Cars, babies and gardens
I had a couple of days off work this week added on to two bank holidays.
Irritatingly, a lot of that time was spent trying to buy a car. At least I have one now, from a friend at work, which I pick up tomorrow.
Earlier this evening I had the very satisfying experience of cancelling the remaining insurance on the old car with the useless-to-the-point-of-evil Nationwide Car Insurance. To give them credit, the guy on the phone who was trying to persuade me to stay realised it was a doomed plan when I explained how crap they had been. I finished off my final tale with a comment to the effect that they'd need to do something quite spectacular on price to induce me to insure the new car with them. He perked up slightly at this and asked if I did want a quote after all. "No," I said, "Don't bother. The quote I've gone for is only £127, and you'd need to be more than £126 cheaper for me to want to stay with you."
*And* the old car has reached its reserve of £50 on eBay, with at least three genuine-looking buyers (to my inexpert eye) and 15 watchers, so that looks to be working out extremely well.
Despite all the car-related stuff I did still had time to do Nice Things, including taking **FIXME for some walks in the fields and woods over the road. He does love going for walks.
I also did gardening! Which was very good - I did worry that **FIXME would preclude any gardening at all. We've certainly not done anything serious since he was born. But a few days' work have brought it back in to something close to nice order, and we shall have our own veg again this year, hooray.
I fixed the greenhouse from the winter damage, for less money than I thought. I mused on here a while ago about how much it'd cost to replace the horticultural glass with less-child-hostile polycarbonate. There are three answers: a) about £500 if you buy a new one, b) about £200 if you buy a glazing pack for a new one and are lucky enough for it to fit, and c) less than £50 if you get multipurpose twinwall polycarbonate from Wickes and only do the bits the lad's likely to crash in to.
Lots of seeds are nicely germinating in there now: first batch of peas and beans in their toilet-roll nurseries, some basil, and yet another attempt to escape my 0% success rate at growing the pepper family from seed. And there are carrots and chard and various salad leaves germinating in the veg bed.
I might not be a Volvo driver, but the evidence of this last week suggests that I am the sort of person who digs out ivy and plants wisteria instead to climb up the front of the house. Ah well.
ETA: Oh yes, and the childcare decision is made. Fave childminder has no vacancies at all, second-fave can only do days that don't really suit us (and we decided it was a bad idea to try to make that work), and third-fave childminder has just told us that one of her existing charges now has a sibling on the way and so she doesn't have space any more. So nursery it is then!
Irritatingly, a lot of that time was spent trying to buy a car. At least I have one now, from a friend at work, which I pick up tomorrow.
Earlier this evening I had the very satisfying experience of cancelling the remaining insurance on the old car with the useless-to-the-point-of-evil Nationwide Car Insurance. To give them credit, the guy on the phone who was trying to persuade me to stay realised it was a doomed plan when I explained how crap they had been. I finished off my final tale with a comment to the effect that they'd need to do something quite spectacular on price to induce me to insure the new car with them. He perked up slightly at this and asked if I did want a quote after all. "No," I said, "Don't bother. The quote I've gone for is only £127, and you'd need to be more than £126 cheaper for me to want to stay with you."
*And* the old car has reached its reserve of £50 on eBay, with at least three genuine-looking buyers (to my inexpert eye) and 15 watchers, so that looks to be working out extremely well.
Despite all the car-related stuff I did still had time to do Nice Things, including taking **FIXME for some walks in the fields and woods over the road. He does love going for walks.
I also did gardening! Which was very good - I did worry that **FIXME would preclude any gardening at all. We've certainly not done anything serious since he was born. But a few days' work have brought it back in to something close to nice order, and we shall have our own veg again this year, hooray.
I fixed the greenhouse from the winter damage, for less money than I thought. I mused on here a while ago about how much it'd cost to replace the horticultural glass with less-child-hostile polycarbonate. There are three answers: a) about £500 if you buy a new one, b) about £200 if you buy a glazing pack for a new one and are lucky enough for it to fit, and c) less than £50 if you get multipurpose twinwall polycarbonate from Wickes and only do the bits the lad's likely to crash in to.
Lots of seeds are nicely germinating in there now: first batch of peas and beans in their toilet-roll nurseries, some basil, and yet another attempt to escape my 0% success rate at growing the pepper family from seed. And there are carrots and chard and various salad leaves germinating in the veg bed.
I might not be a Volvo driver, but the evidence of this last week suggests that I am the sort of person who digs out ivy and plants wisteria instead to climb up the front of the house. Ah well.
ETA: Oh yes, and the childcare decision is made. Fave childminder has no vacancies at all, second-fave can only do days that don't really suit us (and we decided it was a bad idea to try to make that work), and third-fave childminder has just told us that one of her existing charges now has a sibling on the way and so she doesn't have space any more. So nursery it is then!