Category: Tales from my life

I very rarely lock my car. I have a reasonably old, reasonably crappy car, which is nice to drive, and reliable, but it’s not something anyone in their right mind would want to steal, and it’s often full of straw and random junk, so doesn’t really look like a great target. Plus I rarely go to areas with much crime…the worst that happens around here is that one time there was some graffiti on the village noticeboard.

So car locking is reserved for occasions when I leave the car with something of value in it. Yesterday I went to my dad’s house to see if he had a couple of bits I needed for the cider press, and came away with various other things, including a huge box of dvd’s. I figured these could perhaps be stealable, so when I went to the shop on the way home, I locked the car.

I couldn’t open it again. The driver door was locked, and locked tight. Fortunately the other doors worked fine, so I could at least get in and drive home.

I got home and stuck some wd40 into the lock, and left it alone until today. Gren said he had a look at it this morning and couldn’t figure out what was wrong, so I went out to investigate. It appeared that the lock mechanism wasn’t fully disengaging, so you could turn the key or pull the knob, and it would half unlock, but wouldn’t fully click into place. Ok, simple, get inside the door and stick a screwdriver or something in to pop it back into place.

Except nothing is ever simple. It is impossible to remove the door panel while the door is closed. I tried, thinking i might be able to pull it away just enough that I could get inside to fix it. That wasn’t happening. I took it to the garage, and the guy said ‘well once we get the door open we can do blah blah blah’, so I asked how he intended to get the door open. ‘Well, we’ll have to try and remove the panel or pull it out a small way’. Yeaaaah, I wasn’t going to pay an as yet unknown amount of money for someone to spend an hour attempting and failing to do something I’d spent an hour attempting and failing to do. So I told him given that my car is probably worth less than £500, I don’t want to waste money on that, so I’d just take it home and cut a hole in the door panel, and then if i couldn’t fix it I’d bring it back.

So, I came home, removed the other door panel and looked to see how the lock mechanism worked and whether i had enough space to access it. Looked reasonably simple, so I cut a hole in the door panel with a stanley knife. At this point Gren came out and insisted on interfering, so I went inside for a bit, and when i came out he started saying ‘it’s not the lock it’s that bit that doesn’t pull on that bit and it’s all corroded and something something, we just need to put WD40 on it and leave it’. And then got annoyed with me because I actually wanted to look at my own car and try to figure it out myself, seeing as he’d come and tried to take over when I’d only been able to see it for 2 seconds. After about 5 minutes of trying to mansplain to me, he finally went indoors and left me to it. A couple of minutes after that I pulled out the spring that had corroded and broken in half, then figured out what the fuck he’d been trying to tell me was the problem. But it kinda wasn’t. Well, it was, but because of the broken spring, the thing he said needed to be done couldn’t be done, I had to implement a complicated 2 stage process whereby I made up for the broken spring by holding the naughty lock bit in place with my hand, then pushed a screwdriver in to push one bit of metal out of the way….and then the door opened…woohoooo! After taking the panel off for a closer look, I’m pretty sure that if i replace the spring, it’ll be completely back to normal, but as it is, the missing spring means that if the key is turned to lock the door, everything falls out of place and you need to hold it all in the right place to get the handle to work.

So, this essentially means that I’m never locking my car again. And also that my door panel is now held together with duct tape. But my door opens and closes properly, and I didn’t have to pay a penny!

And it also means that my ‘wooo my cider press is finished’ post that I was planning for today will not appear today, as it isn’t finished cos i wasted way too long messing around with the car and now it’s raining and I need a nap. Though it is in the garage out of the rain, so I could go work on it later. Tomorrow is more likely. I’ve varnished it and put sealant around the bottom of the base, but I need to make a frame and some sheets of muslin for building the piles of apple cakes, and need to attach some metal to the top crossbeam to protect the wood from the jack. I did give up on the idea of using the old car jack though, cos it was slooooow to lift and not especially easy, so I bought a hydraulic jack on ebay instead. I figure for £13.50 it’ll make the cider making process considerably easier, and I can also put it in my car to make the wheel changing process considerably easier, should I ever get a flat.

…I’m on a diet!

Since Gren moved in almost 18 months ago, I’ve put on 7 lbs. Not a huge big deal cos my weight fluctuates with my health and med side effects and other crap anyway, but I’ve been generally feeling ‘well’ this year, and noticed my diet has got worse, more due to laziness/routine changes than being too sick too cook. I am 5’3 and now weigh 126lbs. So totally not overweight or anything, but I LIKE to be around 115-120. I am fairly curvy, so any less than this my bones stick out too much and people start telling me I look sick (personally I don’t notice that I look sick until I get below 100, but I guess I trust people around me). And I miss my flat tummy.

