07/01/2013 - Operation Stomp-less

Monday in work. Yawn. Everyone (except me) got shouted at for being lazy and not doing their jobs properly! Hopefully things will be different now and it will all look us!

I also accepted delivery of a new contraption I purchased as a desperate attempt to get a good night's sleep.

No, it's not for me, it's for Barney!

Yes, the above little blighter who looks like butter wouldn't melt? HE'S A DEMON! A GIANT STOMPER-DEMON!

Basically, if he wakes up in the middle of the night and decides he's quite like some attention, he demands it! From me! Usually between 3-4am. How does he demand it? Well he jumps onto the bed and walks over my chest.

Barney is not the lightest kitty on the planet. In fact, he's far from it. So as you can imagine, having a portly puss parading over your ribs/chest/shoulders is rather painful to say the least.

It's only me he does this to, by the way! Not Paul...oh no...can't disturb his darling Daddy's sleep, can he.

Little Beep.

So I bought him a self-heating bed. Basically it reflects the body heat back out into the fleece, so it's so snuggly warm he won't want to move. Excellent idea, right?

Zombie Eyes and Belly Dots!

I think it's safe to say he likes it! I had to sprinkle it with a little catnip to initially get him interested, but now he's a fan!

 He is a handsome blighter, is he not? I heart my Barnacle!

06/01/2013 - The Rave Cleanathon

It's Sunday. Day of rest. Yeah - no. We have a house to clean!

For Christmas, I bought Paulan AMAZING CD - Ministry of Sound Anthems - 90s. The soundtrack to our youth! We raved to this on the way to my parents' house on Christmas Day, and we were rave-cleaning to it today! In fact, we were even dork-ish enough to have our own twitter hashtag! #DinoAndCarries90sRaveCleanathon!

So I sent Paul to the supermarket (then set him to cleaning the kitchen), I set to and decided that the living room needed a bit of spit and polish.


Boy, was I right?! It was icky! To the extent, I didn't just dust around the edges, but took EVERYTHING off shelves and dusted them, took the candles out of the fireplace (we don't have a fire), polished those, cleared out the place itself...didn't get to finish the whole room! It's not even a big room! It didn't help that CITV were playing some of the kids shows that were on telly back in my day. Fun House, anyone?! Knightmare?

Clueless was on after that, AS IF?! Then Ghostbusters 2...needless to say, I got my best work done a lot earlier on in the day!

I snapped a few pics as I was going on with the day...but don't judge me on the filth of my house! I have a valid excuse for these next two!

Doesn't this candle look like the prop from a movie?! Alas, it's from my fireplace!

Just so you can see the filth - the one at the back has been washed. The other two are as found

Basically, there is no fire in my fireplace, as you can see. I put candles there to make it look a bit pretty. I've never lit them. Don't know why - there's no reason why I shouldn't! Anyway, the problem with not having a fire in your fireplace is that there is a big gaping hole that leads up the chimney! So my living room is freezing! AND, the worst bit, the cats like climbing up there. Yes, both cats have been seen climbing into the abyss that is my chimney. My worst fear is that they get stuck and we have no idea how to get them out.

I need to block it up at some stage, but as we aren't going to be in this house for a great number of years now, I feel like that might be a waste, as other people might want to put a fire in!

So when the cats go up the chimney, they have to come back down again. With them they bring reminders that there was once a fire in this house over the 100+ years that it has stood. There is a whole load of soot up there.

I need a chimney sweep!

So at some stage, I think I might shove an old single duvet up there, just to insulate a little, and to stop the kitties from making it their home up there!

Anyone have any other solutions to this?

I couldn't work out the order that the candles go back in... #Fail

I also took pictures of some of the bits and bobs that adorn my fireplace. They are dust traps but what's a house without a few quaint trinkets! I think they speak volumes about me!

My brother and sister-in-law gave me the wooden kitty. I think they got in on their honeymoon in Morocco. The ear-less donkey behind is from my parents' holiday to Spain a couple of years ago, and the odd china kitty in the front is also from my parents', from last year's holiday to Crete. I find it a little scary, but it looks good in that group!

I do love a good tacky present! Just me?

This was a gift from my future Mother-in-Law a few weeks ago. It's a VW Campervan bauble for the Christmas tree! We didn't have a Christmas tree, due to having destructive kitties, but this is a permanent fixture on display at our house now! It's no secret that I love campervans, and we have, in fact, ordered one as our wedding car! This was just meant to be ours!

After leftovers from last night's dinner for dinner, we had a vaguely early night. Busy day in work on the morrow!

05/01/2013 - Start as we mean to go on

Saturday! Yay! Weekend! Time to do nothing, stay in bed all day maybe? Go into town and do some shopping in the remainder of the sale?!

Not us. No, today was the day that we picked up our black A4 ringbinder and opened it for the first time in ages. The folder containsall the documents to do with our wedding.

Yes, it's wedding planning time. See what we have to do and do it! After all, we get married THIS YEAR! EEEKS! 245 days to be exact. Extra eeks!

Yup. The page is blank.

Instead of sitting at home and being distracted by the various blogs I follow, or Paul reading his football sites, we 'spoilt' ourselves and went out!

Have you been to a cafe with a better name, EVER?!

We walked a little way to a place called Oomoo (always loved the name) for a drink and some serious plannage.

The only downside to our excusion is that we're being good for the next few weeks and cutting out as much sugar as we can (except natural ones) so WE COULDN'T EAT CAKE! Oomoo's cakes are amazing. They do a Malteser cheesecake which is just...wow...

Anyway, I still got to have some excitement, in the form of 'Scouse Breakfast Tea'...which I'm pretty sure is English Breakfast tea, but it makes it sound more fun, so let's go with it!

