Roadside Picnic

 last day of general training today, i have been asked to do the senior training tomorrow as well. apparently there is overtime available once we start - hurrah! i am thinking of the pennies. will pay the council tax over 10 months next year so i can have feb and march off, and use that for the home insurance and van insurance instead of having to scramble for it.

greek chicken for dinner, followed by my weight in honeycomb icecream and i am having the kind of evening where i don't want to do anything but poke listlessly at my phone and listen to an audiobook. i was going to go to bed early, but i'm so invested in locke's second adventure that i am probably going to read way past my bedtime again. 

payday has been, money has been allocated, and now we just need to plod through february. another low buy month ahead, and i really need to list some stuff on vinted so i can buy myself some cute things without upsetting my budget. mot has been booked and i am on best behaviour until the van passes that. 

currently reading: red seas under red skies

very old docuseries by michael palin - i am putting this here to remind myself to watch it. 

quiet day again, chris still ill and i didn't get dressed until about 2pm. did lots of cross stitch, walked dog, made chinese chicken thighs for dinner. tesco shop came and i put it all in a laundry hamper to take to the kitchen - i am a genius. i finished lies of locke lamora (5/5 no notes, absolutely incredible), started red seas under red skies about fifteen minutes later. according to my book tracker i have read 1,513 pages this week, and to be honest most of that was listening whilst stitching away. 582 of those pages were today. 

its payday tomorrow and that will be a huge relief. we got through the month. i hate that my bills etc reset on the 26th, but my budgeting spreadsheet resets on the 1st. i'm not sure how to fix that. maybe if i update my trends on monzo to match my spreadsheet it will make more sense? 

i took all the old carrots etc out of the crisper drawer - if i can't see it it doesn't get used and it is so wasteful! instead i now have a diet coke drawer. at least those won't go off in a hurry!

i am too tired to write much today. my eyes are burning. earlyish night for me at 11pm. 

currently reading: red seas under red skies
todays glimmer: the sun coming out on my walk with moose and casting long january shadows over the playing fields. 

fri-yay! 

what a book that was. 4/5 stars, makes such a big difference to read something that is written by someone who can write well! really warm hearted, engaging read. i have rediscovered audiobooks with a fervour. hurrah, now i can sew and read at the same time instead of wondering how to split my hobbies, and then i can take my kindle up to bed and pick up where i left off with the audiobook. i am currently listening to / reading the lies of locke lamora, and woweeee it is so good. like if oliver twist and oceans eleven had a baby that happened to be george r r martin. i can see me finishing it this weekend. 

work was fine, lots of CBTs that i finished quite quickly, and therefore was able to do some sewing. i can't believe training finishes on monday! i have finally found out where i am going.... its to retirement quotes! i have never been so pleased. i really loved doing retirements in my last job, so i hope i enjoy them as much as i did. i am so relieved to not be doing transfers. i suppose i should brush up on my GMP knowledge though, as it is currently non existent. and it doesn't look like anyone else from my training team will be doing the same thing as me. oh well. 

chris is very poorly with the man flu. i handled it much better than he has, he has barely got out of bed all day! i had to go out to co-op to get more meds and some bread for tomorrow. laura also needed new school shoes as hers have a hole in the bottom - they lasted almost four months this time around though! i found some on amazon for 12.99, i hope they fit her. unfortunately not a no spend day, but a low spend day. i had an email from vinted to say i earned £613 on there last year. i should probably make around the same this year with any luck. every little helps. 

got lots of sewing done, my fox now has a head. unfortunately for me, i had a cup of tea after 9pm so i will be awake half the night. i will never learn. 

currently reading: the lies of locke lamora
pages read so far this year: 3,698

i overslept this morning and woke up ten minutes before laura had to leave for school. oops. managed to get her off in time though. the man showed up to do the ad blue delete about 2 mins after she had left, so that was £240 spent before i'd finished my first coffee. on the plus side, the van should fly through the mot now, so that's my next vehicular related task to book in. i love the word vehicular. 