So I decided to try and reduce the crap I eat. My new diet consists of:

• not letting gren cook for me when i’m too lazy to cook myself, cos every meal he cooks involves chips
• only drinking fruit juice diluted half and half with fizzy water or cold tea
• making large amounts of various salads and putting them in the fridge so I always have food available when i want it and am not tempted to eat junk cos it’s easy
• only having one beer when i go out instead of two
• not buying anything that says ‘low fat’ or ‘diet’ on it unless it’s naturally low fat
• not having any food that I’m ‘not allowed’, cos that would just piss me off and make me fail
• if i buy any chocolate or cake or other ‘junk’ leaving it in the fridge and only bringing one portion to my room at any time. I’ve not actually bought any junk, but the day i decided to start this, we had a bbq and my mum brought over a strawberry pavolva. nom!
• using half the amount of mayo that i normally do when i make coleslaw
• going back to eating when i’m hungry and not because it’s ‘dinner time’

At some point, if I’m feeling brave, I might add ‘forcing myself to eat breakfast’ to the list, but I’m not so sure, as even though I’ve not been feeling terrible since spring started, I still generally feel pretty sick for the first couple of hours after waking, so I don’t know if food is a good idea then.

Mebbe I won’t actually lose any weight, but at least I’m eating a lot more veggies now, and in my fridge there are piles of green salad with yoghurt and mint dressing, coleslaw, waldorf salad, brown rice salad, and hummous. and a whole roast chicken. AND i have homemade french bread, which is surprisingly good given there was no way I’d be able to knead it by hand, so did most of it with my poor old mixer. It didn’t seem too happy with the task, but it coped reasonably well. I really hope I don’t kill it by using it for dough, cos I so can’t afford the KitchenAid I’ve been lusting over. I have been keeping my eyes open for bread machines with a dough option on freecycle though, so maybe I’ll manage to snag one of those instead.

And I am actually enjoying the cooking. I’ve always liked cooking, but never really liked doing it just for me due to the level of mess, and Gren doesn’t each much that I eat, so we only eat together once every week or so (when i cook a roast, or when I’m too lazy to cook and eat burger and chips with him), but having the new kitchen helps, cos it’s a lot easier to keep clean. I suppose not feeling like I’m going to pass out every time i stand up also helps, but fingers crossed I’m getting better and won’t have as many days like that in future.

The kitchen is finished! Well, it was finished just before Xmas, and amazingly it’s still pretty clean and tidy. Having an awesome clean kitchen motivated me to work on the rest of the house, and I’ve since repainted my bedroom and put down new flooring, and generally been cleaning and tidying and getting rid of carloads of crap. I should have taken before and after pics, cos that is much more impressive, but generally I forgot. Just imagine it pretty much the same but with STUFF everywhere. Gren came in as I was resizing the pics and said I should have done his room too, which I didnt, cos, you know, it’s rude to take pics of other people’s bedrooms, but then he said it would have been useless without a before pic anyway, showing the 50+ beer cans he got rid of. Either way, Gren’s room is tidy now, which is nothing short of a miracle.

So, here’s my awesome kitchen when it was finished:

And here it is after a few weeks, showing the relative state of tidiness:

Stuff that still needs doing: put in coving above cupboards on the right, paint bare plaster there and inside cupboard above boiler. Replaster and paint area behind the fridge.

I didnt get proper before and after pics of my bedroom cos I am useless, but here’s a semi-before one, from after I took out all the furniture except my bed and computer (hey, i knew it was gonna take a few days and needed to keep the essentials!).

I did actually really love the red, but it’s been that way for at least 10 years, so I needed a change, and if I was gonna put down new floor, it made sense to repaint beforehand. So here it is now:

I did one coat of gloss on the windowsill today, and will do another tomorrow, then I just need to paint the radiator, and glue down the edging for the floor. Oh, and get some non-ugly curtains if i can find any that are super cheap.

The living room is mostly unchanged, I just put away the contents of the boxes of stuff that migrated here when the kitchen was being done, and bought some new cubbies for my yarn, cos the old ones didn’t match, and the set of shelves I had up was showing serious signs of wear after snargle kept climbing up to the top.

New shelves, and they were a super bargain in the argos sale…cost less than £32 for the lot, including delivery!