How cute is that tea strainer?!

 We got a lot done. Plus we worked out all the stuff we haven't done yet and how scary that is! We also had our first spanner in the works, but I won't go into detail as to what that is just get.

I spent the evening creating our wedding website. The first one we tried was not at all easy to use. It was really disappointing. The second one we used, and it's pretty common among the people that we know who have got married recently, but hey - if it ain't broke, why try to fix it?!

Very pleased with our day's work. It wasn't easy but it's better that we bit the bullet and did it, right?

I think it's the problem with having quite a while to plan the wedding. By the wedding, we will have had 21 months, give or take a day or two, between getting engaged and our wedding day. We did a little bit, then nothing, then a bit more, then nothing...the momentum has been sporadic. Probably not ideal.

I'll keep you posted! :)

04/01/2013 - I hate Friday

I know that the title is a bit of an 'out there' statement to make. It's the last day of the working week. Yay! However, it's also my busiest in the office, and history has proven it to be the most difficult. You see, I have to count all the files that we have in the office. I work at a Solicitors' office. That's a lot of files. If I can't find a file...well...it turns out that I have to find it. It doesn't matter that the file is not mine - the person who handles the file generally can't be bothered to help me.

Now the AssHat and the Snooty One have left (I want to use the AssHat jpg again but I won't. Not today!) the files are a little tidier, however, it's still not simple to make sure I know where they all are! Maybe in a few week's time when we've been through them all we'll be able to put them back in the filing cabinet, but for the near future, they're EVERYWHERE!

Going through files today also meant I got to look at some of the files that Newbie hasn't had chance to review yet. Yeah. That was a good idea and a bad idea. I found LOADS of urgent work. I found problems and Court dates that there was no notification of on our computer system. EEKS!

So it was another busy day.

My favourite bit about today - marking off my provisionally booked holiday dates on my wall planner! Including the weeks surrounding our wedding!

WHOOP!

Yes, that is me, the week before as CH and the week after as CK! That amused me far more than I can tell you! One of my colleagues asked me "who's CK?"...um...think about it...

The joy of being Office Manager is that it's my wall chart so I can provisionally book dates before other people! There have to be some perks, right?! It's certainly not the pay packet!

A nice relaxing evening was had at home. Well. I say that. I started stressing about bridesmaid dresses and how there are NONE IN THE SHOPS THAT I LIKE/ARE THE RIGHT COLOUR/HAVE A PETITE VERSION to which Paul told me to turn the computer off and read.

I recently bought a few of the Vampire Diaries books after watching the TV show as a guilty pleasure. The books actually pain me  to read as they are so...painful. Not enjoying them I'm afraid. The only thing that was making the experience more pleasurable for me was this:

See why she's called Belly Girl?!

Maia generally parks herself on my legs when I am in bed. It's comforting, actually. She never used to be a cuddler, but in recent years she's a permanent fixture on me, somewhere, at night. It used to be frustrating as I couldn't move in my sleep, meaning my neck/back would hurt in the morning from sleeping at odd angles, but now I find it odd when she's not there, and I have to get up to find her to make sure she's ok! She is. She's usually curled up on the stairs where the hot water pipes pass under the floor! Little minx!

03/01/2013 - Have I really had time off?!

So before Christmas I was working my bottom off. As a basic explanation my old AssHat of a line manager left to set up his on firm. And he literally just left, which left us in a pile of...well...you get the picture. He also took one of the other Solicitors with him, who did leave notes on files but they were awful.

Couldn't miss an opportunity to use this picture again!

 Our new guy is a nice chap but had NO idea of the mess he was getting himself into.

Anyway, he has been reviewing files and dictating notes and letters to go on them. Problem is that our secretary is now part-time. Which means I have to pick up the slack. And I am slow! I have never done typing before like this. I'm fast at typing my own stuff but listening to someone else talk and trying to keep up...yeah - I suck.

It needs doing so I do it. But I really am not the quickest person for the job! What doesn't help is when your connection to your remote server crashes every minute so I'm merrily typing away then have to rewind as it stopped working two paragraphs ago!

ARGH! - It got to 7 of 20 then gave up altogether.

 

Still, doing all this typing makes me look very efficient indeed! Today was no exception. 

125% of daily work...not bad...

It's not the most I've ever done but I think it's a pretty efficient Thursday of work!

246.7%...that's more like it!

02/01/2013 - The first 'real' day of the year!

I never count the first of January as a real day.

 Does anyone actually do anything on the first day of the year other than vegetate and plan how tomorrow you'll get fit/healthy/not drink/be better...then eat pizza, eat the rest of the Christmas chocolate etc? BEST DAY OF THE YEAR!

Which makes today the first real day. What did I do? Went to work, came home and realised I REALLY need to tidy my house! What made me come to this realisation? This:

Ever get the feeling you and your partner have too many shoes?!

01/01/2013 - Once More With Feeling

I wonder if the change in year will make this app work again so I can actually do this?!

Any readers have probably forgotten me as it's been a bloomin' long time but I will attempt to take a picture a day to document 2013. It's a big year, what with me hitting the big 21 (+9) and of course, our wedding! EEKS!

There were up-sides to 2012 but all in all it sucked for me. It's probably best that the blog entries stopped when they did!

Anyway, to start this year's attempt at taking a pic (or two) a day - here are my babies! You'll be seeing a LOT of them over the coming months!

Barney Eric Kirkham (2 1/2) aka Stompers/Little Beep/Naughty Little Sausage

Maia Arwen Hartley (6 3/4ish) aka Babba/Moo/Belly-Girl