Kates Journal

Yes, today’s one of those rare days when I’m writing original content. I’ve been reading a fair bit lately (well, one book, but reading it quite a lot) and we’ve also been watching Men In Trees / The L Word / Father Ted and the odd episode of Pushing Daisys. I’ve been watching House and Yes Minister as well, which just shows how little work you can get done if you really try.

I’ve been feeling though, the lack of creativity in my life. I don’t *mean* to watch TV when I come home, but quite often I’m just exhausted and sit down thinking ‘oh, I’ll just watch one show while I have some tea’ and the the exhaustedness which was following me home gets through the door and catches up with me. And that’s kind of it, I’m stuffed. There’s still plenty left to do around here, but we’re holding off on the kitchen until I’m less in debt. Plan is to tackle the two bedrooms which are (hopefully) just a touch of plaster and some paint. Somewhat less trauma than removing an entire concrete floor and having it relaid, a doorway bricked up, a new doorway opened and so on.

But in the name of doing something nice for a change (instead of, for example, sitting around the house reading stuff on the internet, watching TV or reading – all of which are pleasant enough but one does need a break, and it’s nice to get out with my beloved) we headed in to London.

The plan, such as it was, was to tackle some of the time-out treasure hunts, spend some time lurking in bookshops and get something to eat… 

Kathryn had yet to see Foyles, and wanted to do so, and so after a nice little lunch in the Foyles Cafe we started our afternoon with a tour of Foyles. Yeah. See, we’re both slow in bookshops when they’re tiny. Foyles used to be the largest bookstore in the world; it’s probably still the largest in the UK. We entered the store around 2pm and left around 5, carrying only 2 books… The list of books we could have bought was huge; I could happily spend thousands of pounds there.

Which would of course, be foolish. When would I have time to read that many books? But hey.

It being slightly later than perhaps intended, we headed off to do the Literary treasure hunt. It wasn’t really a hunt, as such, in that they basically tell you exactly where what you’re looking for is, and what it is. And apart from a few slightly clunky bits of navigation, it worked well. It was, however, nice to see a bit of London that, well, I’ve not really seen since my childhood, despite being really very cold…

We also ran into a couple of people doing the hunt themselves, although they were doing all 5 and we – in the end – only did one (it was bloody freezing).

Having satisfied ourselves that CC&K would be open for desert we headed to Palm Court for dinner; supping on fine cocktails (well, one each) and eating fine food. Being rich would actually be quite handy.

Finally, we finshed the day in CC&K, and headed home to bed.

…then on Saturday we got a phone call in the morning – the wedding dress place we wanted to visit was open that morning – my mother was coming with the hope that we’d get to go visit it, and so we quickly made an appointment and headed in. It’s a weird experience being fitted for a dress. I’ve never been fitted for anything in my life, not by anyone else, and so being prodded and poked and squashed into a dress was quite a novel experience. But, the women there were great – they didn’t make us feel bad for not having much in the way of a budget; they let us try on loads of dresses, and my mum’s and their advice combined to get us two good possible combinations.

Obviously we’re going to try some others too; but that first experience was important – it’s quite unnerving to be in your undies in front of lots of people you don’t know who’re pulling you into dresses… And in the end it was quite fun; and Kathryn looked truly stunning. Even I didn’t look too shabby :)

We then had a chilled out day at home – sorting out music and french lessons for my mum and Parmita. Today’s been a chilly day; the snow falling steadily all mornind, but distressingly not settling even a little…. I’m hoping for more… but a peaceful day of paperwork and snuggling lies ahead.

So, I need passport photos for the interview next week, in search of which I headed in to town. Well, technically I headed in to the bank and they said “oh, the nearest is the sainsburys”. So I went to the Sainsburys who informed me their photo machine was gone; and the nearest was a Chemist which I couldn’t be bothered to drive around looking for so I went into town (where, incidentally I now know of 4, maybe even 5 photo machines in a tiny tiny radius).

