Cheery's country living adventure

walkers60

Hello again
Thank you so much for your replies.  That is indeed a great help, rtandon27.  

Cheery_Daff

Glad RT could help! 😁

Bit of a quiet one this evening, so I did a bit of MB, abandoned for a while. Currently aim is just to make back the cost of Oddsmonkey and Team Casino subscriptions as I want to keep my options open - between them they're £33 I think. Made £21 in June so a bit behind (although overall well ahead this year). Managed a grand total of £7 tonight... 😂 better than nothing!

Cheery_Daff

Right. On a bit of a mission today (well, a quiet one!)

Cycled just over 8 miles this morning which was jolly, and had a lovely long shower (thinking the plughole was blocked but not bothering to unblock while I was in the shower - turned out the actual plug had fallen in )

Now I've just been emailing for quotes to replace the roof on one of our outbuildings. This is something we've been meaning to get round to for ages - the building itself is an old stable block, the most sturdy of our outbuildings, but the roof is asbestos and has quite a few holes in now, and if we leave it much longer the building itself is going to start falling into disrepair. Mr Cheery would like to use it either as storage or as a kind of workshop, so it makes sense to get it repaired now - and we'll be able to free up some space in the garage which is closer to the house as well, which would make sense as a more immediate storage space for garden stuff, bikes, household tools etc (which are currently all over the place). 

Also went back to the quote we got for removing the small garage which is falling apart and which sits right in the way of the best view from the house - turns out the quote was 30th July last year How has it been a whole year?! Still, it would be good to get it done - although it's currently being used as a storage space for things that are on their way to the tip, so we'd need a few tip runs first. Quote was £620, which isn't too bad, and can't imagine they'll charge much more a year later. 

We did get a quote from the same people to remove the asbestos roof from the big outbuilding (just under £2000) but I'm going to find someone who can fit the replacement first and see if they can remove the old one themselves - no point complicating things by getting one person to remove, and then hoping the new person can replace before it starts raining. We'll do that if the roofer can't remove of course, but let's see if it's necessary first. 

Sometimes this place feels quite overwhelming... Of course we are very fortunate to be here, and I don't ever forget that, but if I try to list all the things that need doing I very rapidly become completely overwhelmed. Instead we're just trying to make a bit of progress each week/month/year and things are slowly getting better over time, even if it's not always in the most logical order... 

No more plans for today, so I think I'll pop outside and get digging my giant hole again Small steps...

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, and I remembered to order my repeat prescription - the surgery website is full of 'download the NHS app, it's really easy!' so I finally thought I would, since I have to order a repeat prescription every 8 weeks for the rest of my life.

It was actually easier than I imagined! Although I did have to login to the website itself to find my NHS number (I think there was a way to do it without this). I had to take a photo of my driving licence (which came out upside down), and then it scanned my face (which wasn't upside down), and then it told me to wait for an email which might take 2 hours, but which actually took 5 minutes, and apparently my upside down face matched my right way up face so I'm in! 

Of course I'd actually ordered the prescription on the website anyway since I was already logged in and suspected I might forget in the intervening 2 hours (which was actually only 5 minutes...)

Hopefully this will make it easier in the future though... Wish they were like my old surgery - they'd send a year's worth of prescriptions at a time to the pharmacy, and I just had to pop in to collect them every 8 weeks, rather than remembering 3 days in advance to order them. You'd think I'd get used to it (or at least set up some kind of reminder...) but apparently that's beyond me...  

Baileys_Babe

I too am on medication for life and I have been for about 20 years, I have set up a reminder on my phone to ensure I order them otherwise I would fail. You would think a medication which even if I take a single dose late can cause complications would be hard to forget. But because it is a constant, I am not continually focused on it.

Cheery_Daff

Glad it's not just me BB! I think I partly forget because I take mine last thing before bed, see I'm running out and think 'I must order some more!' but then don't because I'm on the way to bed, and don't remember again til the next night... Maybe if I've got the app on the phone and can just order it there and then rather than firing up the computer... We'll see. 

