I burnt myself :(

10 days ago I burnt myself on the breadmaker pan trying to shake a loaf out of it. It was sore but I didn’t think it was as bad as it was. The next day I developed a 4cm x 2.5cm blister. It popped and reblistered several times and continued to be sore. It was covered and had germolene on it but as it was close to my wrist, the covering kept getting wet or snagged on clothing. I took it off and it started to heal and dry out. Today it developed a crack across it which was quite sore.  The red/healing area is still around 4x2cm.  I redressed it with some more germolene to try to moisturise the cracked wound. Now it’s itching like crazy! It’s driving me mad. I thought I’d look up anything to soothe it on the web but failed.  Oh and here’s a tip. Don’t put burn crack itch into google unless of course… never mind, I’ll leave it with you.

It snowed!

Lots of stuff to blog about but I wanted to note for myselft that we had the first snow of the Autume/Winter today. It started with rain, which turned to huge flakes. Tonight there is a dusting of it here and there around the garden and for the first time since summer, I walked down the garden with the grass crunching underfoot. To be fair, I haven’t been out there much at night but I still got butterflies! I’ve no idea why the seasonal change gives me butterflies but every season does – yes, I know I’m strange! I can’t remember the last time we had snow this early in the year. People keep saying that it’s not normal and that it’s really cold for the time of year. I haven’t done any research but I’m pretty sure that it did used to snow in October and that it used to be this cold. I remember wearing hat, scarves and gloves and wrapping up extra warm as the days approached halloween and bonfire night. Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me, everyone knows I don’t remember what happened last week, but I’m pretty sure the weather was like this when we were kids.

Well would you believe it?

I don’t think I’ve discussed it on here but I’ve been complaining about the clutch in the disco since we’ve had it. It went back to the garage we bought it off (though I@d love to name and shame them, I wont for legal reasons…) who kept it for almost 2 weeks without supplying a courtesy car (we’d had the disco a week). He insisted it had recently had a new clutch and gearbox at a cost of over £1000 and he kept telling us he had receipts. Anyway, it turned out that the disco sat in the road next to his showroom for all that time. Then it went to the garage and was there for less than an afternoon. The conclusion being there was no fault – of course, I’m but a woman.

So I go to pick it up (thats short version. *long version; lots of unanswered calls after I found out that it had sat in the side street and hadn’t moved for a week, eventually getting through for him to tell me it was ready and they’d found a minor fault that had been repaired but he’d forgot to tell me despite me having no transport. I arrange collection and make arrangement with bro to give me a lift, then salesman rings me back and says he’ll bring it to me within the next hour, 5 hours later he hasn’t and isn’t answering phone, I get the spare set of keys and help myself to the car so that I dont spend yet another bank holiday with out my car.) Bro takes me, drops me off, see’s me start it, asks if I’m ok and leaves. I pull out of side street and can’t get the bloody thing in to third gear without the grinding as if I haven’t quite engaged the clutch (the problem I’ve been telling them!). BF rings salesman -from Ireland incurring all the charges – and threatens to rip his legs off or other regional appendages.. Salesman promptly rings me to arrange for me and him to go to the people who installed the gearbox and clutch to see he is being open with me. Also arranged for me to return the car after the bank holiday for testing. It went back, they said it was ok. We never went to garage that supposedly installed it.  Disco went to another garage who also said it was fine (I found out today, they didn’t test it but were asked to repair an oil leak) I drove over 100 miles away yesterday and within 8 miles of my return journey, the clutch failed whilst driving down the motorway!

To say I’m not impressed is putting it mildly. I’ve got tons to do. I need to take L back to Lancaster (long story – took him back, he decided he wanted to come home but will possibly return on monday for start of college course) next week if he does the course. I should have gone to EGSC tonight, I start the first lesson of my main training on friday, the kids start school next week! What a mess.

This garage is ridiculous. I’ve no idea why BF deals with him. Here’s an example. We buy a car, I hate it, BF arranges with chap to surprise me with Disco I want. He trades in other car, (charges us £1000…) and sells us Disco. Doesnt pay off finance on other car and resells it. Then finance are hounding us for payments for original car that we no longer own. When we point out that we no longer own it, and we have finance from them on another vehicle AND! they have refinanaced the car to someone else which we’re sure is not legal, they back off. Unfortunately he’s done the same to a neighbour of ours (idiot BF recomended him…) who’s car we think was scrapped but he’s left with the payments.

