Cherry takes the reins

Cherryfudge

badmemory said:

The trouble is that their health & safety instructions would have been not to touch anything to do with the electrics.  I used to work in a very small offshoot office of a co & if they had known what we did when things stopped working properly we would have had H & S down on us like a ton of bricks. 

Ah yes, that makes perfect sense now - in my work we have to make a phone call and a contracted company comes to change a light bulb! Nice bit of madness really: my first training with this place was a one-size-fits-all health and safety which is why I used to know the correct heights for different bits of scaffolding! Really useful for my then office job .So if they just made us all do a short course on fitting light bulbs, competency assessed annually, they would save the carbon footprint of all those phone calls, the call out time of the company, their fuel costs and probably a lot of admin time. It makes sense, so do they do it? 

:  

Another inconsistency (while I'm on my soap box) is that they keeping everyone trained in food hygiene but forbid us to freeze food we've cooked at work - although we know and have to record the HACCP (hazards and controls set in place to minimise them) which should mean that foods we prepare have a better chance of being safe than even some commercially prepared ones (where we can't check the HACCP chain). So they spend hundreds on each member of staff and don't trust us to use all the skills they've trained us in...

Anyhow... (I'm off the soap box now), I messaged the store on FB and had a proper reply, i.e. written by a real person and addressing my points) to say they are going to look into it.  

Cherryfudge

We had our fish and chips tea tonight as we're both working tomorrow, so another £7.70 spent. 

I've cleaned the goldfish out and saw the swelling behind his eye has grown quite a bit and looks worrying though he doesn't seem at all bothered and seems otherwise in good health. It's not the actual eye that's swollen and Google seems to think it could be anything from cancer to oxygen concentration. Our vet rescued this same fish a few years ago when he got a pebble lodged in his mouth, but I don't know if they do surgery for fish... More research needed, as well as more cleaning, because I found the food he's started to have the last few weeks mucks the tank up quite a bit. The lump started before that though.

I've also spent some time practising French but I have to give it a break when I'm getting more wrong than right. DH, meanwhile, has heroically fixed the dishwasher but he says if there are any further problems he'll call an electrician. The current (pun, LOL) issues are the result of the way it was wired when the whole house was done some years ago but we really don't want to spoil our very new kitchen tiles to channel in new wiring if we can help it!

Cherryfudge

Sun_Addict said:

I’ve had an off day today with my Spanish, some days I fly through it, today wasn’t one of those days 😆

Money well spent on peace of mind for the carbon monoxide issue. 

My DD has issues with flashing lights, she has epilepsy and photo-sensitive migraines so anything like that sets them off. 

Cross -posted with you SA, sorry.

You would be very welcome over on Language-learners' chat - Page 7 — MoneySavingExpert Forum where there are a few people learning Spanish. I definitely have days when my head can't do French, especially if I'm tired. I don't think the odd day off is anything to worry about, count it as time for your brain to consolidate.

Sun_Addict

Ooh will check that out, thank you 😄 This week has been full of work related things so Spanish has definitely been on the back burner. 

Cherryfudge

Alas, my slow but steady weight gain has jumped up a bit this week. I blame the chilli! Well, and the chocolate... so I had a good long walk at lunchtime to try to set it in reverse. on the way home I went to the shops for a Valentine's card/chocolate for DH and some embroidery threads.

Work was extra quiet as the only person we have staying was out till the evening, so I got some training out of the way then did some research for a situation at work and found a couple of interesting pieces of information, but I also spent quite a while chatting to a colleague and discovered she used to go to the same church I go to. I'm always amazed who knows who in a town this size!

Spending
Gifts £8
Hobbies £3

Cherryfudge

A wet day, and a wet week to come if the forecast is to be believed. Online church for me this morning though I had vaguely thought of accompanying DH to the 'real thing'. Amazingly after a lifetime of being a late night person, I'm needing more sleep and actually getting to sleep earlier so waking up in time to walk to church might be a possibility. Of course working mid-week not weekends may be helping too.

The weather scuppered A's invitation to go for a walk with them but we went round there this afternoon and had plenty of baby cuddles. Hilariously, when DH gave a mock-hypnosis to get her to sleep, he very nearly succeeded - twice! Then, thinking he had succeeded, he walked off and she woke up again.

About tea time the rain was slackening so we walked down to the pub and A treated us all to a meal. It was nice but didn't help my plans to lose weight so I walked home afterwards - about 40 minutes so a few calories will have been mopped up.

Nothing spent, and finally rounded up most of the baby clothes receipts for H in case she needs to change anything.

This evening I'm thankful for time with family, the freedom to exercise and a likely solution to my latest knitting problem. Also goats' cheese lasagne!

