Wednesday 20 August 2014

What I learned this week

Another week, another dollar as they say.  Though to be fair I was off work for 3 days last week and all of this week so it doesn't really feel like I am earning it.

This week has been less sedate than the previous one; you know without 40th fancy dress birthday parties to go to and all..but as ever it felt just as busy.

This week I learned:
  • I need to win the lottery so that I don't have to work because I can find myself enough household jobs to do to fill all 7 days of the week
  • Children may well move out earlier than they say they will just so they can be living with their boyfriend even if it is only 5 days earlier than planned
  • Your children may continually try and convince you that they do not owe the board/rent for the last 2 weeks of their stay when they move out
  • Despite trying, little female grandma doglets will not settle into their new home as they cannot stop pining for daughters and grand-daughters
  • Fredster dogs will love their new home and settle in quite happily; in fact will nudge his lead after being dog-sat once his mum comes to collect him
  • A double bed is significantly smaller than a king size bed and will feel much smaller than it actually is
  • There is a sense of achievement in being able to change a plug better than the Hubby can
  • The wind is so annoying when it is strong enough to blow all the petals off the flowers in the hanging baskets
  • When re-potting a plant into a much bigger pot it will be much heavier than anticipated when filled with the plant and a load of soil....the plant will love it though and grow exponentially in just under a week
  • It's annoying having to wait for the daughter that moved out to empty her junk that she intends to take to the recycling plant left in the built in cupboards when you have significant plans for that cupboard
  • Towels will appear to multiply in the cupboard when your daughter and her boyfriend move out
  • It seems impossible to fill the kitchen bin with rubbish when there are just two of you living in the house
  • You can discover you need a much smaller kitchen bin
  • It is much quieter in the house not having a big dog clippity clop round the wooden floors in the house all day
  • The change in the weather, and not for the better, makes my heart a little sad
  • The post man is going to encounter my wrath if he continues to leave my garden without shutting my gate properly because before long he is going to snap the catch off when the wind keeps catching it after his carelessness
  • The postmans laziness annoys me in case you hadn't noticed
  • I am sooo looking forward to having a dining room back especially because I can invite best friends round for dinner and a game of poker and I may just bake some chocolate orange cupcakes for one of them....
So what did you guys learn this week?
 Usual rules apply - see below. I would love to hear from you if you also leave comments on my blog.To join in Julie's What I Learned This Week carnival, simply follow these steps: 

1. Any time this week, publish your What I Learned This Week post on your blog and comment on my blog hyper linking to your blog.

2. Then go and visit Julie’s blog at From Inmates to Playdates, find her latest “What I learned this week” and link up with the Mr. Linky form at the bottom of the post. Please put the link to your POST, not the front page of your blog.

3. Then visit the other participants and see what they learned this week.

Tuesday 19 August 2014

What would you get 9 years in prison for?

Given a vote I am almost certain that Hubby would choose me over 9 years in prison for anything but only just.  Which is a very good job because today marks the 9th year in which he may forever regret thank his lucky stars that he sent a random text telling me that he wanted to hug me while all of our work mates sat and drank around us.  Thinking about it; he was probably drunk.  Never mind; his loss is my gain.

As you may or may not have guessed, today Hubby and I have been together 9 years.  In that time, he inherited 2 noisy puppies and an obnoxious 11 year old that refused to believe his mother was 71 and gained another 2 puppies and watched the 11 year old turn into an empathetic but on occassion still obnoxious 20 year old.

I would like to say that he has learned how to do DIY but that would be a flat out lie as would saying that he has learned to stop getting so frustrated by DIY as would saying that I do not find his frustration frustrating.  So much so that I now insist on doing all DIY.

This month also marks the beginning of a time that Hubby and I can get back to knowing each other as a couple because Beautiful B has moved out and taken one of the original noisy (and now very leggy) puppies with her.  I am not sure he feels getting to know me more is a good thing but I do and so far he is getting more meals cooked for him but that could just be because I am on annual leave from work at the moment and so he really shouldn't count his chickens before they hatch.

I have no idea what he sees in me other than the comedy value.  I don't think I am funny, stupidly clumsy and known to speak before I put my brain in gear yes, but not funny.  He finds me funny and I still catch him looking at me with that loving look in his eye so I am doing something right even if I don't know what it is.  It could just be that he is grateful that I do the majority of the cleaning in the house (and by majority I mean all of it except the ironing) because it means he doesn't have to clean or live in a complete hovel.  

Whatever the reason I can be eternally grateful that someone took me on, finds me amusing, puts up with the odd army type instruction when my brain thinks I am trying to get Beautiful B to do some kind of chore instead of Hubby, and all sorts of other weird and wonderful traits (okay, honesty now - I was going to use 2 different words than 'traits' but this blog host does not provide little red squiggly lines to tell me it is spelt wrong - cue the writing of blogs in MS Word in the future).

