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HairyHandofDartmoor

Happy Christmas Redo 🎅🎄⛄🎁

Seasidegal58

Have a very happy New Year redo and here's to a healthy prosperous 2021 for you and your family. 

🥳🍾🥳🍾

doingitanyway

Happy New Year x

redofromstart

Thank you.  In the immortal words of Mistress Weatherwax 'I ATENT DEAD'
Tired, busy and my eyes hurt.  I predict a surge of eye and back issues for the country following on from all the home working, but better sore than sad.  
Finances are fine.  Tree made it up, briefly. 

Sun_Addict

Glad you’re ok. It does make you wonder if there’ll be any backlash from the WFH for so long. I’m fortunate that work bought me a proper desk, chair, second screen and all the other bits to make it a safe working environment. I know plenty working from kitchen tables though.

astrocytic_kitten

Ooooh redo, I’ve just remembered some news I meant to tell you - I got some of the witches Discworld hardbacks for Christmas. Things of beauty!

Hope you’re managing some time to look after yourself in amongst all the work. 

redofromstart

@Sun_Addict I have the kit as I always work from home, just think my eyes are slowly getting worse in a middle aged (21 so many times now) kind of way and I hate going to the opticians especially since they mentioned the dreaded 'bifocals' word.  I have turned the kindle up to 7 and given up on real books.  So hard for those working off the dining table with one eye on the kids in the background.  
@astrocytic_kitten oh lovely, deeply envious.  I am keeping the nice first editions but buying them all as readers on kindle and gifting the paperbacks to people I think would like to read them.  A few weeks ago our finance director quoted TP on deadlines which made him my new work best friend.  I think you find TP connections in the most unlikely of places.

My pay day tomorrow, and his was a couple of days ago.  Haven't moved it about as we probably owe it all to the tax man once I do the tax returns this weekend.  Have the paperwork ready, just haven't braced myself for the pain of the bill.  I may even need to dip into the savings, I hyper-ventilate at the idea.  I saved the money for the tax bill, but I struggle with using savings.  They are for looking at in a proud fashion and polishing every so often, not using.  I am very grateful that we have them.  
Food obsession of the week is baked egg custard with nutmeg, no pastry using Delia creme caramel recipe proportions for the milk/egg/sugar ratio.  Also minor fascination with turkey 'bacon' rashers at 32 calories a slice which I now prefer to the real thing on my nasty gluten free wholemeal part baked role.
House has progressed, a bit of clearing meant a space cleared up for me to finally have a study.  Still needs the doorway plastering, but I don't count plasterboard as an 'essential' purchase so it can wait.  Lovely view of the back garden.  Today the early snowdrops have started to show some white which made me happy.
Looking after me?  Difficult at the moment, but I am doing what I can to use up my stash of face and body stuff.  Must go back to doing the lymph face massage stuff regularly as it really helped and it used stuff I already have.  

HairyHandofDartmoor

Nice to hear from you Redo . I hope the tax bill isn't too scary.

Seasidegal58

Good to hear you have a proper study space to work from - and how nice that you have a view of the back garden. The snowdrops sound lovely and you'll have all the other spring flowers to contemplate soon!🌷

redofromstart

Thanks HHOD and Seaside.  

The tax bill was better than expected and the shiny savings remain intact.  Lovingly polished in fact.  The standard interest rate on the mortgage on the other hand was very painful, the monthly interest nearly doubled so I cracked and fixed again.  Took minutes to do online by staying with the same provider and the interest is back to what it was.  The penalty is that I can only overpay by 10% in any 12 months which is ok but they also reduced the monthly payments so less is being paid off routinely.  When this two year fix ends then we will need to look at it properly.  At least if everything goes wonky the minimum we must pay has dropped.

Hurrah no council tax month, boo to car insurance and service.  I forget every year that I run it that way for a reason.  I also got round to putting the meter readings into Bulb and had to make a payment to them.  Everyone at home is certainly taking its toll.  Must remember to do the home working tax claims too.

Still spending a lot on food, trying to batch cook at weekends to counter this.  I wish I liked something fast and easy like pasta (and that it liked me obviously!)  Weight continues to creep up slowly.  Everyone else at home constantly snacking makes me hungry too.  I suspect the imminent return to the office will see many people unable to fit into work clothes if they don't do something now, but I don't even have that focus.  Need to either lose weight or buy new trousers though, only two pairs that fit and one of those is covered in bleach marks.

Garden is starting to bloom, crocuses, irises, primroses and hellebores adding to the wave of snowdrops that I have all over the place now.  Lots of pleasure from a 5 minute stroll around and a great return on the few pounds I spent on very reduced bulbs in the autumn. 

Hope everyone is keeping well, I do read through a couple of times a week to try and keep up but work continues to take all of my head space.