River Cottage Campaign – Please sign!

It’s that time of year again… continued

Well the dishwasher seems to be working so that didn’t decide to give up… yet. But I wish I could say the same for my laptop! It’s a Compaq Presario R3000 and for a while now it’s had problems charging. I thought it was the connection and kept fiddling with it. Now it wont stay on long enough to use and it wont charge either. It looks like this is a common fault with these machines. It wasn’t a cheap laptop either when I bought it; it cost over £1000 because it was the only one in PCWorld that had a dedicated graphics card which turned out to be a waste of time because it was a “special” mobile version of an NVidia card and wouldn’t run my games.  I’ve found a great thread that explains how to fix it but I’m not sure I have the patience or the skills to do so.  Only one way to find out I suppose…

One a better note I’ve found a website that I’d highly recommend if you have problems with your major kitchen appliances in the UK. It’s called UK Whitegoods. They have a forum to ask for help. I posted about the dryer, someone replied the same day asking for more info, I posted that and within hours someone had told me what I needed and gave the details of how to get it! I emailed asking for a quote and again, had a response within hours. He is going to add the items I need to the online shop so that I can buy them! How good is that?! Now if I could just find someone to fix the DVD recorder…

It’s that time of year again…

What is it with new year and electrical appliances? Every year something decides it’s not going to do another year and gives up in the first few weeks! This year it’s the DVD recorder and the tumble dryer.

As Yule has now finished and I took all the decorations down yesterday, I thought I’d get all the films etc that we recorded on to disk. I went to turn the recorder on and nothing happened. I changed the fuse and still nothing. I’m gutted!  River Cottage is on there; the Escape series and the Forever series. The DVD is a Packard Bell EHR2080 and so far, apart from being a bit noisy and taking a while to boot up, it’s been a good recorder. OK, I can’t compare it as it’s the only one we’ve had. It was also expensive at around £300 when it first came out. It wasn’t really used very much but since we’ve has Sky+ with its ease of recording entire series’ even weeks in advance, it has been used more. I wouldn’t say it’s had its money’s worth though so if you’re thinking of buying one, look at something else unless it’s cheap! Looking at the Packard Bell forum it isn’t really a good buy. My main problem now is how to access the recordings on the HDD. Is it possible to? I would have it repaired if I knew where to take it. I rang our TV repair centre and they said it needs to go to a computer shop!? I did explain that what it was but they insisted that it was computer related not TV… Hmmm…

The other appliance is the tumble dryer. Now to be fair, it’s not all the dryers fault. It’s a Hotpoint CDT40 and like the DVD, isn’t very old but for a while now it’s been making a terrible noise. So loud that you can’t use it at night. So S had a look at it yesterday. He took the panel off the back and noticed that the fan was rubbing on the machine. It was very loose so he put some tape around the pin to hold it in place and stopit rubbing. When he turned it back on it was quiet; it wasn’t rubbing but it wasn’t heating up either. I’ve had a look today and it looks as if the element is broken – no idea how that could have happened. I’m not very good with this type of thing but the element(s) looks like a coiled spring around a foil coated card. The card in the middle has snapped. I don’t think this will affect the element but I think it may have tripped the thermostat. Just guessing as I’ve got no idea. So, I need to get another element and probably a thermostat if I want to fix it.

Great… I’ve just gone to unload the dishwasher and it’s still got water in the bottom. Please let it be a one off!

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! ……

After months of computer problems, I decided today to be brave and wipe this computer. I’ve never really messed with XP but this PC is three years old and needed a clean start. It crashed all the time, Explorer was constantly locking up whether or not I was by the computer, Dr Watson kept being closed due to whatever reason it felt like at the time and I was rebooting several times in an hour and finally today, it was struggling to boot up; instead, getting a flashing cursor on a black screen.

Any hoo…. I went through the folders on the hard drive; not as easy as Win. 98 because of the user accounts but I did it. As I was putting things back tonight I realised I hadn’t backed up my photo folder! That’s probably the worst one I could leave! Because it was so large I was going to put it onto it’s own DVD but I was formatting this, cooking, going shopping and a hundred other jobs at the same time and I forgot.

