13th December, 2008 (12:25 pm)
The Day I Was Frrrreeeezzzzzzing (5)
I am so sick of being cold.
In the UK, we’re not so used to weather extremes. We tend to bob along quite nice, shuffling along in mediocrity, rarely too hot or too cold or too windy or too anything. For the most part, I think this is why I’ve never been tempted to emigrate elsewhere; yes, there are lot of crap things about living in the UK - and please, don’t get me started on those - a ranty Vixx is not a happy Vixx - but at least I’m not boiling hot or freezing cold whilst I endure them.
Until now, that is.
The last few weeks have been ridiculous. Yesterday? Yesterday my dashboard told me that my car’s engine had been running for over an hour and there was still ice on the bonnet when I pulled into the car park at work. I’m regularly having to scrape the windscreen inside as well as out, and I’m going through a can of de-icer a week. I wouldn’t mind, but because we’re the UK - and we’re so used to oh-so-averages - even after weeks of this ‘cold snap’ no-one seems to be on top of it. I witnessed a car careering into another on Tuesday after the roads between here and S’s school went ungritted, my work just CANNOT sort out the bloody heating, sending us from one extreme to the other within minutes, and S had two impromptu days off this week thanks to the boiler pegging out at his school. I’m perpetually under one of S’s old nursery blankets, cuddled up into the corner of the sofa in a bid to get warm. But the worse thing? The very worse thing? WE HAVEN’T EVEN HAD ANY SNOW. My corner of the UK seems to be the only part of the country that hasn’t seen as much as a single flake. Seriously - how unfair is this?
This is the MAIN reason I stay in the UK. Along with the wondrous lack of engorged spiders and bugs, the one the the UK has going for it is its complete inability to cope with any snow. The roads screech to a halt, the trains, buses, businesses, schools . . . honestly, it’s awesome. So tell me: what the hell is the point of all this arctic air if I don’t even get a fucking day off work?
Comments: (5)
2nd December, 2008 (8:46 am)
Random Rant #14 (7)
These are the things that have pissed me off today:
- S woke me at 5.30am and then refused to go back to sleep. As a consequence, neither did I and I’m knackered;
- I spent fifteen minutes getting the ice off the car, only for it to start fucking raining so I didn’t have to;
- … and because I got wet, my carefully straightened hair has fucking curled up again;
- S’s lost his scarf yesterday and didn’t tell me;
- I have to do something later on that I really don’t want to do, and for once it has nothing to do with work;
- I bought new glasses on the weekend in the hope I would look sexy and sassy, but in fact I simply look like Eric fucking Morecambe;
- Because of health problems, I’ve lost almost 10lbs since Halloween. And because I’m such a stupid, grumpy, mardy cow, I’ve been stuffing my face and have subsequently put back on 3. I now look and feel gross;
- I have a horrible head cold again and feel like shit; and
- it’s only 8.43am and I have already had enough today.
In other news, I’ve been missing again because I’ve been unwell again. I can’t even be bothered to talk about it now but yipee-fucking-do, I’m on the waiting list for another operation.
Someone needs to post some good news - perhaps about puppies or rainbows or some similar shit - before I stick my head in an oven.
Comments: (7)
16th September, 2008 (8:06 pm)
The Day I Won’t Ever Be a Grown-up Again (14)
That is the very last time I EVER try and be a grown-up.
I’m not bad with money. I used to be - I used to fucking shocking. But we learned the hard way, dragging our sorry asses out of debt over several years thanks to a (then) booming house market, hard work from us both and a job change for me, and I will never go back to that dark, horrible, scary place again. We still have debt but it’s less than the UK average, and we manage it well. Our credit score is impeccable. I haven’t paid credit card interest for a couple of years now (having wised up to always moving the balance when the honeymoon period expires) and at the end of each year our overall debt is always lower than the year that preceded it. It’s slow but it’s right and I know we’ll get there in the end.
But like everyone else, we’ve been having to adjust to the rising costs of, well, everything in the latter half of this year. The last couple of months have seen two trips abroad, a little one’s birthday and accompanying party which all means that we stretched ourselves a little too thin. Yes, it’s our fault because no, we didn’t have to be so extravagant for S’s birthday, and we certainly didn’t need two vacations. But up until six months ago our disposal income could’ve coped with this. Today it cannot.
To compensate, I arranged for us to extend our overdraft by an extra £250 (about $450) to tide us over. And because I’m a responsible adult and trying to decrease our debt, not increase it, I put an expiry on it to ensure that come payday, the extra debt would be gone and we’d be none the worse off for having it.
THIS IS THE STUPIDEST IDEA I HAVE EVER HAD.
As the rest of this is kinda rambling and ranty and really without purpose, I’ve put the rest under the cut. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Comments: (14)
30th June, 2008 (7:01 pm)
The Day With the Snarky Tosser (7)
- Wake up. Shower. Put in contact lenses.
- Rub eye accidentally. Rip lens.
- Spend fifteen minutes trying to locate lens in back of eye.
- Find lens. Pull it out. Realise there’s 1/3 of it still missing.
- Frantically search for said missing piece across duvet and/or my person. It’s not there. Start hunt within eye. Not there either.
- Eye goes bright red. Decide to leave it for now as no longer in pain.
- Go to work.
- Get to work. Helpful colleague informs me of story where, once upon a time, right, there was this guy, right, and he, like, totally ripped his lens, right, and it got lost, right, and it got stuck, like, totally in his eye, right, and then the eye grew over it, right, and he, like, totally went blind or died or something.
- Panic.
Comments: (7)
4th May, 2008 (10:51 pm)
The Day With The Alien Eye (12)
My son has beautiful eyes.
I know that all mothers think this way about our kids. We always think that our offspring have the cutest grin, the softest hair, the bubbliest laugh but . . . really. Just look at him: they’re stunning. They’re a gorgeous hazel/green that I’ve yet to see anyface else, offensively emotive, unabashed and curious, framed with long, dark spiky lashes. I fall in love each and every time I look into them, and the most wonderful part is that, as neither M nor I have brown eyes (you can imagine the rumours) they don’t remind me of anyone other than him - they’re utterly and unequivocally his.
For as long as I can remember though, he’s had intermittent problems with his eyes. I sometimes think that if they weren’t so huge and didn’t take over half his face, he wouldn’t be so prone to infections and irritations. For his Year One school photo - when he was, what, just three? - there’s a definite swelling of his right eye - nothing hideous, but enough for a mummy to notice - and twelve months later, it’s the same story for his Year Two one, too. We go through Brolene eye drops like . . . well, something hard to exhaust, and I think a week rarely goes by without me needing to rugby tackle him to the ground to administer them.
But recently? Recently S has A Very Sore Eye.
(more…)
Comments: (12)
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