Take today for example - Hubby knows that I have a list as long as my arm of jobs I want to do - he thinks I don't have to do half of them, he knows that while my heart tells me I have lots of jobs to do to feel satisifed, instead my head is telling me I am on annual leave and should rest.  Therefore, I may well do nothing except write blog posts and watch some of the trillion films and series I have recorded on the TV.  He, of course, thinks that as I am on leave I should do nothing.  

When he gets home from work he will ask what I have had to eat because he knows that when fending for myself I am likely to either eat nothing or eat a yogurt or maybe a piece of toast.  Then evening will arrive and out will come the chocolate and sweets while I play Farmville 2 and watch TV.  This will be after watching an episode of Pointless where I will come out with at least one stupid answer to a quiz question that makes him laugh and tell me that he loves me.  He doesn't care about the sweets, he just wishes I would eat a proper meal at lunch time.

He will have woken up today and wished me a happy anniversary as he does on the 19th of every month even though we are now married and we have an official date to wish each other a happy anniversary.  He has offered to see a movie with me even though he hates movies with the exception of very few.  He has chosen a movie otherwise he risks a horror or a film that is so far-fetched it defies belief.  Pity the film that he has chosen isn't realeased until tomorrow so instead we will stay in, order a takeaway, have an alcoholic drink or two and watch Captain Philips.

He will have watched me walk into at least 2 rooms, stand still wondering what I went in the room for and walk back out again, tripped over my own feet at least twice, burnt a finger or stabbed one with a knife and put something somewhere safe and then not been able to find it.  I will have ranted at something on the news that has annoyed me and danced with Abi Sheep at least once.  I will have scratched Lily behind both ears at the same time so that she sneezes and say 'Ach choo' to her and before the night is through I will pick up a novel to read in bed and then fall asleep before I have read a chapter.  And these are only a few of the reasons he loves me.

So today, Hubby, thank you once again for loving me and my weirdness, for telling me every day you love me, for wishing me a happy anniversary each month, for accepting Beautiful B as your own daughter, taking on 2 noisy dogs and then changing enough to agree to and love another 2 of them.  Here is to another year of me trying to get you to at least put up with doing DIY without getting frustrated and of you convincing me to love myself as I should.

I always have and always will love you with every fibre of my being; I will always be willing to walk to the ends of the earth for you, I adore you more than you will ever know and I will love you until all of the stars fall out of the sky.

Always been, always am and always will be yours.

xxx

Ps: if you came here expecting the usual Tuesday dose of 'What I learned this week' something more important came up, you know an anniversary, and please come back tomorrow.  mwah. x


Monday 18 August 2014

'Ribena? Are you okay?'

I don't know why I insist on responding to Hubby with 'Yes, I am fine' each time he gets out of bed and comes to check on me after I wake up early on a morning.  He will always ask and I will always respond with the same thing.  It doesn't annoy me; after all he is just worrying because he loves me and I am more than eternally grateful for that, I just am amazed that he continues to ask 8 years down the line.  I may worry that his worrying is going to cause a heart attack but that will more than likely be caused by his refusal to eat all things bad for him and no greens.

I am on leave this week, all of it using up excess hours worked rather than annual leave which is great if we don't worry about me not having time to take all of my annual leave before the new leave year starts.  I can see a 3 week break over Christmas and New Year on the horizon.

Beautiful B has officially moved out even if all of her junk hasn't.  Her promise to come and take all of the junk to the recycling plant didn't happen yesterday as 'she had worked 2 long days and deserved a lie-in' and so she 'promises' it will be removed on Tuesday.  

'It's not like I need to use the cupboards or the spare room' was the convenient reason she found for me not to comment on her unfulfilled promise; little does she know that today a desk and shelf unit are being delivered.  She more than likely knows I have lots of things to fill her wardrobes up with but assumes that can wait which is proof alone that she doesn't know her mother all that well because I have things lined up to fill them.

My OCDishness is itching to get the spare room sorted, especially the wardrobes because I want to have a tidy space for everything instead of cramming everything as neatly as possible in ever more stuffed wardrobes in my bedroom.  Things such as the box that holds all the spare extension cables and light bulbs can go to the back of the cupboards in the spare room as they will be needed very rarely instead of being in the cupboard downstairs that I use daily.  This all makes perfect sense to me (and to Rachel) but not to Beautiful B.

My house feels tidier, my kitchen isn't randomly filled with dirty mugs and dishes that Beautiful B has brought downstairs after they have lived in her room for more than a day, the back garden is always clean (though Hubby would probably argue I do not need to go out there armed with a little plastic bag every time one of the dogs ventures outdoors - I disagree), the bathroom isn't constantly in use and I now have more clean towels than I can shake a stick at.