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!  

b’day

Well today is my birthday. It wasn’t what you’d call a great day. I had a homemade card of my daughter, nothing off either of my sons and S came back from work with a maccies, ate it standing in the kitchen and then went out to his mate’s house because he’d got a water leak.
I didn’t do much today. I planted up the rest of the bulbs that I could find, including some hyacinths which I think are too late for forcing. I emptied a couple of pots, dividing and replanting a pelargonium and a garden mum which are under the staging in the greenhouse.

Happy birthday me… 40th next year – ain’t that great.

Growing

Wow its been two months since I last blogged.

News – loads!

1st – well, I’m going to be a Nan… Yep I am. Honest! L & L are having a baby boy. L had no idea she was pregnant and neither did anyone else. She’s due in November.

Uni has gone out of the window and I feel much better at the moment

L got his first job today

K was very upset this morning because we clipped his hair to get rid of the head lice last night and when he looked at it this morning he didnt want his friends to see it 😦

S came home early. Something to do with a client not paying his boss so he’s had to come back. He was finishing early anyway to go for a blood test. He bought a van off Ebay a few weeks ago which is the worst car we’ve ever bought – long story but will update and link it. He’s also bought a BMW which also needs tons of work and money 😦

We noticed yesterday that the tax was due on the Vectra so we went to sort out the MOT etc and discovered it’s had no MOT since March! Booked it in this morning and had a taxi home -then I suggested we see if the rot box – I mean van would start and surprisingly it did. Oh and the vectra went straight through the MOT! Go Veccy-noo-noo!

We went to the Hollybush (in the van because the Vectra was in the garage all day) to get the kids some Neon tetras and a guppy to cheer them up and put in the new tank and S ended up buying a large – 6- 7″ Oscar to go with the other one….

I’ve spent the last few months playing WOW and getting the house/garden sorted.

I’ll post pics of the garden

We bought a rotovator off Ebay today and went to collect it in the van tonight. Can’t wait to get it out tomorrow and have a blast. I just need to dig up those last few docks, brambles and nettles; the roots of which go down a good 18″ to 2′ 😦 Am planning another veggie plot but we have no luck with the garden. We now have vine weevil, lily beetles as well as the million slugs, snails, couch grass, untidy neighbours whose brambles are growing both over and under the 6′ fencing. I’m going to need a lot of luck :S

Also from Ebay – I hope. I’m waiting for the auction to end any minute – I’m buying a wormery to use the kitchen scraps etc. Can’t wait to try that either! Will let you know how it goes.

What can I say today? I love S! I love him so much; I love him more today than I did 15 years ago. I love my kids! Everyday I love them all more and more; even when they drive me nuts! 😉 I love my family. Anyway, thats how I feel today.

My phone was sorted today so I sent texts to the girls from uni. It was quite sad and the first time I’ve had any regrets about not being on the course since I’ve been away. They are brilliant and will make fantastic nurses. I would have no qualms about being a patient of theirs. I will miss them and I hope we all keep in touch. Some of us have already made plans to meet up over the holidays so I’m looking forward to that.

J had one of her sleepwalking episodes a couple of nights ago. She is getting them more often now but at least she rarely gets the night terrors that used to make her scream and cry and we couldn’t get through to her and most of the time scared her more because we became part of her dream – they are awful. This one was a normal one. She came down and we have glass panelled doors like the one here. I was sitting here under the stairs on my pc and the door was closed. She started pushing it instead of using the handle but it wasn’t a constant push. She was sort of bouncing off it. She kept it up for a minute or so and I was about to get up before she hurt herself when she looked at the handle and opened it. She came in, asked what I was doing, gave me a kiss and went back to bed! She does this type of thing all the time. If you didn’t know her you would swear she was awake. Her eyes are open and she talks and acts as if she is awake but she does things she wouldn’t normally do, or says odd things and most of the time she doesn’t know where she is – or rather, she isn’t where she thinks she is. For example she has said she is in bed when she is on the lounge floor, she was going to go to bed by going out of the back door and many other things. We have to lock the doors and move the keys after a recent episode when she was about to walk out of the house at gone 1am in her nightclothes! Apparently she was going to see how big they’d grown but she couldn’t tell me what exactly “they” were and was most annoyed at me for not knowing…

posted by Twinsane at 19:29 0 Comments