So, I realise that your life is devoid of meaning without my posts, and that you find yourself weeping quietly to yourselves as you fall asleep on days when I don’t post, so I thought I ought to update you all on the quiet.
So, why’ve I been quiet.
Well, I’ve been working a lot, including doing some agency work because our roof is leaking, which costs money, and we want a baby, which it turns out also costs money. Ironically, for once, this bit would be cheaper in the States. The ‘getting a baby’ theoretically, would be cheaper, ‘cos we could just buy some sperm.
In the UK with the cost of treatment options being so ‘not cheap’, and having no actual source of sperm, we’re essentially forced down the IVF route. And the IVF route is nearly £4,000. And that’s when it’s on special offer (buy 2 for 1! Reduced to clear…).
So over the next few weeks quietness will probably continue to reign over the blog.
I’ve also been working on the house, intermittently at least. So the under-stairs area now looks like this:
It is looking pretty good, if I say so myself. It is waiting for a touch more filling and sanding, then some painting. I’m rather happy with it though. Definitely an improvement over the old arrangement. I’ve also started on Kathryn’s office, which later today we need to try and clear so I can finish filling over the evil, hideous, awful, nasty, gnarly Artex.
As you are all no doubt aware, Artex is made from Synthetic Evil Diamonds encased in a concrete like slurry of misadventure, and thus no quantity of mere mortal tools can remove it. Indeed, the only way to truly remove Artex from any surface is to destroy the entire surface itself, and then have the wall thoroughly exorcised. I don’t have the money, time, or patience for that so I’m plastering over it. Which is, of course, a deep joy. Because trying to put a thin skim of plaster over a surface that’s sharp and uneven is, of course, as much fun as you can have standing up.
It’s going okay, I’ve got a ‘first coat’ over much of it, which I’ll sand back and then re-fill over with filler to try and get a fairly smooth surface. It’ll never look as good as the ones the plasterer did, or the ones where they’d (thankfully) applied it over wallpaper (and we peeled the wallpaper off, and there was great rejoicing). I can’t say that the process is adding to my already minimal appreciation for Artex*.
Oh, and I’ve been doing NaNoWriMo, which is unlikely to produce anything astonishing, but it’s a lot of words. I’m hideously behind, because I essentially only write when I’m not at work. But it’s something (my progress is here. I’ve also been doing the odd bit of writing for Transport Evolved.
And we’ve been having a life. For example, last night we went to go and see Mark Thomas in Cheltenham, doing part of his 100 Minor Acts of Dissent tour, which was, quite frankly, Brilliant. We then had a late, but very pleasant dinner out. So not very exciting for you guys, but busy for us.
* We did try something called ‘Smoothover’ in another room. As I recall this appeared to be a product made by Artex or it’s subsiduaries entirely designed to make you lose all hope that the artex’d walls would ever be smooth again and thus, give up, leaving the artex in place.