Anyway I am RIGHT on it today, as I've FINALLY started measuring up to sort out the kitchen ceiling! You may remember we ripped out our entire kitchen in September last year... in preparation for some builders replacing the joists/floorboards above, which they did in October. We've been using our temporary kitchen (toaster, microwave, 2 ring induction hob, minuscule oven that fits half a pizza) ever since so it's about time things got sorted out I think... 

Anyway, I shall be fitting plasterboard to the ceiling myself - we're not actually plastering, as we're having the beams exposed, and I have no intention of plastering loads of small spaces between beams. Still going to be rather faffy, with battens fitted to the joists, insulation stuffed in, plasterboard stuck to the battens etc. Not had an active in-house DIY project for a while! 

Not cheap though - plasterboard, battens, glue, screws etc is over £200 now and that's without insulation - going to see what we've got and what we need after my next cuppa... 

Cheery_Daff

Ok! 

Copious amounts of glue and screws arriving on Tuesday. Plasterboard and battens arriving on Thursday. I've rummaged around in the outbuildings and I reckon we have enough scavenged insulation to not have to buy any more. Grand total £240 (but we DO need a kitchen ceiling and hopefully this will reduce some of the LPG bills because there won't be a load of heat escaping to upstairs... I hope...)

rtandon27

How exciting Cheery - a new project on the go!  It will be lovely when you have a ceiling in the kitchen & can trap some of that heat in the house!  Hope you got the water tank in the ground & managed to collect some of the copious amounts of water that came down yesterday!

Repeat prescriptions are such a pain, especially when as BB says they are meds for life! - I don't understand why my current doctor's office doesn't just prescribe the 3-month / 6-month amount and then book me in for the medication review immediately with the caveat that no repeat until the review!  My previous doctor at our last place did that & the pharmacy even kept repeats ready for pick-up for the one day a month I went through the village!  I've now had to put a reminder in my diary a whole week before I need it because for some unfathomable reason, the electronic request system takes the doctor's office four business days from request to provide it to the pharmacy & the pharmacy takes another day to get it on their delivery vehicle and drop it off to the front door!
...though I must say the pre-planning is a bit of a pain, but nowhere nearly as painful as trying to deal with the ditsy women who work in the front office at the doc's!!!🤣🤣🤣

Karmacat

Oh my, a double wow.  First wow is a wow of horror, that people on prescription meds for life have to go through such **faff** to get the next dose!  Really appalling.  Second wow, a good one, is for the kitchen ceiling.  Yay! 

Cheery, with all the land, and the sociability, and the different fingers in the pie, I'm not sure you'd appreciate this, but it all reminds me of Escape to the Chateau, the tv series about the Strawbridge family and their lives in a chateau in France.  Sorry!  I'm not sure they're your cup of tea, but its an extreme compliment from me, I guarantee you - living your own life, in the way you want it, based on your own principles on your own land, its brilliant.

Cheery_Daff

Tis indeed a faff - for everyone involved! They're creating themselves more work as well - at the old GP, they just signed 12 months of prescriptions in one go and I lodged them in the chemist (and booked my next medication review), so no need for pre-planning, just collected one whenever the chemist was open and I'd run out. Really don't know why they can't do that (they said 'to save people having more prescriptions than they need' - but it seems daft to have it as a blanket policy for people on long-term medication). 

Hey ho. 

Ha, yes KC, I know of the Strawbridge family, really enjoyed their earlier series (It's not easy being green, I think?) and I have a couple of their books. I've not seen Escape to the Chateau though, I think it coincided with not having proper TV access any more and I've never quite got round to sorting it out. I follow the previous Mrs Strawbridge (Bridgit, who was in the earlier series) online, she's done some lovely stuff around bees lately. Will add it to my list of things to check out! 

Back to work today, and I don't mind toooo much since the weather is so vile!