Sorted!

Well after another week from hell, I can only be pleased that the weekend is upon us again. The last 2 weeks has been head ache after head ache and quite literally too. All I seem to have been doing is fighting fire, fending issues, supporting and defending decisions and dealing with certain people that quite frankly would have trouble distinguishing between their arse and their elbow. I have been a dumping ground for all business problems and a ‘don’t worry she’ll sort it out’ mentality. Fortunately I have been able to sort it all out and take it as a compliment they think I can sort it out, but to the detriment of doing all the other 100 things on my ‘to do list’ which seems to be on a rolling day by day cycle as it is!

Well I can’t complain really, I suppose I should just be fortunate that I am busy and I do have a job, and one I enjoy with people I enjoy working with and all the other things that seem to get shadowed by the not so good stuff you have to focus on. Anyway, feeling particularly demotivated, absolutely shattered from what feels like 4 hours sleep in 2 days, oh hold on, that’s true, and a pounding head ache lasting 2 weeks, I refer back to the point that it is the weekend now…

So I pick up my new car tomorrow which I have been looking forward to. I think it’s really important to always have a personal goal with something to look forward to at the end of it. After Saturday and I have my car, then what? Nothing to look forward to. Get up, go to work, go home again. Same routine. So this means that we (as in husband and I) have to have something else to focus on, to work for. This normally equates to spending loads more money.

The next thing therefore to look forward to will be our holiday in February that we haven’t booked yet but always take. A promise we made to each other as part of our ‘pre-nup’ was that every year on our wedding anniversary, we will not be in the country. Whether it is a weekend in Europe or our normal week in Egypt, we will always make the effort to do something. The minute this stops will only be because we aren’t getting on or due to having kids, so I pray for the latter. No doubt part of this weekend will now involve searching through holiday brochures looking for a hotel that is posh enough for me to rest my delicate head after nights of debauchery – otherwise what’s the point in working anyway? I could quite happily be a lady of leisure, I’m sure I could do it.

Sunday I am going shopping with Mummy. This is normally a thing my mum does when she knows I am down. She takes me shopping and buys me lots of things. It does always result in arguments when she literally tries to pay for everything when we get to the till, which irritates the hell out of me and she knows it. But we do have a great laugh, lots of people watching and taking the pee out of each other; I’m looking forward to that.

I don’t really get much chance to be a daughter anymore with my oh so important life where I don’t make time for anything that really matters… I’m such an idiot, but this I am changing. There’s never enough time is there, so I am making it. My Dad being ill has made me see the light and whilst I thought that work and materials was all there was, I see it very differently now and work no longer worries or stresses me quite so much. I still love it, it is still important and a massive part of my life, it is just no longer my entire life. A work life balance which was also highlighted by a great idea from my boss today (yeah she doesn’t have many… kidding!!!!) which sounds perfect and a definite must do activity. In the meantime, roll on the weekends!

Ever wondered how all of sudden you go from having some money in your account to being skint as skint can be before you even blink? Well in my case for all of a day on the day I get paid, I am in the black, then it’s all gone the next day and I am back in the red. I would like to stay black actually, even to experience it for just a week. I never really fully recovered from being a student and still paying the price for knackering my liver through endless snake bite blacks and tequila slammers. Looking back I was pretty stupid to spend so much money on utter crap but I guess nothing changes. However whilst I can spend my money on what I want, I will. So here is how you go very quickly from having a little money, to having even less…

My bank holiday weekend spending spree. In fact the spending sprees are not really limited to a bank holiday, they are a reoccurrence every weekend, but this one was pretty big.

So we started the weekend well – spent Friday night in the pub, didn’t spend too much but was then up at the crack of dawn for yet another visit to the dealer (of the motor kind, so let’s just clear that one up) and handed over vast amounts of cash for our new cars. Highly excited, I said hello to my new car as she was sitting looking all spangly if a little unclean, looking forward to me driving her home on Saturday. In case you are wondering I have decided that my car is a she, but as yet have no name for her. And yes I am weird and proud of it.

So after spending thousands on our new cars, we then took a trip to my parents in true student style with 3 black bags full of washing. I wouldn’t normally do this of course, but as our washing machine is bust, it's gotta be done (another way to spend stupid amounts of money for an engineer to do bugger all actually). Being way too proud, I am never ever going to set foot in a scabby laundrette full of smoke stinking black teethed ‘Dots’. The choice therefore of being clean or giving washing to Mum is limited. I actually think my mum likes it, makes her feel needed in a mummsy kind of way. However my boss has offered to do our washing, well she didn’t but that’s how I am taking it. As my mum is going on holiday, my boss is my substitute mum so we may well be taking her up on that if the damn engineer can’t fix the machine tomorrow! Thanks boss.