Cherryfudge

Monday - Valentine's Day - we romantically spent our free morning sorting out the lounge curtains by adding more hooks and respacing the drawstrings. Cost was £6ish which to me is a lot for a couple of dozen bits of plastic, but the curtains do look better. In the afternoon we were both working: as the weather was miserable the shift was very slow at the charity shop where DH helps out but for me, a late shift after so many earlies felt almost back to normal. It was a bit odd in that I was surplus for the first half of it and got some paperwork done.

Tuesday (15th) was an early shift at the other service and there were actually quite a few people there including someone who has a lot of management experience so my colleagues and I picked her brains over a couple of issues. That was really helpful.

The day brightened up, too, so I took someone out for a short walk. I'd intended to go for a run after work myself but energy wasn't forthcoming.

This afternoon and evening have been quite productive, though. I gave the fish tank another clean and have taken out some of the ornaments that were hiding dirt. I think the fish likes the extra space as well as the cleaner water. I've also moved DS2's tank of newts - to my surprise still apparently thriving - with the aim of putting them somewhere I can keep a better eye on them. They seem to need little input and the plants in their vivarium are overgrowing. I'm going to have to find a new place quickly though, as they are at present in DS2's room which Aunty will be borrowing in a few days!

I was intending to meet my friend's this evening but one has hurt her knee and wasn't feeling up to socialising. I used the time for the fish tank instead. I've also been in touch with my lovely former neighbour, who's about to have a baby; I've ordered my prescription; I've done rather badly on my French lesson, I've done two lots of laundry and I've mended a bra.

I've remembered I was supposed to reply to a message asking me to help out with something, and I haven't. I need to look at the message properly and work out what I can do and what's a step too far for comfort. It's the same weekend as J and L have asked the family round, but we aren't sure what's happening about that and I'm almost sure I've agreed to a shift at the same time. 

Spending:
Housekeeping £14. ??

Tonight I'm thankful for the weather turning nice this morning, helpful advice at work, DS2's pets surviving despite my not having invested much in them and being given a day's annual leave later this week.

Cherryfudge

What a windy 24 hours it's been! The patched up roof at work is going to need more work, as more tiling has gone to seek its fortune and some of the plastic temporarily covering the missing ridge tiles has followed it.

I was supposed to be doing the early shift at my usual place of work but the other service needed staff and asked me to go over. I don't think I would have enough to do at either place but it wasn't too bad and they did actually need me. The next five days are all either leave or days off.

DH has done another section of dry lining in the kitchen, and the company we contacted some time last summer is free tomorrow to fit our replacement back door! It doesn't fit very well, sticks badly and isn't double glazed so the new one should be an improvement, but tomorrow will be draughty!

I'm waiting to hear if my friend has had her baby, and we've also heard that DH's best friend has been called in for the third series of treatments, which had been put off when he got Covid a few week ago. then my friend who hurt her knee has had the day off due to the weather, which has been just what she needed as she's in a lot of pain and has been told it will take about 6 weeks to heal. I've offered to walk her dog tomorrow but this will be a bit of a juggling act as DH is working so I'm also the contact point for the door company. I've no idea how long a door takes to fit so the schedule is anyone's guess.

Nothing spent.

Tonight I'm thankful for a really lovely meeting with the church group, days off to come and the prospect of a more winter-tight door.

Cherryfudge

I've just been checking the garden before Storm Eunice - okay so it's the middle of the night and we are well away from the main area due to be affected, but we could do without things blowing around. I noticed the door is loose on the gas meter cupboard so I've closed it as best I can, the shed door has all latches fastened and the recycling boxes are in the hall.

I spent part of the day visiting my friend and walking her dog and I've said I'll walk him again in the morning but I'm having serious second thoughts now. He's not the problem, the weather could be. I'll see how things are when I get up. I'm also due to walk down to help with the church cleaning but I'm not sure that's a good idea either. I could offer to do both on Saturday.

Our main news is that the new back door is in place. It has lovely deep double glazing and lets lots of light into the hall but the glass is clear so I can't get away from the feeling we have left the door open! I think I will be talking DH into some window transfers to break up the effect. We aren't overlooked but it occurs to me that anyone sneaking round would have a good view into the hall and I'm in the habit of leaving bags there which might be tempting. On the positive side, I can see how some pots of flowers lining the step outside would look really nice in summer, and I think with a  bit of thought we could decorate the outside to screen the view a bit.

Some shopping got done... can't remember how much so I'll have to add that another time. I've also got seriously into Wordle... wasted ages on it this afternoon so I shall try not to lose so much time to it in future. I also spent a while running the bit of the computer cleaning program that finds duplicated programmes. My laptop is old and slow now but I'm hoping that the mass of duplicates it found were the problem, or at least part of it, and now they're gone it will skip like a spring lamb again.

Things I'm thankful for tonight: new sturdy back door that will open and shut without brute force and won't be draughty. Time with my friend and her very cute dog. Chocolate brioche. 

Honeysucklelou2

Good news on the new door.  My DD showed me wordle the other day - interesting game!