22 Foxhole East

All the planned plastering is now done.
Finished - he had to reschedule 3 times. Childcare problems.

I have overpaid the mortgage, it is now £106,999.00 - I had to get it below £107 to feel validated.

Caved, and rang the mortgage bank to get a current account so I can get internet banking to be able to check the mortgage online. Such a faff. Hopefully it will be worth it.

Measured the alcoves for shelves, and bought the wood on Monday. Will get on with that tomorrow.

I now have less than £150 for the month (all bills have gone out) but will be getting around £40 every friday from the ctc. The mortgage amount looks go though!!!
The kids accounts have £4k in, just waiting to go out in £400 segments every month - that is my emergency fund. Panic ye not!

And....Where is the child tax credit renewal pack?? It usually comes around nowish, the money has gone down, but no pack has appeared. Come on CTC muppets!! Get a wriggle on!.


So there. Only doing low cost stuff for the rest of the month. - painting and shelving and putting up mirrors and stripping more wallpaper.

The big yellow glowy thing is supposed to reappear in the sky this week.
The salad leaves have sprouted. Nothing else has though.

DS3 is home and in fine spirits. He has come to the conclusion that girls are loud, boastful, and cannot carry out simple instructions. They also fall out of bed alot, and need to pee/ get a drink multiple times a night. This was not conducive to a good night's sleep - the girls' dorm was above the boys' dorm and they got very little sleep. He is 10 and very unimpressed with the fairer sex. :rotfl:

He said he was too busy having fun to miss me. Which I am overjoyed about.

The girls got off the coach and immediately burst into tears when they saw their mums. They were gone for barely more than 72 hours! Then the Mums burst into tears because their baby girls were crying. !!!!!!!!! They all complained the school website was not updated enough... I am not sure if this was all about teaching the kids a bit more independence, or the parents! Takes all sorts I suppose.

There is movement in the planting trough in the yard!! I have a few tiny tomato seedlings coming up, some rocket is poking leaves out, and the lettuce is popping up, and there is nearly a carpet of basil. No sign of the courgette, so will sow some more and see what occurs. :T

I spent the day doing stupid fiddly little annoying jobs, like putting screws back into light switches and plug sockets back on the walls.

Put up a mirror, and then started stripping wallpaper in the living room. It is woodchip under the anaglypta, and judging by the previous owner's dodgy polaroid photos hidden under a bit of carpet in one of the cupboards, the woodchip has been there since at least 1983. It seems to have been stuck up with superglue! It is taking an age to just strip a square metre.
Good job I work cheap:rotfl:

Paid out another £40 on school trips for DS1 and DS4

I have nothing at all planned for half term in two weeks. Which makes me feel like the worst mum ever. Will have to do better, but with so many residential trips and reward day trips with the schools, there has not been much incentive to plan for the holidays, as all except DS4 were off somewhere nice and seasidey with their mates and schools.

Maybe there will be a YHA flash sale soon. Fingers crossed.

Got DS3 and 4 to plant some more seeds in loo rolls. All the remaining courgette seeds, and some others I thought were french beans, but look very much like sunflowers...... So they are mystery seeds and we have planted them and will investigate further at a future date. Should they emerge.

It is chucking it down now. 5pm prompt, the heavens opened, so the seeds will be watered naturally.

Made about 20 buns, which will be iced, and then brought out during the Eurovision celebrations. The man next door to me has Union Jacks in his house windows and on his van. He really likes Eurovision. I hope. He could just be a nutter though. Or early for the wedding.

We spent 3 hours this afternoon playing Risk. I won. The kids loved it.
Got up and went food shopping at 7.30. I was awake, so I got up, and there was nobody to talk to, so I looked online and the supermarket opened at 7. So off I went, did the shop, came home and had coffee, picked up DH and the two smallest, went to the market, had gelato in the sunshine, came home and had lunch and started on Risk.

The fridge is full of left over salad bits, so it will just be sandwiches or pittas and salad for tea tonight. Easy meal.

What a nice day!

I am studiously ignoring the pile of clean laundry awaiting sorting in the kitchen though......

It had never occurred to me that it might be open at 7am!

No YS bargains though.

After 4 solid days 9 -2.30 stripping woodchip wallpaper, I am now on wall number 4 of 4 and have lost the will to live.

Simply cannot settle into it today.
And all this media craziness about the royal wedding is making me feel sorry for them. It is awful!

So, I changed Gas and Electric supplier this morning.- I am in credit with the numptys I am with now, but they want to raise my dd over £20 a month. So I went straight to the kitchen, rejigged the heating (now off unless we need to manually stick it on for an hour if we are cold) and rejigged the water heater to come on in 20 min sessions - 3 times a day. Should be more than enough for all washing up and kids' just before bedtime baths.

Then went and did a price comparison and found the cheapest 100% renewable tarrif I could find, and it still comes in at £9 cheaper than the £77 I am currently paying, and so £30 less than the ones I am with want to start charging me.

As I am in credit with them I will no doubt receive a cheque as some point. But there will be a 6 day crossover so 2 x payments in June until the refund processes.

Just paid out for DS2s school reward trip, he changed his mind, he does want to go now. So that is another £28 out of the budget - put it on the cc. Will come out of child benefit which is paid early this month as Monday is the bank holiday.

Engerlish Heritaage have just sent their yearly demand for £99 and I simply do not have it at the minute. YHA have also sent their demand, but that is only £25 for the year for all 6 of us.

DS1 is on his DofE this weekend and DH is off for a 'soiree' with his posh mates. So I have told him he can take DS1 on Saturday morning and pick him up on Sunday at 2pm on his way home. It did not go down well.

DH is not happy as he will only be able to spend 24 hours with his friends, and they were maybe, thinking about, possibly, going out to brunch on Sunday. !!!!!!! It is supposed to be an evening do! Well he can damn well be miserable and tell tales of woe and fatherhood to his muppet mates (which is unfair of me, I have never met them, they may be perfectly lovely childless people).


So I will do the food shop today, and strip tomorrow. There. Writing this has cleared my mind and produced a plan. Off to inventorise the pantry and fridge and come up with an easy mealplan for the coming week.

Have a great weekend, be it royal wedding or not. I don't think any of us are going to be able to avoid it. Go Zen or go home. At least there is the football afterwards.