We sort of split the hour this morning, getting up a tiny bit later than usual but having extra daytime too. I quite like the clocks going back, not just for the extra hour but because I enjoy the dark evenings, although I do support the 10:10 campaign for staying lighter longer for all the very good eco reasons they put forward and I know plenty of friends who struggle with less daylight and sunshine.
We’d put a selection of airbeds on freecycle yesterday so had to stagger putting them on the doorstep to make sure the right people got the right things. I don’t really like the strange not-to-sure-what-to-do-or-say ness of freecycle exchanges. In my opinion both parties are getting what they want – stuff cleared or free stuff so it’s a mutually good deal but then if someone collecting is not suitably thankful I regret giving things to them so I’d rather just let them come and collect more anonymously.
Scarlett made cups of tea (she is really very good at that now, makes it just the right colour 🙂 ), the kids tried on some wetsuits we’d dug out of the wardrobe to see if they still fitted, one was too small so is now on ebay, the other fitted both of them but Scarlett didn’t like it. Davies did though so that might come along with us next year.
We all sat and watched a home video of the first year Ady and I were at this house – February 1993 onwards. We’ve both changed sooo much – I was 20 and Ady was 29, his 30th birthday and my 21st are part of the video, along with a housewarming party, loads of friends we mostly are not in touch with other than Christmas card exchanges and the kittens we had followed by Malice and Candle at their most wild and feral. The early few months in the house were chaos, bare floorboards, no kitchen, walls being knocked down, new bathroom and heating and total rewiring with dust and mess everywhere and nowhere to escape it all. There is also a little bit of the 3 month build to create upstairs, all with a couple of months old Davies wailing as a soundtrack to the stress of further dust, a bloody great hole in the roof, our bedroom the ground zero point of the build where the stairs went in. The video shows Ady and I mostly cheerful throughout, enjoying the adventure and the process and looking forward to achieving our eventual aim of the house we wanted. It gave me fresh bolstering that we’ll be just fine with any hardships and tough times next year.
And hopeful the physical work, reduced diet and less drinking might return me to that gorgeous slender version of myself aged 20 ;).
Ady went off to empty the drawer in our bed where he has stashed mobile phones over the years when contracts have provided free upgrades, dismantle the now emptied chest of drawers and put away the clothes. Scarlett went to ‘help’ him and Davies did some Simpsons movie maker while I started listing the phones on ebay. This took hours for some reason so I hope they make more than the 99p each I have started them all off.
Ady chopped up one chest of drawers for firewood but said the second one was really quite intact so I stuck it on freecycle – loads of interest and collected very quickly :).
We rang up about an oven for sale locally which claimed to ‘need a bit of a clean, hence £45ono’ but was the exact same oven in the same colour we’d seen in the shop yesterday for £175 so I was keen to go and look at. We went via the clothes bank to drop off clothes not worth trying to sell. When we arrived at the house it was possibly the most run down from the outside property I have ever seen. All the children in the street must surely assume a witch lives there. The gate was hanging off it’s hinges, an upstairs window was broken, the garden was totally overgrown and full of stuff like a rusty bike, a fridge and a broken sink. We were incredibly reluctant to knock on the door and actually go in and had pretty much decided we’d be saying no to the cooker. But despite a couple of knocks on the door nobody answered so we were saved. The quest for the cooker continues…
Back at home Ady got dinner on, the kids played outside until after dark and then came in for a bath while I cleared the bookcase ready for the Books Sale tomorrow. We have gone from six shelves fully stocked, a couple of them with double levels of books to barely three shelves – one of books the kids want to keep (and I agree, they are really nice, new books on subjects they are interested in and are therefore worth storing), one of books I want to keep, things like dictionaries, a couple of autobiographies, things like Harry Potter which the kids want to keep to read when they are able and a shelf half full of books we will be taking with us. Both kids still have bookcases in their bedrooms so I guess we will still have a fair few boxes of books when we come back :).
Plenty for the book sale tomorrow though, non-fiction and fiction, chick lit and biographies, loads of kids reference books (mostly ex library stock) and a few work books, activity books, some reading scheme stuff and I’ve also pulled out the educational cd and pc games that didn’t sell at car boot sales but will probably go to fellow HEors tomorrow. I think I have about 6 or 7 people planning to come and I’ll do a second date either this week or next too.
We had dinner watching The Cube and the kids went to bed. I watched the last of the Single Dad and thought the ending was quite disappointing. I can’t decide whether I have enjoyed that or not really.
I feel like the kids have missed out a bit this weekend as we’ve been busy doing fairly boring stuff so they’ve been confined to the house finding their own entertainment. I’ve also felt bad looking at my friends facebook pages today seeing how much everyone else has done for Hallloween. It’s not something I am remotely fussed about either way, we’ve done a few parties or done nothing at all in previous years, this year was a do nothing year. So no pumpkins, no dressing up and no scaring the neighbours banging on their doors after dark ;).