CQBlog: 30/04/24 – Hey! Pollyanna’s back…

You know how sometimes, it feels like life is just another thing, on top of another thing, on top of another thing?  And you’ll recognise that life at CQHQ has been like that pretty much full time, since like, forever?  For much of that time, my positive and chipper, sometimes rather annoying, glass almost full, alter ego, Pollyanna, has generally kept me looking on the brighter side of whatever it was.  Just every now and again, she takes a little mini-break, perhaps a weekend break to Paris or somewhere to recharge her batteries.  While she’s away, I might give in and allow my pissed-off-ness to spill out: you’ll have spotted that too.  

Just recently, I’m conscious that I’ve been the subject of some checking-up, and perhaps more than the usual amount of ‘but you know you’ll feel better for it’ from Mr CQ.  And I’ve tried really hard to prioritise the stuff that will make me feel better, but when EVERYTHING needs doing, and if it’s not done, it’ll just be me that needs to fix it or will suffer the impacts, it has been impossible to find stuff to cut out.  Or to take the foot off my mithering pedal to get the builders here, or to find a plumber, or even to just choose the blinking flooring for the kitchen.  And for a big chunk of the past month or so, it has been clear to me that Pollyanna has been on some extended luxury break.  

But guess what?  She has *finally* returned!  “Thank the fecking gods for that!” I hear you cry!!!  Well, I’m totally with you there.  Thank feck indeed.  

Shall we start with some of the simple things that have helped her return?  

Totally outside of my control, but clearly way more important than anything else, we just had sun!  We had almost a week of glorious, sitting out in it, sun.  

I’ve been able to swim at least 3 times, and 2 of those without the additional, and, I’m thinking now, unnecessary wet suit.  Don’t get me wrong; it was still very cold, and I could see it being invaluable in the depths of winter.  But I just realised that the faff of getting into, and out of the thing, the extra time it takes, just to avoid that first five minutes of “OMG WHY AM I DOING THIS???” is totally outweighed by being able to decide and to actually swim in less than 30 minutes.  The additional organising of two flasks (a large one with a hot cuppa, and a teeny tiny one with something just to sip), dry clothes, bath mat to stand on, towel, never mind a fully charged camera and which pocket did I lose my car keys in all takes time. But without the wetsuit, they just seem to take less.  Last time, in just our cossies, we actually managed to stay in for something like 20 minutes and it was fabulous.  Me, Deb and not another single soul.  The sun on our faces.  Just blinking bliss.  

We’ve also managed to get some decent gardening time in too.  Loads of seeds sown, lawns mown, furniture rearranged, pots re-potted, multiple excuses for beautiful morning or afternoon cuppa breaks in a glorious spring sun.  More sun on my face, and on my legs, which astounded me.  So much so that I already have a tan line at my feet that I don’t want to encourage: nobody needs to see where my Converse stop while I’m on that yacht in Croatia next month.  Nobody. 

Another simple thing, which I might have said no to because I was too busy, was the most recent writing challenge I subscribe to.  This was to write a short story with the genre, action and a key word given to me 24 hours ahead of the submission deadline.  So, 24 hours to write a story?  Not that hard, eh?  But your story, on this occasion, should be no more than 100 words.  And just this paragraph is 108 words, which gives you an indication of just how short that story needs to be.  I love these challenges, so, challenge accepted, story submitted, totally feeling good about that.  

D&D was back on, so I got to steal a ship, kill some undead things and cast some spells.  That always helps.  And no, I’m not gonna grow up and stop playing stupid games.  The pleasure I get from rolling a whole pile of fantastically coloured, strange sided dice with a disparate group of D&D buddies is priceless.  

But then let’s get on to the BIG stuff.  

For much of the week we had a whole pile of guys crawling all over the roof in an attempt to fix the damp down one whole side of the house that means two of the walls that were newly decorated last summer now need the plasterboard replacing before being redecorated.  They knocked all of the old roughcast off the chimney stack, replaced loads of the bricks that just crumbled away they were so damp, took off the chimney pots, rebuilt the coping stone at the top, and have recemented the whole thing ahead of returning to roughcast it again this week.  It means we’ve had ALL the noise of cement and rubble crashing to the floor, cement mixer going, and I’ve made I don’t know how many coffee with 2.  There are days when we’ve had no TV at all because the scaffolding has interfered with the signal, and others when we’ve had Sky Sports Football, but not Sky Sports F1 channel.  We can’t get C4 but we can get C4+1, and even the radio that I use the sky box for during the day has been a no go most days.  But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and Pollyanna’s focus is entirely that, and not the noise.  It could (should) mean that once completed, we will have no more work for this particular builder and can choose another, more expensive but more professional builder for any future jobs.  

Still talking of builders, but this time our more expensive and more professional builder, we have finally made all of the choices and ordered all of the right bits and pieces for our kitchen rebuild to start in just two weeks’ time! OMG!!  This involves new walls, floors and ceilings to the pantry, the kitchen and the dining room, before the new kitchen can start to take shape. Quite a significant job.  SO significant, in fact, that we’re moving out for 3 weeks to let it happen.  And before we move out, we need to move EVERYTHING out of said pantry, kitchen and dining room.  So all of the usual stuff you have in a kitchen that is overflowing with stuff from 3 different houses, plus, my huge collection of cocktail glasses and my MASSIVE collection of alcohol.  This will be no mean feat. 