Stuff that still needs doing: Paint over the holes from the cavity wall insulation, sort out old yarn shelves so it looks pretty, sell one of the spinning wheels.

The spare room has looked like a bombsite for a while, especially while I was doing my room and had the entire contents of it in there. It’s not very impressive from the pics, but I sorted out all the fleeces and clothes and photography kit and other junk in there, and put it in a way that i can hopefully find things in future. And people can still actually sleep in the bed.

Stuff that needs doing: clear junk off windowsill, put up some curtains.

The bathroom is generally kept reasonably tidy, but the windowsill seemed to fill up with tons of junk, so I brought one of the old yarn cubbies up from the living room to put behind the door:

Still to do: Repaint walls, probably white or cream. Repaint coving where the paint is coming off. Get a new shower curtain. Put up a decent mirror instead of the ugly one that I found in the back of my dad’s shed 12 years ago.

And here’s the bombsite rooms….dining room and utility type room. They are tidier now than in the pics, but still…yeah.

Oh, and here’s an idea of the level of cleaning that was needed beforehand….this is the hallway after the builders had left.

Work on the kitchen is slow but steady. Here it is last wednesday:

And here it is today:

Now they just need to do a tiny bit more plumbing to get the sink fully working, and bring in and hook up the washing machine and dishwasher, finish and grout the tiles, install the hob and oven, finish the cupboard over the boiler, put in the floor, and do a few bits of finishing touches adding trims and stuff. I’ve still not actually seen the hob or oven, but i’ve been assured that they have definitely been ordered, so i hope they show up tomorrow.

This is what it was like yesterday. Now there is a hole in the wall and boxes with new cupboards in. And all day it’s been BANG BANG BANG BRRRRRR CRASH. But at least it’s getting there…yay! I am getting over a cold so I’ve been hiding in bed sneezing and coughing and wishing that putting the covers over my head and squeezing my eyes closed would make the noise go away.

It had a magpie in it the other day. It was pretty awesome, aside from being 7am. I am actually impressed that a magpie and cat could fit through the catflap at the same time. I am less impressed at being woken up at 7am and not have long enough arms to reach both window safety catches at the same time to get the thing out. It was all ok in the end though.

And that isn’t the point.

The point is, my kitchen is pretty nasty. When I moved in 11 years ago it was even nastier, it was yellow with a beige floor and white cupboards. I put down a new floor, which would have been ok, cept it’s got white in, and it was cheap, and the white is no longer white. I’ve painted the walls and cabinets several times, this yukky dusky pink was really only decided upon as it was the only cabinet paint on super special offer and they really needed doing cos i’d used non-cabinet paint the time before and it was all scratched up.

I AM GETTING A NEW KITCHEN!!!

Sadly budget constraints have meant my dream kitchen with sparkly granite worktops and glass spashbacks won’t be appearing any time soon, but it will have awesome things….like more storage space…and a totally flat wipe clean hob, and a mid-height oven so i dont have to bend over and whine getting heavy stuff out. Well, given that the current oven blew up a few weeks ago, ANY oven would be good round about now. AND a one and a half bowl sink! This makes me very happy. There should be enough space to store all the cooking things, AND the wine making things AND the soap making things AND all the things for any other kitchen related hobbies I decide i need to do.

So I decided to take before and after pics so i could remember the horribleness of before.

This is the side of the kitchen we actually use for cooking. It is a little cleaner than normal.

This is the side of the kitchen that gren uses cos it has a deep fat fryer in. It is way messier than normal cos I’ve been emptying old stuff out of cupboards. Also it’s generally ugly cos the cupboards are horrible, and there’s big bits missing from the coving cos there used to be a cupboard around the old boiler. Also I bottled a ton of cider vinegar the other day, so that needs a home finding for it. The entire space behind the small bin is full of carrier bags. I really need to remember to reuse them and stop collecting them

And this is, in theory, what it will look like. I am not sure why the boiler looks like a train in the pic, but i asked him to leave it cos it amused me.

Also, the floor will not be so scary. It’s gonna be hardwearing laminate in a fake slate tile effect, to match the worktops. But without the huge tiles and white grout.

And i want it done now now now. But the contractor is a bit rubbish and unable to use a tape measure, so he sent the place the wrong measurements (the plan above was done from estimates I gave), so I’ve had to send the proper measurements in for it to be done again. He has promised it’ll all be in and done way before xmas though, so that’s all good.

woohoo new kitchen!

