Idle musings of an idle girl

It's alleged that one of the ways you can tell if an area is up-and-coming is to have a look around at the numbers of skips outside houses, houses with scaffolding and trendy coffee shops. The area from which we are moving has the occasional skip which mysteriously sprouts a mattress or two, but the closest you're likely to find to a coffee shop is the "Tuck Inn" which seems to serve the entire taxi-driving population of Cardiff with their morning dose of cholesterol.

Cardiff has seen an exponential rise in the number of stretch 'limousines' (which are really just cut-and-shut vehicles, aren't they?) which ought to mean that the place is filling up with celebrities, but as you're more likely to find them full of shrieking hen-parties or abusive ten year olds, I'm not so sure it's a good indicator of up-and-coming-ness, or indeed classiness. They must be hellish difficult to get around mini-roundabouts though.

I'm afraid my head is too full of wheretofores and henceforths to be in much of a state to blog; can you guess we had a letter from our solicitor today? I'd not mind so much if she'd actually answered the questions we asked her in our previous letter. Instead, she failed to spell 'shall' correctly (yes I know, pretty difficult to get it wrong, but she did); the spelling of 'their' also seemed to elude her, but then I'm sure I shouldn't complain - at least she speaks to me on the phone and actually gets on with things which I'm led to believe is a quality missing in most of the legal profession.

So this afternoon we had to go and do the mortgage application thing which is all very grown-up and boring. Thankfully our financial adviser* is a normal sort of chap who finds these issues just about as boring as us, so tends to explain things in nice simple terms which even I understand and doesn't worry himself unduly about the boring technical bits. I was marginally offended when he suggested that we were all growed up, but then conceded that there was a fairly good possibility that he might be wrong about that.

To celebrate signing the next 20 years of our life away in vast mortgage repayments, Himself and I treated ourselves to a slap-up meal at Asda. It was particularly nasty the way that the fish and chips I had been served tasted identical, so to Himself's mortification, I complained and received fresh which was better, but then I don't suppose you can expect too much for a ?3.18 meal. Asda, incidentally, also sell the clicky zappy things, so I bought another one just in case I wear the first one out with my incessant clicking.

Having worn myself out with all that form-filling and cheque-writing, I came home and had a little zizz on the bed, and now it's raining. Such excitement.

*Re-reading that, it makes us sound terribly grown-up to actually have a financial adviser, but really we're not

My fantastic new zapping device arrived today, and I've had many fun-filled hours attempting to stun my itchy bites into submission. I'm not sure it's working since I've got so many of them, but since it doesn't hurt, I've got nothing to lose.

Speaking of having nothing to lose, the 'sold' sign is now up outside the house, and tomorrow afternoon will be spent arranging a mortgage, which rather scarily means we'll have everything to lose.

Because I'm going to be spending scarily large sums of money on a house in the next few weeks, I have a cunning plan which might just be a way to make some extra cash; I'm not sure I'll save enough to pay for a house in the next four weeks, but it's always a start.

As a consequence of having to get lots of bits of paper ready for various solicitor/estate agent/mortgage type people, I visited Staples this afternoon to make copies of everything I was sending off. I was told to "help myself" to the self-service photocopier situated behind the till, and whilst I could hardly abscond without paying (there was a big security bloke on the door), their method of collecting funds seems a little haphazard. I naively assumed there was some sort of counter on the photocopier, but it transpires that they just ask you how many copies you've done when you go to pay. Since I'd no idea and hadn't had the inclination to count them, I just waved the wodge of papers at them and said "60" (I think that there were at least 120 copies), so she rang it up at 4p x 60 which made ?2.40, thereby saving me about ?2.40. Alternatively, I could've gone to work and done it for free, but that's naughty and anyway, work is further away.

My wonderful husband managed to secure a ?18,000 discount on not one, but two houses today, which means that tomorrow, we get to pick our favourite house to buy. Oh yes, and we have 28 days to get everything sorted and moved in, so there may be a bit of fraughtness over the coming few weeks; please do bear with me.

I'm so excited I could puke! We've had an offer on the house, and we've accepted. Woohoo.

One of the side effects of summer being here - other than hayfever making my life a misery - is the appearance of the Biting Insects. Now I admit that I'm a juicy specimen, and there's certainly plenty of flesh to nibble on, but I really do wish they'd bugger off and bite someone else whose body doesn't seem to think an appropriate response is the production of histamine which is what my crappy immune system thinks it should do. To say that an allergic reaction is an "inappropriate response" to a harmless stimulus is putting it mildly.