I started a couple of weeks ago by taking everything I possibly could to the dump, most of it from the lean-to, giving me a great space to start with.  I moved everything from the shed that we needed to keep, but wouldn’t need imminent access to, into the lean-to.  I also moved a huge drawer unit in there that will (I hope) hold all of my cocktail glasses safely just as soon as I get a chance.  Then, once I had a clean, tidy and newly spacious shed, complete with the mother of all padlocks, I started by dismantling the wine rack from the pantry and rebuilding it in the shed.  Then I relocated all of the assorted smaller wine racks (of which there are many) alongside it.  They now house all of our wine, and most of my liquor bottles, but not all, which was a massive job.  Before I can finalise it, I needed to decide what I will take with me as my temporary bar for our relocation, and ensure that nothing vital was tidied away at the back of anything else.  So now I’m waiting for the rain to go off before I can move the rest, thinking creatively about how I’m going to squeeze it all in.  And how I’m going to do that and leave space for the shakers and other assorted goods, before even thinking about pots, pans, china etc.  

And then once the lean-to, the shed and the attic are all crammed, anything remaining, including all of our food, will need to be relocated, on the rebuilt shelves from the pantry, into the living room.  Which is a huge reason for us moving out.  Apart from having no access to the back garden for the boys while this work goes on, the living room will be pretty much full with the food stuffs, but also has to hold the furniture from the dining room and kitchen.  So there is still a lot of work to do here, too, but again, I see light at the end of the tunnel that is the huge excitement of a brand new and sparkly kitchen ready and waiting patiently for my next cocktail party!

Also, before then, in fact tomorrow, we have finally found plumbers to replace all of our sad, tired and leaking radiators.  Just like the builder, we’ve ended up going with a bigger, more expensive, but more professional plumber so we are expecting them to turn up tomorrow and we cannot wait to have all of the radiators working just in time to switch them off for the summer.  But at least when it comes to winter, the radiators that are currently working, won’t have to be on overdrive for any semblance of warmth outside of the kitchen.  Here’s hoping!  It is also important to get these completed before next week because the relocated food shelving from the pantry will have to go in front of the living room radiator (switched off, obvs).  Another blinking massive job ticked off, and as I write this down, I almost can’t believe it.  I’m still not holding my breath though: just keeping everything crossed…

There is one final job that may actually fall over into the ‘after the kitchen’ period, which I really had started to believe might be workman free.  But given all of this other stuff that is really happening right now, I actually think holding the fixing and coating of the outside walls until some time in June might be a sensible thing after all.  I gave in last week and moved a whole pile of stuff back to where it lives in the gardens, rather than pending Kingdom Coatings return, because sitting out and looking at all of the mis-located stuff was just no good for my head.  I thought that sods law meant my moving it would see their arrival the very next day, in fact, I half hoped that it might trigger it, but it wasn’t to be.  But at least the gardens now have some semblance of order, despite still waiting for phases two and three to be completed before it can be at least temporarily-final, because no gardens are ever finished are they.  

And here I am, having taken enough of your time already, and I haven’t even got to the biggest of the BIG stuff!  Yesterday, I had an appointment at the neurology department in Glasgow hospital, to talk about the potential for an operation on my spine, as a direct result of that sciatic nightmare I had last year.  Going via friends to drop the boys off for the day, we left at 10:15 for a 3pm appointment, arriving at the right department just 25 minutes early.  The very lovely consultant guy was a real human being, and in the end, agreed that there was absolutely NO value in my having an operation.  Hurrah.  Hurrah.  And thrice hurrah!  Although I had already decided I was 90% decided to say no to an op anyway, I hadn’t realised what a relief it would be to hear that I didn’t need one.  Straight back in the car, pick the boys up, home just about 7:15.  We took butties to eat in the car and hadn’t even stopped for coffee, never mind lunch or tea.  That’s 310 miles, 9 hours, for about 25 minutes of appointment.  This is clearly the down side of moving away from a big city, but still worth our new life here. No shadow of a doubt!  

Now I wait for the gynae appointment at the beginning of June, and news of anything at all happening with my hip referral whenever that comes through.  More to come before I can count myself as ‘fixed’ but as a complete aside, a neighbour here has recently returned from having her hip replaced in Lithuania and cannot speak highly enough of the whole process.  These past few weeks have seen the pain in/from my hips being so much that I might be tempted to consider this rather than anticipate how much more pain there will be if I have to wait the 18 months from my February referral as was suggested.  But that conversation can definitely wait until after the kitchen.  Definitely.  

So, as I write, it is absolutely chucking it down.  This would normally be a miserable day for most people, but I truly feel like a corner may have been turned and we are about to see the end of many, many seemingly never-ending sagas. My glass is well and truly half full.  If not more. And just in case you’re feeling in need of a little pick me up, I’m leaving you with a picture of this gorgeous 2-day old lamb.  You can thank me later.  

Welcome back Pollyanna: you have been sorely missed!