Whilst at my parents handing over the washing I noticed they had some new plants. I decided it was a good idea and would do the same and buy some new ones of my own. I dragged my husband around the nursery and £110 later we came out with some lovely plants to decorate the inside and outside of our house. More money I really did not need to be spending. We kill plants within a few weeks of having them – irresponsible owners – so it really is money wasted.

On the way home with our vegetation blocking the view out of the car, I managed to just catch a glimpse of a restaurant. Feeling peckish and in desperate need of a beer, we stopped for a bite to eat. This was probably the most stupid thing we did at the weekend as during lunch we got onto the subject of what to buy my parents for their Birthday’s (3 weeks apart), bearing in mind my Dad is 60 this year. OK, so the fact we have recently bought him a brand new car as he has been ill and it is his 60th, kind of got forgotten. Brain wave… they are going on holiday in a couple of weeks and they really want to get a TV to put on the wall for their living room, which they were going to buy when they got back from holiday. So we agreed that in a couple of weeks time when they are on holiday, wouldn’t it be amazing that when they get back, all depressed they have arrived back to rain and work, that they would walk into their house and see a huge box all wrapped up; only to find that on opening, it is the 42 inch LCD they were looking forward to buying on their return….

This led onto our Sunday shopping spree for TV’s… £1000 later, we have bought them a wicked LCD screen as a surprise which will be ready for them when they come back from holiday. God… we will be picking up the TV whilst they are away in husband’s new monster truck and hopefully they will be happy with it.

Now completely penniless, we went to enjoy a night of black tie and tiaras at a friend’s 21st Birthday, which I have to say was the most extravagant and possibly most expensive Birthday party I have ever been to. It was absolutely amazing and totally over the top with it’s posh professional photographers, full on ball gowns, a cutting the cake ceremony and the “Addams Family” – which you can’t put a price on for entertainment. Yeah and I mean that. They own the manor house where the party is held and are possibly the most inbred family I have ever encountered in my life – no joke when I say they look like they have come straight out of the family in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I was actually quite freaked out, especially when one of the “Addams Family” would come to take away the plates but insisted in sticking her huge floppy hanging round the waist breasts in my husbands face, nearly blinding him! Incredibly funny and was worthy of a few pictures, but he was utterly traumatised. Fortunately for him though he was able to drink himself into a stupor whilst I remained sober and drove us home. I then found out today that Amy (Birthday Girl of 21) threw up in the taxi on the way home as the taxi driver wasn’t English and didn’t understand when they asked him 3 times to pull over! It wasn’t until he heard the heaving from the back seat that he thought he better stop, by which point the door had already been injured and the damage was done!

Anyway, we got all our clothes back from Mummy, lovely and clean and pressed which was great. We spent the next few hilarious hours going through my baby photos with my parents, when we happened to stumble (with Mum’s help…) across the best picture of my Dad dressed in my mum’s clothes from way back when. I sneaked this picture home, so this will add another surprise to my Dad’s 60th, but with a dodgy ticker at the minute, I better be careful what I do with it… but I have plans! Bit of bribery I feel.

So now after a lovely weekend it is back to work and worry. Hey ho, only a couple of days left to the next one…. and pay day!

One of the many disagreements that happen in my house are sadly connected to cleaning. I know it a very boring topic but it is one that that comes up frequently. My weekends tend to have a large element of cleaning in it (which I would rather do without) as it is really the only time I get to do it properly. My husband doesn’t get the cleaning thing, yet he would be pretty quick to moan if the house was untidy or covered in cat hair.

Having decided ages ago that we would split the chores to make it fairer on me, I still find myself having to give ‘prompts’ to get him to help. I expect he is the same as most men with an inbuilt fear of cleaning products and committing to do something now. Everything with him is “yeah I will do it later.” So I ask him when and he says “I don’t know, by the end of the weekend.” When the end of the weekend comes and I ask him to do what he promised, he minces with words and says that he didn’t give a timescale on which weekend he was going to do it, that pees me off, we have another disagreement then I just end up doing it myself…!

Whilst he isn’t great at being proactive around cleaning, he isn’t as bad as many other men I know. Typically though when he is having his helpful moments (normally because he thinks this will give him points to trade in), he will do his task so badly, I’m sure on purpose, so as I never ask him to do it again. I know his ploy and he’s not getting away with it, but I do have a very annoying trait where I just can’t help but comment if he has done something really badly. Not how bad it is necessarily, just some loving grateful advice on what he will need to consider next time! I know this doesn’t go down too well, but I can’t help myself, it just comes out. Got to be honest about these things. With my OCD on cleaning, something not done properly will just keep me awake at night which I will blame him for and that wouldn’t make for a healthy relationship!

When they say Men are from Mars, they also say ‘To offer a man unsolicited advice is to presume that he doesn’t know what to do or that he can’t do it on his own.’ Go figure!