Anyhow, having got my photos I thought, hell, I’m in town, I should pick up the secateurs (sp.) and a green-wood-saw so I can trim the Bay tree. Oh, and a new cafetier. Apparently single cup cafetiers are somewhat less in fashion than when I bought it because having toured a large variety of shops I was unable to locate one. Thankfully woolworths’ still had the same model I bought before – albeit a penny more expensive this time – and this one, oddly, doesn’t say “PYREX” in the little hole where it should. Still.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find it until I’d stumbled unwittingly into Wilkinson’s. Wilkinsons, cheap as they are also have the advantage of being needlessly vague about where things are made (instead putting “Distributed by Wilkinsons, UK”, or similar on their packaging). This allows me to assume that they’re not items made by people living on slave-like wages in a dictatorship (unlike labels which proclaim certain countries I could name). Of course their *price* probably indicates otherwise, but my rare purchases from them ameliorate my feelings of guilt, at least slightly.

Anyhow, I wandered in in search of the Cafetier and the gardening implements and was lucky to escape with just a toilet brush, toothbrush holder, shower organisy doojit and a toilet roll holder. I was awfully close to getting the cheap-but-adequate bathroom cabinet but was stopped by a sudden fit of sanity. Oh, and the garden bench which is almost certainly atrocious quality but looks pretty nifty.

Anyhow, I’m off to do some garden tidying; and if the light holds I might do some very local abandonment.

I am, incidentally, feeling brighter. A bit of in-my-head poetry writing and some getting out in the sunshine truly did help.

2008 has, for several of my friends sucked an astonishing amount. And it’s been surprisingly challenging of late for me. My oldest friend lost his dad 2 years ago (I think) to the same cancer that claimed my dad. This year he lost his mum too; something which has been stuck in my head since. In the quiet moments I think about it; it makes it harder to concentrate on the good in my life.

I’ve also had some hard stuff at work; including a post-cardiac-arrest where I felt more useless than a chocolate teapot. I’ve done my ILS – which in theory is meant to mean I can ‘lead’ a cardiac arrest – if no one else is there. But with the doctor in charge doing less than nothing myself and the other nurse there flailed – expecting leadership and finding none. Thankfully an anesthetist took over, lead the care and once we were up and running it went much better. Well, sort-of. The whole thing was just…well, it left me feeling that I need to know more. My problem is that between the house and work I’m pretty much exhausted. I don’t feel like learning at home because I’m too tired.

I know that’s a feeble excuse. But I mean it; it’s a hard old slog. A few days ago I was officially the only nurse doing ‘treatments’ – that means that everyone who needed a treatment in the clinic or who needed sutures or dressings had to have them done by me. About half way through the day when the treatments box was full staff from other areas were freed up to help. In the end it wasn’t that stressful because I just declared a ‘fuck-it’ and carried on at my own pace. I didn’t even think about the 4 hour target except to order the order of treatments. No breaches, though, which would have made the morning way more stressful (mostly because we had lots of clinic patients and not too many sutures until people were able to help).

I am also still a little on the stressed side about money. I know that Rebecca’s going to be ‘ready’ soon; and that’s going to be, well, expensive. I need to send my letter to Charles Ware’s Morris Minor Centre, but I don’t see them sending me a refund of any sort. I see a fight involving the small claims court.

I’m quite fed up about it though.

In other news, I’ve finally finished the tiling in the bathroom. I’d been putting it off because I had a suspicion that it’d be a pig of a job and… it was, somewhat. The boxing is just slightly too big and I’d made it impossible to make all the joints line up because I’m some kind of mad person who likes to cause herself pain. And today, all things being equal there’ll be some grouting and some kitchen stuff done.

And lo, the house moves on.

I’m surprised by my restraint, although until yesterday I’d not fixed either of the laptops and the dead G5 continued to vex me, so posting would have had to be done via Kathryn’s laptop or by the TV-Hackintosh. Yesterday I finally got around to stripping down the Dell laptop, it was broken in rather a lot of places; the screen’s casing’s disintegrating, the connectors seem to be working loose; but thankfully the power-supply connector hadn’t broken. Despite feeling crunchy and loose, it’s actually the cable that had died and pulling one of the spare powerbricks with a new cable from the attic had it working again. Still no battery though.