chris took moose down to the country park for a walk while i was working, and they got lost and ended up on the army base/airport then had to come back via a flood that was over his knees. poor moose ended up walking almost 13 miles. he has been utterly exhausted all afternoon and yelps every time he tries to move. no walkies tomorrow for him! just dog training. 

work was okay today, lots of free time as i finished my CBTs very quickly. some of my favourited items sold on vinted - including the joanie dress :( i am sad, but also i don't need more clothes!! i really need to get back on to listing my own stuff on there to make some space as i still have a suitcase full of stuff in the airing cupboard to list. 

i finished my sewing! nice and quick. and straight away i have started the next one. any guesses as to what it is yet? its 4 pages of a4, so i am going back to old school methods and marking off what i have done with a pencil. 

ella rang me around 8pm to ask what concert we were going to this year, and we had a look and evanescence are playing in september in manchester, and within five minutes she had bought the tickets, i had booked the hotel, we had arranged trains, and it looks like i am going to a gig! its another patch for the battle jacket haha. the annual gig is alive and well, this will be the third year on the bounce that we do this, and i am really looking forward to it. unfortunately i now have to face up to my budget spreadsheet and admit i spent £140 on a hotel....

currently reading: assassin's blade
todays spending: -1000000/10 very bad

(i am running out of sewing related journal titles)

today was blue monday. apparently that is a massive gimmick that was made up to sell holidays in 2005 to combat the "january blues". however, mind and samaritans use it to campaign to talk about mental health. so lets see. my mental health is very up and down. some days i wake up and am entirely satisfied with my life, and other days i want to starve myself into obsolescence.  i read old open diary entries and i was the epitome of a manic pixie dream girl, and i was also clearly very mentally unwell and desparate for approval from any source. now i think i do not seek approval from anyone but myself, so that is a giant step forward. i still people please to a pathetic extent and suck at putting my foot down with a firm hand when it comes to my boundaries though. 

work was okay today, we did lots of team building again and group training sessions. i spent the day slyly cross stitching at the same time and made huge amounts of progress. they asked us to share a photo from the last year when we went on holiday. lots of people abroad, saint kitts & nevis, fuertaventura, turkey etc. i showed a photo of the sculpture trail in the forest of dean, but i was so nervous i messed up and said it was the new forest, aka an entirely different geographic location. i also told the story of when i was a teenager and broke a ski lift by crashing into it. its a good job that i do not get embarrassed easily. 

greek chicken for dinner (yum) and laura and i joked around for a bit before she went upstairs to watch transformers and i carried on with my sewing. it would appear that i have nearly finished it... 

our internet is out of contract, and i am wondering about switching provider, but not sure if there would be an overlap? i can't afford (literally) to be without wifi now i WFH but i wouldn't mind saving a tenner a month. i also need to look into tax rebates for WFH. 

this evening i watched a documentary on youtube called skint. its a multipart series, i believe set around 2005. i moan a lot about being broke, but these people are REALLY broke. most of it is obviously choice through drug addiction, but the raw poverty is really something to witness. i have never had to steal to survive, and i have always managed to have something to eat even if that is sometimes just pasta and cheese. i have always had a roof over my head, and clean clothes to wear. it just breaks my heart a bit, that these people were someone's baby once, and this is the hand life appears to have dealt them. it makes me feel much more grateful for the little life i have. and then i wonder why it takes something like that to make me feel grateful for what i have. 

currently reading: assassin's apprentice
no spend days: six! 

 chris came down with fire in his belly to sort the house out. he really wants to get rid of the olive tree in the garden, i do not necessarily, but i can also see the bonus in doing so. the garden is about 120ft long, but only about 9ft wide, so the tree takes up a lot of space. the key thing is we really need to build a garage, mostly because on street parking sucks, we don't have much space for storage in the house, and the tiny shed we have is full of camping equipment, but because its so tiny, the camping equipment is also in the airing cupboard, under the stairs, under the attic eaves... you get the picture. 

