Cheery's country living adventure

Cheery_Daff

Hmm, spreadsheet discrepancy might just be a function of when interest is added - it's showing that we owe about £20 MORE than we did when I checked yesterday  So I'm going to wait til the last day of the month and use that figure to add to the spreadsheet, and see where we are (there's about £150 discrepancy at the minute). I'm not sure I can be bothered to even TRY to understand it right this second - what's £150 discrepancy when you still owe £192k?!

South_coast

I'm so glad I'm not into spreadsheets 🤣! I definitely don't need anything more in my life to obsess about!

Cheery_Daff

Ha SC! I do like a spreadsheet although mostly I use them with words in, to turn pretty colours and keep track of things. This is my one numbers exception! But I'm not too obsessive about it - happy to fiddle the numbers if necessary when it comes to these giant amounts

The sun is shining! It's very exciting! I've had a late around and written a blog post, and am now having a VERY exciting cafe trip on my own! Hooray!!

Cheery_Daff

Evening chums

Well I have a LOVELY restful weekend, and am having a much better week than of late. Things that seemed overwhelming last week are just being ticked off the list easily peasily Always nice when that happens! 

Lots of post today! A 'dear resident' letter from the council about potential changes in restrictions. A letter for each of us from the Covid study people (two negative tests 11 days ago apparently - I assume they'd tell us more quickly if they were positive!). An invoice from the garage for the MOT (I've just paid that now - it's going back again on Thursday to have the brakes sorted).

And two letters from the car insurance people about a mileage reduction refund. Apparently once we register, we'll get 2% of our premium back for every 1000 miles we don't drive between now and the end of the policy up to a max of 10,000 miles. We've got both of our cars with the same people so likely worth doing. Are there downsides? Mr Cheery feels like it's spying to have to enter exact mileage, but given we give them approximate mileage anyway, and exact mileage is recorded for MOT, I can't see the issue. 

Not sure how much we'd get back. I think we're only down for 10,000 miles a year on each car anyway (and probably less on one of them). We can also apply for a refund from March to July as well. Certainly done FAR less than we would usually with me not driving to work, so even if we only get a few quid back it's worth it I suppose. 

Nothing else financial to report I don't think. It's my sister's birthday today so I sent her a healthy takeaway wrap for her lunch via an online delivery app from a local (to her) cafe the wonders of the internet! I nearly sent her cake, but she's been trying so hard to be healthy I didn't want to sabotage, and I knew she already had a birthday cake. Good job I didn't as three other people sent her cake! fortunately she has three almost teenage boys who will happily help her plough through it

Mr Cheery built me a new standing desk adaptation today so I've been using that this afternoon, most jolly. Makes a nice difference to be able to stand up and will do my back no end of good. My previous adaptation was so unwieldy that I stopped using it but this is far better.

Right - resting!

edwink

Cheery_Daff said:

Evening chums

Well I have a LOVELY restful weekend, and am having a much better week than of late. Things that seemed overwhelming last week are just being ticked off the list easily peasily Always nice when that happens! 

Right - resting!

I've only just caught up on your diary at long last and I've really enjoyed reading what you have been getting up to. So nice to read that you had a restful weekend because sometimes we all deserve to put our feet up once in a while. Glad you are still nipping out to your local cafe for tea and sometimes cake, it is so nice that you are supporting a local independent shop.  

Keep up the good work.

Edwink x

Cheery_Daff

Thanks edwink Good to see you! 

Urgh, I'm out of sorts today. Just hormones I think Haven't felt able to settle to anything all day, whatever I started I felt like I should be doing something else. Didn't help that I've had a really bitty day, don't think I had longer than an hour free in one go before I had to meet someone or go somewhere. Urgh.

Still. Some good things came of the day! We collected the car from the garage, and as the garage is half way to the cafe, we nipped there too at the end of the day, which was just the right thing Did I say I'd had a word with someone about the woman's mask? We she was wearing a different style today and it was all fine, so all good

She also helped me mop up when I clumsily knocked my tea all over myself, the table, the floor, my papers, my diary, and the edge of my new work laptop No harm done fortunately.

We've grown some giant turnips here and we've carved one of them this evening Mr Cheery did the hard bit, scooping the middle out, and I just made the face We also carved a face in a kind of bulbous courgette as well which was much easier!

I'm sure there are other things to report but I' tired, and need to get up tomorrow and get a bit of work done in the morning, which I'm not pleased about but there we are. 

Caught another mouse this evening, and took it up to the layby. Really thick fog swirling round, it was quite exciting and quite alarming at the same time!

Oh and I did TWO streetbees surveys this morning - a whole 50p!!

Cheery_Daff

Evening chums, 

Pleased to report I'm in a rather better humour today, thank goodness. I did spend rather a lot of time working, but it was interesting stuff that I was doing for myself if you see what I mean, so I just kept going (and quite frankly the weather was SO blinking vile I refused to be outside!)

Anyway, what to report? Managed to do a meter reading on request for the first time since August I always see the emails to late, but I've caught this one just in time! We're £240 in credit it seems, which will slowly drop away over the winter, but that's fine. 

We had a gas delivery the other day, so need to check whether that's come out of the bank as requested in one big lump. Also it's pension payday and the end of the month, so off for a little bit of a play! 

Cheery_Daff

Well I got half way through reconciling YNAB while Mr Cheery was in the bath then decided that wasn't how I wanted to spend the little bit of time I had on my own so I stopped But I will get back to it today! Nothing drastic was happening in the bank account at least.

We have a power cut this morning, so no refreshed hot water bottle, and most importantly NO TEA Not sure how I'll cope. Tempted to just go back to bed But I promised myself I'd do a couple of hours of work before going to the cafe, so that is what I'll do.

Of course the cafe will be closing again soon. For us, that's the main difference lockdown will make - I was working at home anyway, and most of our friends and family are in tier 3 anyway so no visiting. It's hardly a hardship of epic proportions, but I will miss our little cafe trips again

Hey ho. Right. Going to get under a blanket, get an extremely inadequate drink of water to put me on, and get on with some work while waiting for the power to come back...

themadvix

Hope the power returns soon Cheery! Have you got a camping stove for the tea? 

Cheery_Daff

Don't worry! It came back on shortly after I posted than goodness. And we had a lovely breakfast in the cafe, last weekend breakfast for a while it looks like. Maybe we can add some more OPs to the mortgage from the cafe budget??

I'd actually booked a couple of days off work the week after next and we were aiming to have a couple of nights away from home for the first time since 2017 (when we stayed with friends in Germany for a weekend). Alas that is not to be, but this morning Mr Cheery suggested spending some of the budgeted holiday money on frivolities and decorations so we may well do that instead. We'll see.