And the screen, while clear and sharp still, has a serious flicker issue which isn’t related to the connector on the board. So rather than being back with a laptop that I can close and open at will, I’m still with one that has to stay in a fairly fixed position. And the screen casing’s cracked around all the screws that hold it together; so moving the screen without proper care is prone to making the screen casing come apart. Still, it’s all araldite-and-wire’d back into some sembalance of a structure. It’s nice to be able to pick it up without the whole thing flexing disconcertingly.

I’ve stripped the hard-drives out of the G5 and will give the company who repaired it a ring as soon as they’re open; see if I can’t get that back up there to be looked at again. I am concerned though as to why the supplies packed up again. I’m switching things around though, it’s no longer going to be the video server; which will, frustratingly, make the machine in the lounge somewhat noiser, but should mean no more network streaming issues.

As for the house (renovation photo set number 19), well, I spent thursday generating as much dust as it’s humanly possible to create, but this time I sealed the kitchen off from the rest of the house and channelled away with my wall chaser. While it is an ace tool, it’s also the most manky job in all of christendom. On the plus side I’ve got two electrical boxes to sink and then we can put the wiring where it should be. I removed all the wiring from the immersion heater – all the way back to the fuse box, in the end. The distressing thing is this house’s wiring is a mess, there’s no proper ring main to speak of, there’s just little pseudo-rings scattered around and linked by a big junction box (hidden) and spurs running here, there and everywhere. I could, were it not for the Part P regulations tidy it all up. Chopping some chunks out, drilling some new holes, etc, and I’d have a downstairs ring and an upstairs ring. But because I’d then have to call in an electrician to check over all the work I’d done; and to re-do wiring in the kitchen requires (‘cos of Part P) even more in the way of work that’s nice-but-not-required (as far as I’m concerned, and the electrician I spoke to agrees :) ) that I’m better off leaving it all alone and just putting new sockets on the front so it all *looks* nice.

Incidentally, while pulling down the wall, I came across a Daily Mirror from 1963. Sadly it’d suffered from being right near the filler pipe from the cistern and was disintegrating pretty badly. Also, whoever put it in there then decided to use cement, not plaster, which probably didn’t help it any and made it somewhat hard to separate from the wall and from the huge clump of concrete. There’re some shots of it in my newly created ‘Renovation Finds’ photo set.

Never mind.

In other news (at least not house related news), I broke my Cafetier today. I’m quite distressed by this, being a coffee lover. I have a filter maker, but that makes a minimum of 2 cups, and I’ve got a little ‘filter in a cup’ which is just dandy, but I can’t just sit on the couch and have that. I have to make it then bring it in. So a new cafetier will have to be sought.

I rather liked the one I had :-/

And in other, other news. I went up to JLH on Saturday to see, well, what remains of Rebecca. It’s pretty distressing still, the car’s visibly got lots of work to go – and seeing what Charles Ware had done; panels (structural ones) that are meant to meet other panels and fall about an inch short? The boot floor (the *new* boot floor) was rusted through because they’d not protected it with paint… It’s another 2grand just to put right the mess they’ve made on that side.

So, anyway. i’ve got an interview with the unnamed nursing agency in 2 weeks, so I need to dig out all the relevant paperwork for that today too. In addition to working a long day and a late. And hopefully heading towards reducing that debt again :-)

And one thing I’ve not discussed is the Wedding; which I really should, but which warrants a whole post by itself (without my finger hurting each time I press a key (walls, slipping claw hammers and fingers don’t mix, incidentally). But, if any of you out there know a good seamstress… I’m going to talk to a colleage at work, but more options is always better than less if you ask me. We were thinking about doing a sort of gift-wedding; because we *have* everything (well, everything we *need*). Traditionally, marriage was move-in-together-start-a-new-home; but for us, we’ve got a home, we’ve got a complete dinner service, we’ve got tables, chairs, toasters, ovens, bed-linen, furniture, glasses, a fridge, a washing machine, a blender… We considered the possibility that instead people could gift us bits of the wedding (or something towards them), but we came to the conclusion (having discussed it with people) that this was more odd than normal, possibly even ‘too odd’. So instead we’re pulling in friends who can do things (or who know people who can do things) to keep costs to something we might be able to afford this lifetime.

So; on that note, if you know anyone who’s a seamstress, that’d be handy, and if you’d like to do something for the wedding, shout – or we won’t know :)