Tuesday 7th August - Conifered & Pressured To Death

Now that my long term plans laid out in black and white, aiming to get debt free in 7 years (an absolute fantasy from where I stand today) I'm putting the final touches to The House, checking and revising my figures, then going all out for it.

I've already started behind the scene by "volunteering" for three extra shifts since I last blogged, so now I'm on a shift of 8 12 hour night shifts (1 extra), 24 hours off, then a 12 hour day shift, then 2 days off, followed by 2 extra 12 hour nightshifts. That's 36 hours overtime in a week, so I'm having to rearrange my holiday dates again so I now get paid holiday pay on rest days at the start of the month as I'm working my holiday (and you can't work and get paid holiday pay on the same day - thank you Europe!).


My son flew out to Spain on Saturday with my daughter as her 15th Brirthday (and Christmas) present from him, and they get back this Saturday afternoon at Stanstead, then my wife's cousin comes over from Austrailia on Sunday for the once in a lifetime, 6 week visit. So my wife's picking the kids up from Stanstead on Saturday, then driving to Birmingham on Sunday to pick her cousins up.


So, it's one hell of a mad rush to get everything ready. We've had about 12 months notice, but due to the old cashflow (lack of) problems, like everything else in my life, we've had to leave as much as we could until the last minute. AGAIN.


So, over the last weekend I laid a new carpet in the lounge on Saturday, only to take it up again on Sunday as the glue I was recommended to use to stick the carpet to the underlay solidified, lifting the carpet in rucks, then settled back down again through the night, leaving us with a terrible, mountainous, ruckled carpet. Emergency trip to the new ScrewfixDepot in Kings Lynn for a carpet stretcher, but ended up with a carpet puller as the woman I spoke to at their head office in the morning gave me the wrong catalogue number and I ended up with the wrong thing. Had to get a neighbour to help me in the end.


That wasted Sunday, the day I was to be in the garden. I managed to put in about three hours, but it wasn't enough. I'm still cutting (hacking) back the Conifer hedge and I worked on Sunday until I ran out of jigsaw blades, meaning I had to get up early Monday, go to Focus to get replacement blades (I don't have a chainsaw), tear-arse back home and worked in the garden until about 2pm. Then got cleaned up, and ready for work, a 12 hour night shift.


Complete with some wicked scratches and grazes all up my arms, cut shoulders, and a few scratches on my face from where the conifers rebounded back and smacked me square in the face as the jigsaw made it's slow progress through the trunks. And an unprecedented level of tiredness to boot. Lst night was a really long one.


And the DVD Camcorder I got my wife last Christmas specifically for the visit still isn't repaired after the daughter dropped it at her Birthday party.


The gardens having to be left now. The Confier hedge is trimmed back, and now the gardens full of bits of conifer trees which I can only get rid of, bit by bit, as the council empty our brown bin (Can't afford a skip). It's just not finished, so I'm going to have to inform the wife's cousins that the gardens "undergoing Renovation". And stuff it. There's only so much I can do. The need for money always takes precedence and I'm always left like this - millions of things to do and no time.


In between night shifts this week, I've got to paint the bedroom where the cousins are staying, or, at least, ceiling and woodwork. The ceilings going to need 2 coats I guess and that's going to hold me up again.The wife, complete with her bad back, is going to do the walls for me.


Soooo much pressure! That's why I'm writing my blogs in my dinner break at work and saving them to a pen stick for cutting and pasting here!