chris left to take the boys home, i did the dishes, folded some laundry and then took moose down the beach to try out the long lead. he is not sure at all about not being able to roam free! we walked up and down a bit while he went loopy, i had to tie the long line around my waist to counter balance his strength! our neighbour irish john came over with his tiny dog lola, and laura got to hold lola and john made a huge fuss of moose. it was very sweet. 

came home after an hour and finished up the kitchen, then my tesco shop arrived. i have definitely been better about spending the grocery budget since doing the online shop with tesco, as much as i hate to admit it. my food bill has gone from about £120 a week to £80. we aren't really buying snacks and we aren't buying alcohol which is helping, but it's been a bit of a relief to see the spending slow down. unforunately laura forgot to tell me that she had food technology class tomorrow so we had to go to the corner shop to buy fruit for a fruit salad none of us will eat. how fun. 

i decided to spend a couple of hours doing a new cross stitch pattern, here is how far i have got. that was two hours of stitching. its a shame because this is an older kit from the subscription box, and you can really feel that they have downgraded their supplier since then. the aida is much stiffer and the hoop is holding its shape with this kit, which was not the case with the last one i did. another reason to cancel it i suppose. 


watched some youtube while i sewed. i don't seem to have the attention span for a series or a movie at the moment. i just want to dip in and out of things, or have something comforting on. i watched some morgan evelyn cook, a 90 day fiance roast video, and a caleb hammer episode. posted my reading wrap up on my book instagram, then went up to bed early to read, and as much as i hate to admit it, i think i am now invested in celaena sardothien's character arc... 

currently reading: assassin's blade 
weekly average screen time: 8h 26 min (most used is FB, YT & drop the bloody cat)

we went for a long walk along the beach this morning, and the tide was going out as we went. i took this photo of the dunes, they reminded me of something from another planet.


i wore my lucy and yak cupid trousers and i think that maybe they were a mistake because i have worn them maybe three times since i bought them, but then maybe i just need to make more of a point of getting dressed properly now i am WFH. also wore my lazy oaf tshirt that says don't happy be worry, which always makes me laugh.

we got cut off by the tide coming back in so had to take our shoes and socks off and wade back through the water. the dog had the time of his life and the kids really enjoyed it. it was a fun memory to make.

came back and had a freak out over finances, have become aware that i need to pay the home insurance, mot, yearly tax and van insurance within the next two months, on top of the ad blue issue. so naturally the sensible thing to do would be make sure the finances are locked in, but instead i bought myself a plant from co-op, extra food that wasn't on the mealplan for dinner (looking at you korean bao bun 'served' meal - very very disappointing) spent some stupid money on drop the cat (i swear that game is so fricking infuriating) and bought a back issue of a cross stitch magazine for the free gift. WHY AM I LIKE THIS. It's not like I spent over £20, but that £20 would have been 16% of my home insurance bill. i am so tired of it. i've turned off in app purchases in my settings, and i'm hoping i forget how to turn it back on to be honest.

have spent my afternoon spiralling and watching youtube videos. i am going to go and lie on the sofa in a minute and hate read some more sarah j maas.

currently reading: assassin's blade
currently: full of rage at myself
no spend days this month so far: 5

 finished reading empire of pain around 11pm. there was a statistic in there that i am going to paraphrase. it said that after they released the "tamper proof" pill, that out of everyone that died from heroin overdoses in the following years 4 out of 5 of them started their drug abuse and additction with prescription painkillers. wild. prescription drug abuse is such a weird thing that nobody really talks about. it must be fine because its come from a doctor! but its not, and it can and does ruin lives. 

