knocked the lid off my propagator and managed to completely upset one tray but thankfully left the other, so no Green Zebra tomatoes for us, but hopefully the Ponderosa Pink have survived. I was hoping to finish off the greenhouse at the allotment today but the weather has come in wet again, so might have to see how it goes during the day.

Lots more decluttering has been done, including the filing of about 20 different statements, some of which I hadn’t even opened. Sometimes I leave opening them until I have time to go through them and file because if I open them and leave them in an opened envelope they will get read.

There was a break in the weather on Thursday so DD2, DS3 and I managed a walk. We tried a “Let’s find a public footpath and explore “ walk. We drove to a small lay-by down a lane, about 4 miles from home and took the first public footpath sign we came to. It took us initially around the back of someone’s garden before opening out into a couple of fields, one of which was occupied by 4 horses, looking slightly surprised at us passing through! Once out of the field we meandered along a winding  lane that lead steadily uphill until we were fairly high up on the very edge of the moor. It was quite surreal because usually the moors have low stone hedges and few trees but we were in quite a deep lane, so deep that we were sheltered from the cold wind, making quite a pleasant environment. We literally reached the end of the lane which stopped in a farmyard, but to the left another public footpath sign took across a few more fields, this time  descending to a river. I made sure that we always knew where the nearest village was, so we had our bearings which was just as well  because I’d left the map on the kitchen worktop! From the river we found another track leading back uphill. It can’t be used very much because it was littered with beech nuts, casings ( is that the right word?)  and leaves and you could see where the water from the rainfall  had  drained and made a way through the beech nuts and leaves, down to the river.  It made me wonder why such a track existed as it went to the river and stopped. The whole area had quite an ancient feel to it as if we were treading on established paths from years ago. It was quite a climb to the top of the track but at the top we saw the village again and walked through what must have been a mile of muddy waterlogged track. Where the track had levelled off, it had stopped draining down to the river. The puddles were so deep in places that we saw clumps of frog spawn in them.  The frogs must have thought it constituted  a pond ☺️. Eventually the muddy track brought us full circle to the original lane we had parked on. It was great fun discovering paths that are on our doorstep. As we drove home DD2 and I were trying to spot as many different potential signs we could start at next time.

Cherryfudge

That's fab news about the boiler! I'm so pleased for you.  
Now I need the Eek emoji about your statements being read... ::o 
I always love hearing about your walks. If you get a rainy day, I suggest you take the children down to wherever your local history collection is housed and try to find that walk on old maps. Perhaps there used to be a mill or farm at the end? It would be fascinating to find out.

lucielle

Brilliant news regarding the boiler!
L

janb5

There are some lovely people who turn up like like the cavalry  Maybe make him one of your delicious cakes- it would go down a storm!  I endorse Cherryfudge`s comments re the statements......! x

crazy_cat_lady

Really happy news about the boiler HSL. Enjoy that!

VelvetFreak

Yay for the boiler working again!
I love reading your story about the walk you went on.

MeandO

Lovely boiler news HSL2, I’m so pleased for you. Xx

Honeysucklelou2

Thank you everyone...I am still revelling in the heat and feel so thankful 😀. That’s a good idea Jan, I could ask his wife, which flavour he’d prefer.

I went to work this morning to try and get ahead for the coming week. Hopefully I’ve done enough to make Monday easier. I got to the allotment today and did a bit more chopping. The greenhouse is virtually bramble free but I need to search for some clips before I can put the spare glass in. I’m sure I have some somewhere! 

The ponderosa pink tomato seeds have started to germinate 🙂. I’re recycled a cardboard veg carton into being a seed tray and got another variety of tomato sown - this time a variety called “chocolate stripes”.

I’ve printed off some 100 squares to colour in each 1/100th of each debt. Quick visual statements of each debt I think, will work better than spreadsheets. I find the spending tracker app is effective as it shows the breakdown of spending in bar chart and pie chart forms. Anything to keep motivation going as there is little wriggle room in the budget.

janb5

HSL - I made Mary Berry`s carrot cake with mascarpone icing this week and it was so easy.  Pretty inexpensive to make as well and the mascarpone available @ Lidl.