Having said that, you will note that I haven't mentioned that I am missing her.  Probably because I get a lump in my chest if I think about how I miss hearing the (too loud) TV from her room, her requests for lifts in the car to places, her constant moan that there is nothing to eat in the house...etc.

I cannot argue that I am enjoying the peace in a large way and that I enjoy her visits when she comes to pick up the Fredster after she finishes her shift at work and that I laugh inside at having to make her go home when she picks him up because she would chat with me for hours and then have to go home far too late at night to be walking home even armed with a big(ish) dog.

But the house is quiet and while I love that I also miss the noise if you know what I mean.

I am loving the house being tidy, nice and clean though - it sings to my heart every time I walk into a room.

And.....after a couple of days my dining room will be restored because the spare room will be spare no more and will become my office and maybe then I won't miss the noise of a (too loud) TV coming from that room.

Love you baba....til all the stars fall out of the sky xxx

Tuesday 5 August 2014

Shocking, or at least to me, news stories

I generally only watch the morning news when in a hotel room because I am lucky enough to be a morning person and work from home most days and so can essentially roll out of bed and straight into work. 

In some ways pottering around a hotel room and listening to the news reminds me of why I don't generally watch the news. 

Two stories of note in the last week...

Firstly, a well known children's author has caused shock because they have written a story where a main characters smokes. And yes, I am talking a young children's author, toddlers in fact.  

Regardless of the fact that many parents of young children smoke and they see cigarettes every day I do believe it is irresponsible to have the habit glorified into mainstream children's books. 

Ignoring the argument that a parent has the right to choose to introduce their children to a life with cigarettes surely some businesses have a responsibility to try and protect our children from what is a proven dangerous habit and potential killer?  

I understand that publishing houses are in the business of making profit and it could be argued that introducing a book where a character smokes is unlikely to do that so I can only assume they have done because either the author is a big selling author and they believe it won't affect sales or they believe that the added publicity this is causing may boost sales.  

The publishers say the smoking is shown negatively on the book allowing opportunity for parents to discuss it with their them. Personally, there are plenty of opportunities to discuss the negative effects of smoking in mainstream media without it being in toddlers books, especially where a character is trying to be cool by smoking. What next?  Alcohol in toddlers books?

The second story is about people in New York are paying a woman £600 a day to potty train their children. Known as 'The Potty Whisperer'  she claims a 100% success rate in only 2 days. 

I am not convinced that 100% of children are completely potty trained in two days. This is essentially a habit that you teach children, it becomes automatic and I'm not convinced that happens in 2 days. 

I understand that the world is a busy place and that New York may be argued to have busier parents with less time than elsewhere but personally I don't believe that is the majority of parents in New York. 

Let's face it, very few parents have fond memories of potty training, the ever more vigilance than you need when a child is in nappies but surely it is one that is accepted as taking time?  

Conscious I am going to drop myself in a clichéd and expected assumption but I can't help but wonder if the woman in question is being used by families who have plenty of funds and nannies galore. Is it the latest fad and/or is is she being used because the parents think she has something different to offer rather than they can't be bothered? 

The mother questioned this morning in the interview had a 3 year old little boy and said she had been 'dipping in and out of potty training' with no success. Little wonder the child isn't potty trained - it takes consistency to teach a child a habit; it is called a learned behaviour for a reason. 

I may be at danger of sounding old now but I couldn't help but think that potty training seems to be the latest victim to an increasing number in society that seem to have forgotten that a child needs to be raised with consistency; consistent behaviour, rules, love, lessons, energy and the list goes on. 

If you bring a child up to be able to do what they want because you are tired they grow up doing what they want, they don't learn what they can and cannot do. Little wonder they are confused. 

I have visions of these children as grown ups with toddlers of their own asking their mums for advice on potty training; 'Oh I'm sorry dear, I paid someone to teach you that in 2 days.' 

I will get off my soap box now. What do you guys think of these headlines? 




What I learned this week

A whole week without posts because work went mental and then a busy weekend catching up with Hubby's brother and the rest of the family. My bad. 

This week a wide scope on lessons learned

* Two days of rich eating isn't so good on the stomach when it isn't used to it or so Hubby tells me

* I need to be more forceful in my learning requirements in a new job even if work colleagues are very busy

* I need to learn to concentrate on the lessons learned from a bad work experience instead of beating myself up because I don't know the job as well as I THINK I should

* When trying to determine how long it will take me to write a report I should triple it and then double it

* A fancy dress party for my friends 40th causes me all sorts of anxiety

* A lesson learned before the event: when deciding how much vodka I need to get through a best friends fancy dress for her 40th birthday I should double the volume I think I may need

* Attending a friends 40th birthday weekend is very very expensive and I can be even more grateful for the small performance pay bonus because it pays for said birthday weekend

* A days work trip can turn into an overnight stay so I should always pack a phone charger otherwise it will cost me £20 for a new one

* Before leaving the house I should make sure that I have my work mobile; though not having it makes for a train jounrney where I can concentrate on spreadsheet calculations

* Milky Bar Crushems don't always taste as scrumptious as I remember them being

* Ordering what was an expensive in room movie at a hotel can be an even worse idea when first thought when I realise I have already seen it. 

