Mortgage free in Forever Home :-)

KajiKita

badmemory said:

Don't forget with rhubarb though that the home grown is better than shop bought.  It seems to be one of the things with a really significant difference.

I didn’t know that. I have never bought rhubarb in a shop as I thought I didn’t like it. I have only ever picked it from a garden. 😊

KK

KajiKita

SandyShores said:

And lime juice is pretty reasonable in bottles (not as nice but handy to have).  It says to use by 6 weeks after opening but we always keep longer - though I guess the any could be frozen in ice cube portions.

Edit:  found this whole web page about freezing juice and/or fruit portions - I never knew you could freeze the portions.  https://toasterovenlove.com/how-to-freeze-extra-lime-juice/

I didn’t know that you get lime juice in bottles …. Wow 😊 I think I will go with the freezing option, especially for lemon juice and zest 👍

KK

KajiKita

Oh bother! Come back here and the first thing I see is a reminder that I should have bought limes this morning when I was out …. Bah! 😉

Anyway …. I have had a reasonably productive and positive day. My expenses have landed so I need to pay off the company AM3X (really wish they could just send the funds straight to the card itself instead of me having to do yet another transaction! 🙄). 

Booked my car in for MOT and service a week before the MOT is due. Hoping it doesn’t need too much work as I’ve spent quite a bit on it over the past 12 months. 

No gardening today but car is washed, refuelled, cleaned out and satnav set up ready for 60th birthday treat trip to Glastonbury for my best mate tomorrow 😊 I have also cleaned down my bedroom and thinned out some of the clutter - there are many drawers that need going through and thinning but that will be a winter job. Got rid of one carrier bag of motley assorted items including a 3 page handwritten list of why it felt so good to have left the psycho ex. I considered getting rid of the latter but it doesn’t provoke any particular emotional response any more and it’s actually quite a solid reflection of what I need in a relationship …. 😉 Also chopped back a houseplant that was taking over the landing, tidied up all the dead flowers and washed and rearranged the ornaments there - feels very different there and in my bedroom now 😊

Had HM tomato, sage and red onion soup from last year’s tomatoes and sage for lunch - it still tasted really good! 😊

Had a speculative approach from an LI recruiter about a possible job role - it’s a significant pay cut back to what I was on when I started this role but it seems like a much shorter commute. The only downside is the fact it’s a QSHE role and I’m not that fussed on the H&S bit. I sent the recruiter a huge wedge of questions! 😂

Waiting on Mr KK to return and my frozen vegan meals delivery …. 😊

KK

SandyShores

I was looking at some of my hand written reflective notes the other day too, it is good to see how far you've come and know that life is so much better.  Mine have gone back in my drawer too.

Soup sounds amazing.  I was sad to have to add most of a small net of red onions to the recycling the other day, we just hadn't used them - I hadn't thought about making soups to freeze.  At the moment I'm buying cans of lentil soup at 75p a tin - I feel like a slow cooker day is coming on.  The freezing lime and zest is a bit of a revelation to me, we've tended to buy the bottles but if I ever see limes on offer I'll be juicing and freezing them in ice cube trays along with the zest.  Will probably do that with lemons too - in some stores one lemon costs almost as much as a small net.

Good luck with the job, but if you are thinking of taking a significant pay cut, could you reduce your current job hours to a similar level?  Just a thought, as I know part-time a role can feel so different - I even had two part-time jobs once that added up to more than a full-time role and it was great, you just don't get involved in the office politics so much and its great to have a change.

Have a great time in Glastonbury today

KajiKita

@SandyShores, thanks for the idea of shorter hours on the existing job, but I just don’t think that would work. My boss is constantly trying to EXTEND my hours - I aim to work 7.30am to 3.30pm (usually arrive a little earlier and leave a little later) partly so I am aligned to production and partly so that I miss the worst of the traffic on my commute. I also sometimes take calls at home after standard work time from the US / Canada. My boss also starts at 7.30am (with a much shorter, easier commute) and works till 5pm so expects me to as well (he had a habit for a while of scheduling 1 hour meetings at 4pm which I refused to turn up to!). In all honesty the role and the business is so chaotic atm (slowly, slowly improving) that I genuinely think that the business would miss me if I worked fewer hours. In a few years it might be possible, but not yet. The appeal for me of the job mentioned to me yesterday would be the much shorter commute, but the two downsides are significant. We’ll see how it pans out. 

KK 

KajiKita

@SandyShores, I think you can freeze chopped onion as well can’t you?