The weather has been strange here the last week or so, changing from sunny to rainy at the drop of a hat. This has meant that twice this week, on an early evening drive to the next village, we have seen rainbows. My first thought was ‘omg cool, damn, why didn’t I bring the camera’…closely followed by ‘WHAT DOES IT MEAN????’.

For the entire car journey, both times, we alternated shouting ‘single rainbow half the way!!…omg single rainbow ALL the way, WHAT DOES IT MEAN? omg wait, double fucking rainbow…ALL THE WAY’, and laughing hysterically. For anyone who has no idea what i am referring to, hand in your internet membership card immediately.

Also, unrelated to the internet, today’s rainbow was REALLY fucking awesome…as we were driving out of the village, we could actually see the end of it skipping from garden to garden. I have never seen the bottom of a rainbow before, so that was really cool. Also, when we got to the next village we were at a better angle than in my village, so it had got brighter throughout the whole journey, and once I’d stopped driving, I noticed that right at the top of the arc there were 3 rainbows…not like the normal extra rainbows you get spaced really far apart, but 3 all squooshed up together. I made gren take a pic on his phone, so if it comes out, i’ll post it.

Aaaaaaaaand, part 2 of how the internet has ruined me, after the first rainbow incident, we went to the shop, and as my uterus was still rebelling at the time, I decided I needed cake. However, as I rounded the corner to the cake aisle, I noticed something shocking and amazing. CHERRY PIE WAS ON SALE FOR 1/3RD OFF. While gren was buying his beer, meat, and toilet paper, and whatever other crap he buys, I conducted a long conversation with myself about the relative merits of cake vs. pie. Sadly I was unable to reach a satisfactory conclusion before gren found me and asked why the fuck I was standing staring at the dessert shelf drooling and muttering to myself. So naturally i bought both. Even with hindsight, that was a wise decision. And i still have pie left. nom.

The internet is also mostly to blame for my obession with goatse, LSG girls’ boobs, and expensive German yarn… for that matter, the internet is entirely to blame for the fact that I now share a house with a man who pretty much only buys large quantities of meat, chips, toilet paper and beer whenever we go to the supermarket, and then invariably looks at his purchases and says ‘it’s gonna be a good night’ to the cashier. To be fair though, while his dietary habits are somewhat disgusting, he’s a pretty fucking awesome lodger…there aren’t many people who would sit in a car with me for 10 minutes screaming ‘WHAT DOES IT MEAN???’ and laughing like a crazy person.

So yay for the internet, I guess.

Also, I am sad today for a reason that is SECRET so I’m not gonna tell you. BUT, I still managed to write a mostly coherent post with no wahhing. I also realised that I have approximately 90 pints of homemade cider waiting to be drunk, and a bottle is in the fridge right now. OMG, and apple mead that needs bottling. If I can find 6 bottles, I’m gonna go do that RIGHT NOW.

So, today is my birthday, so i went out shopping with my parents and then went to lunch and i ate noodles and dumplings and it was nommy. AND i actually bought stuff. I’ve not bought anything for aaaaaages. AND I BOUGHT BRAS! For a while i thought the world was going to end as the stupid posh bras in the stupid posh department store didn’t go below a 32, but i went into M&S and actually found a couple that were pretty and not too expensive. And i bought something green. i don’t think i own anything green, but they didnt have the pink one i wanted in my size, and the green is kinda growing on me. I guess having something different for once is nice. and it’s silk, and pretty. oh, and a fucking DD cup. I refuse to believe i have DD size breasts,  it is a physical impossibility, they are SMALL…ok, well not small, but smallish. Stupid indoctrination from my teen years i think makes me think anything bigger than a C cup is OMGHUGE. But it clearly isn’t. anyway, bras that fit ftw.

anyway, you dont care about all that crap, you just wanna see boobs, right?

Well, tough, you’re gonna have to wait.

I also bought this. I am becoming a complete bedding whore, but i REFUSE to spend hundreds of pounds on my bedding. but yay for sales. fucking 500 thread count bitches. I am never going to leave my bed. Though i have a huge dilemma, as i only put clean sheets on like 2 days ago, but i wanna use these nooooooow.

And the most exciting part of the day was my dad just being all casual like and saying ‘you know that lens you’ve been going on about, well we’ll buy you it if you like’. Our attempts to get to the shop before it shut were thwarted by GPS, roadworks, and heavy traffic, but that’s ok, cos it’s cheaper online. So soon this blog will be full of OMGWIDE photos. mmmmm, wide angle.

oh, right, yeah. boobs.