Busy Busy Busy

Work last week was massively busy. As I've mentioned I have a new team. As a result I'm in back to back meetings getting people up to speed. Unfortunately, I've still got my usual workload and as they are not yet able to do everything I'm basically (temporarily) back to doing about 9 jobs at once.

I'll be honest - it's all getting a bit much and I'm beginning to think that there are limits to how much longer I can do many peoples jobs at the same time. And the people I work for are constantly snapping at my heels about deadlines.

I've decided to push forward until Christmas and then re-evaluate. I made a commitment to get things running smoothly here, but if I haven't achieved it within 2 years then maybe it will never run smoothly. If I decide that's where it ends up then I'm going to have to make tough decisions.

It doesn't help that I'm constantly being head hunted for jobs that pay a lot more. Though I'm digging my heels in for now because the people I work for are important and they make a huge difference to the world. That's why I made my initial commitment - though it's not always easy to remember that - and you can get to a point when you think 'it's them or me'.

After a frantic week at work I then hit the weekend. This week we're having new windows put in. Not that it's happening for cosmetic reasons you understand. In fact when we moved into our very ugly and very strange house we had huge plans. We'd convert the garage into an entrance area, we'd extend the kitchen and we may even extend the top of the house over the front extension.

We've done none of that. First of all the shower room started leaking and falling apart - so we replaced that. Then all the wood in the garden rotted through and started to fall apart so we replaced all of that and had garden remodelled into an easier to care for (but much harder to mow) set-up.

The driveway (ugly and concrete) also gave up and split in two with part of it raised - a bit like pictures you see of an earthquake - so we had to put a new drive in so we could actually park on it!

Then just as we had enough saved to think about extending the kitchen (it's teeny tiny) the windows fell apart. Our back door doesn't actually shut - you have to use the key to make the door shut - but at least it locks. And in the other windows the rubber that holds the windows in place is literally falling out of most of the windows - so basically somebody who thought it was worth the effort could just lift the glass out and walk in.

Then you'll remember in a recent storm that one of our windows literally got blown out. This was for 2 reasons. 1. It was a big storm, 2. the window was obviously just held in place by thin air.

On Friday the scaffolders turned up to put the scaffolding in place. This was something we needed to make the most of. We also anticipate further touch up required (will make sense in a minute). Anyway, let's get back to my weekend.

On Saturday morning I got up and after a couple of cups of coffee dog and I walked down to the seafront so I could continue with her 'don't bark' training. Then we went to the butchers to get our meat for the week.

I walked back home and put a couple of washes on and then was hit by a wall of tiredness so had a 30 minute nap! Reason for nap was that we were visiting friends for lunch and the afternoon.

I haven't actually seen these friends for 3 years - and they don't even live far away. He is the godfather to son - so they are really important people to us. I have just got out of the habit of booking people's time because of COVID.

Friend has amazing house in Hove. I've mentioned that ALL our friends have nicer houses than ours and theirs is a doozy. They've just remodelled the back of the house creating an ENORMOUS living space with kitchen, seating and dining area. It's so large you could still probably hold a dance competition in the area. The whole of one wall opens up into the garden.

Just stunning.

As part of this remodelling friend had also created an indoor cinema. His wife wasn't too chuffed with this but it was part of his negotiation about the living space extension. I admit I'm not too fussed about the cinema - but husband and son were pea green with envy. I had to remind husband that unless we won the lottery he could give up on any plans to have a cinema himself.

Lunch was stunning - they did a Raclette - maybe I've had a sheltered life, I've had a fondue before, but didn't even know Raclette's existed. So we had breads and cheeses and cooked meats on the hotplate. In fact I was so excited by it that I purchased one - we have our holiday coming up and it strikes me that this is the PERFECT way for us to eat for a week. I'm going to have a trial run this Saturday. 

It will end up being like when we bought our gas bbq. We ended up having about 30 bbq's in about a month. It got to the point when son was begging that we didn't have any more.

After a lovely afternoon with friends we came home, I cooked a light supper and enjoyed a glass of wine. That was the calm bit of the weekend.

Sunday morning woke up and had a cup of coffee, then got into work clothes. I went out on the scaffolding and cleaned out all the gutters, then washed the gutters and the eaves. Once that was done I painted the top area of the house front and back (can do the bottom bit when the scaffolding has gone).

We have a light pointing out into the top of the garden (remember our house is in a hill), the bulb has never worked since we've lived in the house. So we got this working. 

House washed and painted I then went to fill up my car as I am visiting one of our offices tomorrow. More washing went on and got sorted. Then we had to take down all the curtains and clear the window sills, ready for the windows to be put in.

Then I thought about the garage door - we're going to have to repaint it to match new windows. I don't have the paint, but I could white gloss the surround to the door. I didn't want to ruin the driveway so I carefully laid out covers to protect it. Needless to say the one square inch not covered is the one area that paint got spilt so I ended up having to sort that out. Not easy with white gloss on rough stone!

Cleaner didn't turn up last week and I hadn't had a chance to sort things out - so next activity was to clean the house (sigh).

House sparkling again (well not really, I didn't do a deep clean or anything). I then went on to make sausage rolls and quiche for family lunches in week and then made supper for the family.

I started this activity at 08:00 and I sat down for the first time at 18:30. I had no choice but to remain in a seated position as my gammy knees had given up from so much climbing up ladders and bending constantly.

Needless to say I fell asleep very early!

I'm sure there will be more excitement this week - and there's always the worry that the people that put the windows in do a rubbish job of it causing us endless issues.

Once they've gone I'll have to get out on the scaffolding again to touch up my paint job. All a bit of a rush job as I understand that by midweek the scaffolding will be taken away for the next job.

I realise that all of the trauma's are things that in most people's lives would be way down the list of things of importance. I also realise we're lucky that we've been able to get this work done - especially when so many people are struggling to even feed themeselves.

Though in our defence, we live a simple life - if we do anything exotic or posh we do it on our Tesco vouchers and we NEVER do anything unless we've got the money to pay for it. We both struggled with debt throughout our twenties and thirties.

Update: Chaos in the house as the people have turned up to start the windows and dog is barking its head off!