* And on that note; my memory is obviously shot. 

So what did you guys learn this week?
 Usual rules apply - see below. I would love to hear from you if you also leave comments on my blog.To join in Julie's What I Learned This Week carnival, simply follow these steps: 

1. Any time this week, publish your What I Learned This Week post on your blog and comment on my blog hyper linking to your blog.

2. Then go and visit Julie’s blog at From Inmates to Playdates, find her latest “What I learned this week” and link up with the Mr. Linky form at the bottom of the post. Please put the link to your POST, not the front page of your blog.

3. Then visit the other participants and see what they learned this week.





What I learned this week

It's been a funny old week; a mixture of trying to work fast enough to catch a couple of hours relaxing in the sunny, boiling back garden before the end of the day.  To be able to not work and relax like that would be bliss...until I got bored.  

This week was also the week that I travelled to Sheffield with work for the first time in two months and the first chance I have had to pick up my specialist pillow from the hotel that I left it at in May.  Also my first experience of sitting on a non-airconditioned train when it is 30 degrees centrigrade...

  • It's possible that one train company have had someone faint from heat exhaustion as they were giving away free bottles of water on the way back from Sheffield.  That or they are avoiding a claim;
  • House-keeping at a hotel may well ignore receptions request to dig out a specialist pillow and fetch to reception;
  • Waiting for the specialist pillow to be located may feel like standing in a sauna when in a hotel with floor to ceiling windows at reception on a day when it is 30 degrees centigrade...and I was so grateful I wasn't working there as a receptionist;
  • The Mecure Hotel in Sheffield is gorgeous and has separate showers instead of having a shower over the bath and it is heaven;
  • Sitting in a restaurant having dinner for one because you are away from work isn't so bad after all especially when the pizza you are eating is scrumptious;
  • I hate Blackpool Council right now for only collecting refuse fortnightly.  It's such a 'stinky' idea when it is so hot every day;
  • Despite being covered in hair my dogs will still enjoy sunbathing in 30 degrees centigrade; 
  • After being a life-long 'I like my Pepsi Max at room temperature' I will enjoy ice cold Pepsi Max for a whole week when it is so hot.  There is nothing like sticking to your ground;
  • As long as I stand over Hubby when he is taking meat from the freezer for a BBQ it is possible for him to cook a BBQ without using an excessive amount of meat;
  • When my daughter says she and Ry are out for the day taking a mooch around Ikea, only 2 weeks from moving into their own home, I know they are going to come home having spent at least £200;
  • Why Beautiful B thought she could take out strangely but amazingly flat packed lamps and shades out of a box to show me and me understand the full effect of them I have no idea;
  • Watching Beautiful try to hold a conversation with me while trying to fit all the lamp and shade parts back in the box again was hilarious;
  • Needing some new bedside cabinets myself I am curious to how Beautiful B's will look as she managed to get some from Ikea for £35 each!
  • Writing a post about how I love lists may well result in me googling 'To do lists for cleaning' and spending half a day looking at different options before printing household organisation sheets off that some kind American woman has posted on her blog;
  • Pinterest is great for finding things to help you organise your home;
  • I have to try and stay away from Pinterest as the world goes into some time of timewarp where 30 minutes turns into 3 hours;
  • I am too busy today to set up my new household organisation book;
  • Hubby is going to think I have gone mental when he sees the said organisation book for the first time but that is because he doesn't realise that I am slowly going to train him to think he has decided to help more now that Beautiful B is moving out and leaving all her chores behind;
  • Now there is an idea - trying to convince Beautiful B that she thinks it is a good idea to come home and help her old mum keep her house clean....;
  • Finding Beautiful B's first grey hair will result in complete hilarity for Ry and I as she realises that she is taking after my mum's side of the family and suffering from premature hair aging. 
In a bid to be honest, as I am so disorganised usually this post is written in advance so Rachel, yes you may get confused as you know some of this happened a week ago and you are not in a time warp...
 So what did you guys learn this week?
 Usual rules apply - see below. I would love to hear from you if you also leave comments on my blog.To join in Julie's What I Learned This Week carnival, simply follow these steps:
1. Any time this week, publish your What I Learned This Week post on your blog and comment on my blog hyper linking to your blog.

2. Then go and visit Julie’s blog at From Inmates to Playdates, find her latest “What I learned this week” and link up with the Mr. Linky form at the bottom of the post. Please put the link to your POST, not the front page of your blog.
3. Then visit the other participants and see what they learned this week.

So what did you guys learn this week?