Major significant events in my life at the moment are somewhat lacking, so very little has happened over the last couple of weeks. I did spend the day at Champney’s with a friend – the first time I’ve been able to walk around in public wearing nothing but a glamorous white robe without being arrested! OK so I’ve never been arrested wearing just a robe, but I have been forced into rather close weekly proximity with a load of policemen whilst in University Halls… wearing just a robe, in the middle of the night. This is all due to some peasants from the ground floor who were intent on setting off the fire alarm often resulting in a behavioural ‘investigation’ by the police. Really peed me off actually, not at the fact that I had to get up and out pretty quickly before being burned alive or my ear drums bursting, but because having to break what little sleep I did get to the cold realisation that the lovely policeman wouldn’t be staying to investigate me!

….Anyway, back to Champney’s. We were the youngest people there by about 20 years which was a little odd, must have been cos it was Sunday, but most people were surprisingly normal; no celebs and no one I recognised. The place was absolutely over-flowing with women desperate to keep hold of something they once may have had (though in some cases debateable), and are now faced with the option of admitting they have lost it or make just one last desperate attempt to see whether nature can be reversed using minimal effort, no exercise and no calorie counting. I am sorry to say that it can’t and no amount of botox, HRT, anti-wrinkle cream or evening primrose oil will change that!

Waiting to be called for the treatments with nothing to do but people watch reminded me of a scene from Absoutely Fabulous when Eddie was having liposuction and collagen injections in her lips. An American lady walked in looking a spitting image to this then said she wanted to change the time of her spray tan (oh please!). It was a fabulous relaxing day and would have been more relaxing if I wasn’t asked a question every 5 seconds when trying to get a massage and if the woman doing my manicure wasn’t hung over and cutting my fingers with every stride, but worth another visit!

Speaking of visits to Champney’s, the hen night plans of looking for a weekend away are completely falling through. Nothing is available in August as apparently it’s the school holidays! The only dates we could do in September now clash with a case the ‘hen’ has to sort out as she is now a qualified Solicitor – why did she have to go and get a career? She didn’t think it through properly! So now what was going to be a long weekend can only be an overnight stay at most and is veering dangerously close to Ramadan where the added risk of eating and drinking nothing during that time is highly likely. Not what I had planned, so now it seriously looks like at best it would be a day at Champney’s and a big night out somewhere – if we end up in sodding Moccocos in St Albans I will not be best pleased….

In my attempt to try and get back the body I once had, we joined a gym again. It is a common cycle with us, we join, go religiously for about 6 weeks, then go once in 6 days, which slowly becomes once in 6 months! I think on average for each time I managed to drag my arse to the gym, an hours workout cost about £240! BUT, this time is different, this time we are going to go more, this time we will look fabulous in 6 months…. Haven’t heard this said before!

So we joined a new gym. I didn’t have high hopes at first as it is cheaper, smaller, less exclusive and less impressive than our previous gym, but the end result will be the same so what’s the point in spending more for it? So I am told anyway. We went to the induction, which in itself almost killed me with the whopping 28 calories I burned off learning how to use the high tech equipment! I’m not kidding, it nearly killed me, that’s how fit I am! But determined to shape up and get my athletic physique back (yeah whatever, like I had one!), I reluctantly kicked myself into gear and got in there. Wooooo, pretty impressed I must say. Didn’t know that that there were any attractive men present in my town, now I know where they hang out! The gym is a bit of a magnet, something the last one was not able to achieve. So this has picked my enthusiasm up and will certainly give me the boost I need to tone up!

Other news: my husband has been really irritating me, not sure if it is deliberate, but he has been making me quite animated!

My boss came back from 2 weeks holiday… she was missed and we also didn’t disappoint, as all her IT systems were cocked up and the desk was an absolute tip. We did accomplish something in the time she was away – we can all be proud!

One of my cats has got some kind of dodgy flakey skin thing going on requiring pills only horses can safely swallow, which have to either be forced down her tiny throat or cut open and the contents delicately sprinkled in her food. A task which takes a good 15 minutes of my precious time, cos if it ain’t a masterpiece, she ain’t eating it. She is such a delicate snob!

My Daddy has to have keyhole surgery in November and is not very well but Mummy is looking after him. A colleague has moved to pastures new and I am missing him, but the best news of all, the tragedy of the car choosing and showroom hell has been solved! After 5 changes to his mind, my husband has now committed and handed over money for a new car – well done. Finally that particular saga will hopefully end. My car has also been confirmed for delivery on the 1st Sept and this weekend we have to choose the exact shade of colour of the cream leather. Shade, how many shades of cream are there? If I said red or yellow, then there would be no choice but with cream we have to choose? Oh God, please don’t give us choices…!