Really looking forward to today; seeing my friend and having a proper, drawn out chin-wag …. <happy sigh> 😊

KK 

redofromstart

Yes you can freeze chopped onion - I struggle with chopping in bulk and sometimes buy the pre-diced fresh ones and freeze them as the frozen ones are chunkier chopped and rarely available.  

May be worth speaking to the recruiter about how rigid the pay band is as well. I work to pay bands and am open about the rate throughout but I know that isnt always the case.  I always ask myself what value I place on my time - be that commuting or chopping onions to save a few pence.

KajiKita

Long drive to and from Glastonbury, not helped by my friend arriving an hour later at mine than we had planned to leave …

A nice day on the whole, though chilly. I spent some money on myself for the first time in a long time (books, some beautiful green amber jewellery, a floating chime bar tuned to the root chakra, a pretty hippy-elegant top and a small, hand blown, (cutely wonky) blue glass vessel from the Viking shop that I will use as a posy vase) from the ‘treat money’ I set aside from my bonus 😊 

On the way home, somehow we got onto the covid pandemic and I gently challenged some of my friends utterly paranoid, conspiracy theory driven views on what happened and how the government responded to it. She was literally yelling at me, in the car, where I couldn’t get away from her. She offered to open the gates when we got back to my house, mid ‘debate’, but I said no and leaped out of the car to get away from her. I think she realised how it was affecting me as initially she was all set to rush off (it was quite late) but then we started walking around the garden, talking as if nothing had happened. This made it even later … we were standing in the drive and I realised that I had been bitten by a horse fly (it has a very distinctive sting for me), hadn’t taken an antihistamine in the morning and the venom was spreading through my leg as she started up on the covid thing again …. In the end I had to say that I had a bite and please could I go in and treat it. She left. Both of these things were a naff end to the day and will both linger for some time …. <sigh> 

However, I am delighted to have eaten one of my frozen vegan posh ready meals (loads of seaweed in it which is not something that I would normally try - reminded me so much of being in Japan!) - dinged in the microwave, so at least I got to eat before 8pm! 😊

In other news, all WW2 vehicles for the big France trip that Mr KK is leading, have safely arrived at Portsmouth docks 😊 Crossing my fingers for a smooth sailing for them 🤞

KK

SandyShores

I totally get where you are coming from when your role is key and it can take a while to sort things out so that everyone is comfortable/things don't go to pot without you.  Early finishes never seem to go to plan for me, so I always make it either a later start or have a whole day off (but I know that's not possible in every job).  

Onions, thanks, yes I have bought pre-frozen before, hadn't really thought about freezing them myself, but good to know it works.  It must work for garlic too I guess?

Sorry to hear about the late start and stressful end to your lovely day Kajikita.  I tend to avoid talk of covid, it seems to be a bit like Brexit talk - which divided friends and families across the country.  And my reaction to horseflies is dreadful, I ended up down at A&E once my ankle was so swollen I could hardly walk.  Your  Glastonbury trip sounded lovely though, lots of treasures and hope you recover soon

KajiKita

Thanks @SandyShores (every time I call you Sandy in my head, I see you as Sandy in Grease in the tight trousers and big hair! 😊😉) 

I’m quite brutal about finishing ‘on time’ as I know my productivity drops and my resentment climbs if I am obliged to stay late - think stroppy toddler (almost! 😂). I do work later sometimes, by choice, and then try to leave earlier on Fridays of that week but that never works either! 😂 I am doing some ‘work’ during this week off but only on stuff that really matters to *me* (mainly around looking after my team) and no more than 2 hours per day - once that time has elapsed I am closing the lid on the laptop even if I am mid sentence - the emails I am not touching, that can wait until next week. 

I hear what you say about covid and brexit …. It’s an utter minefield 😢 I have given my friend a free pass on this stuff for so long, due to her looking after and then nursing her mother to the end, but enough was enough yesterday and I just gently challenged her on a few things. I think her response shocked her herself tbh, as I stayed quite calm and just rebutted or accepted the points I couldn’t argue, whereas she dropped into something really horrible (like a kind of grinding venomousness - ugh). I think what really rocked her was when I pointed out that life is messy, not black and white like she’d like it to be with a clear cut enemy, and that she is carrying huge bias against the police because of her personal past as a New Age traveller. In the last two years, her mother has reported her to the police c. 6 times as either missing or as abusing her mother and every, single, time, without exception the police have been thorough, professional, reasonable and kind. She looked as shell shocked as I was by the time we finished. I don’t think this conversation is done either tbh …. Ho hum. 

My bite is bitey but not as bad as some. I will slather it with @nthisan, take an antihistamine and some painkillers and keep an eye on it. 

I am looking forward to the three books from the Glasto trip 😊 Being disciplined and finishing my current book first though! 😉😂

KK