finished all my work training pretty quickly today so i caught up on some youtube. i really enjoy videos by morgan evelyn cook, diaries of tay and project no buy. i thought about doing a no buy, but a) i've already messed it up and b) i don't really buy much anyway. i should probably put a self imposed ban on shopping on vinted though. or maybe just allow myself one purchase a month. now i WFH most of my day to day outfits are going to be leggings and a warm hoody, rather than any of the cute dresses in my wardrobe. 

i don't think chris slept very well last night due to me not being able to breathe so i hope he is asleep when i go upstairs. i called off going to dog training because i feel so rough and i have done no practice with moose all week. i had the bookswaps meeting at 6pm and i joined via phone rather than give people the lurgy. hannah being pregnant etc i can't think of anything worse than making her ill. i am pretty sure reading a mirror crack'd from side to side by agatha christie traumatised me and i know i haven't got german measles but i don't want to be the cause of anything going wrong! 

one random person has joined our book club on fable - i hope they are prepared for the level of snarkiness that has been going on. so far i am not loving the series. but our next read is set up and it is assassins blade. i have never known novellas be over 450 pages. 

currently reading: assassin's blade
currently grateful for: clean pyjamas and hot water bottles

i was watching a caleb hammer video and one of the guests just said "if they cant catch you what is the point" and i have got NO idea what it is supposed to mean.

today has been a bit of a wet blanket all the way through. laura's dad brought her home last night at almost 8pm, so she had to go to bed pretty much straight away. she'd had a filling so when she woke up this morning i checked in with her, gave her some painkillers and sent her to school. i got a message about five minutes after she'd left demanding to know why i'd sent her in, and then spent all day thinking that she had rung him to moan about me, which really hurt my feelings. came home, and asked to see her phone. she'd text him to say SHE WAS FEELING BETTER. so i sent him a photo of his own text exchange with her and just said "this is why i sent her in". he was obviously poking for a reaction and i just cannot deal with the fact that we have been broken up for almost a decade and he STILL tries to manipulate any situation to get a rise out of me.

training day 2 was good - although one of the computer based courses didn't work for me, so i have to do it again tomorrow. annoyingly its one of the older training videos so they insist on it reading the text out to you and you can't skip until its finished but i read about 15x faster than the voice speaks. argh.

made chicken beer camel for dinner. laura tried to read the word bechamel off the meal plan and failed. much giggling ensued. spaghetti, white cheese sauce, chicken. simples. spent an hour with her having a laugh and a chat about things, did the washing up. i have taught chris about OHIO and he is almost getting it, but not with washing up his dinner items. i did use it to finally put away a load of laundry today though! and i have had the tumble dryer going ALL DAY but everything is still damp and i have no idea why. pulled the trap out of the machine and flooded the kitchen but there was nothing stuck in it, so that was a waste of time. 

then i got advertised to! i was influenced. A pattern I have saved on my Etsy went on sale from £5 to £1.50... and I bought it :( I didn't need it! I have loads of kits to get through. But it was a dragon asleep on a bookshelf. And now I have regrets because upon opening the pattern, it's clearly from a pattern mill (AI) and has soooo much confetti that its going to be a right pain to stitch. Gah. Absolutely my own fault, I should have zoomed in because if you look closely you can tell. Plus the thumb nails don't match. I might try and stitch it up anyway because apparently I don't hate myself enough.  


my feed is full of people decluttering. its very satisfying watching people throwing things out but i am rocked every time by just how much STUFF people have. like i have three or four large doom boxes (ikea kallax box size) and i should probably reorganise my shed and attic eaves... but thats about it? whereas these people seem to have basements and attics and garages full of stuff that they just don't need? and the closests. give me strength. the consumption is wild. 

my book club is going strong. i am posting something snarky for every chapter i am reading and very much enjoying doing so. going to stop looking at bad screens now so i can look at good screen instead (kindle) under giant blanket. i wish i had the money for the new miffy fruit blanket from the oodie. its so cute.  

currently reading: crown of midnight
currently: freezing even though the heating is at 19.5C and is bankrupting me