I no longer have legs: there are two extremities extending downwards from my torso which are a mass of suppurating sores would be a bit more accurate. At last count, I have at least 20 bites on each leg which each swell to approximately 2cm in diameter. The cosmetic part doesn't bother me in the least - I don't put my legs on show for the general public, and should probably hold a licence if I planned to do so. No, what bothers me is that these bites itch. And I mean they really itch. It's no use telling me not to scratch them; I wake myself up in the night with pieces of skin and blood under my fingernails and free flowing wounds dripping blood onto the sheets. I've tried cutting my fingernails so I can't scratch, but then I resort to rubbing and rubbing and rubbing until there's an open wound. Himself suggested I wear mittens like they make small children with chickenpox do, but I'd just do the rubbing and rubbing thing again.

Application of any sort of medication is pretty much out of the question since everything is designed for bites which aren't 'open' and I don't think that by any stretch of the imagination could I think that wasn't the case and anyway, they don't work because I've tried them anyway. The only remotely useful stuff is "afterbite" which comes in a pen-shaped applicator and is basically ammonia solution. This stops the itch if you can get to the bite just after it was done, but since I don't feel the bites happening, this is a pretty rare occurrence. Mounting an internal attack doesn't work either - I take antihistamines all year round because of my latex allergy, but either there's not enough antihistamine in my system, or it's too busy attempting unsuccessfully to sort out my respiratory system to bother with piffling things like legs. I hate the summer.

I've just about stopped retrieving small pieces of loose amalgam out of my mouth, and although the dribbling hasn't quite stopped, I think its back to normal levels which can only mean that my lovely dentist spent approximately an hour of his and my afternoon fixing my sore teeth.

First of all, he took an X-ray to make sure there was a hole underneath a bit of filling, but I wasn't aware that the approved technique was for him to hold the film against my tooth so he'd be receiving a dose of nasty radiation too - perhaps he's got a death wish or has no desire for children. Then there came the point when he had a fanatical gleam in his eye and a whirring drill in his hand: huge clouds of smoke emanated from my mouth; rinsing and spitting revealed what looked like decrepit bits of old filling (which is good), and largish chunks of what seemed to be healthy looking tooth (not so good). He's done the best he can, but if this fails, it'll be Root Canal Work. I'd rather he just yanked the thing out actually.

Unfortunately whilst he was poking about my other teeth during a slack moment, he discovered another problem which needs solving, so I'm having to go back for that - 18th July is the first appointment available, but since he didn't charge me any money for the privilege, I shouldn't complain too much.

Teeth still hurt, and the next emergency dental appointment is at 3.30pm tomorrow, so I've booked the afternoon off work to have all the fun of a dentist prodding at my teeth.

On a more positive note, it's Himself's birthday today and since he's such an easily pleased sort of chap, appropriate gifts from his Amazon wishlist and some Chinese food seem to have pleased him. The Buddhist monk in full regalia was a bit of a surprise, but thankfully only glimpsed at on the way home from the Chinese place tonight.

In yet more good news, we had another viewing on the house today, but from the webcam, there seemed to be much pointing out of the cracks on the study ceiling which isn't perhaps so good. We'll see.

Sorry, can't be bothered to blog tonight - my teeth hurt and I'm too hot.

Having been roused from my slumbers by some bloke banging on the door this morning, I lumbered down the stairs in a bleary state to find out what he wanted. It's normally the postie wanting a signature for some item which Himself has ordered and failed to tell me about, but since our postie sounds like Cliff Richard and is probably just about as old as him, he doesn't seem to bat an eyelid at my state of undress.

This morning's visitor turned out to be a young chap from the council wanting a bit of carpet - something about a bulk rubbish collection. Now we do have a bit of carpet under the bed which needs to be banished from the house before we move, but I didn't have any idea that anything had been organised for its disposal. Himself had made some enquiries about the council taking the carpet and some other stuff, but that was as far as it had reached. Turns out that it takes three young chaps to stand and ogle at me in a state of undress whilst I explain that I have no idea what they're talking about. They didn't seem too impressed, but then I'm not everyone's idea of eye candy.

We have one of these pictures hanging on our living room wall. In fact it was a wedding present from my brother (but only because I sent him to Ikea to buy it on the morning of our wedding). I'm sure a goodly proportion of you will have seen it before because it's a very popular picture, and Ikea is a very popular and cheap shop. This doesn't bother me, and I derive a small amount of satisfaction from seeing it on TV makeover shows because this reinforces my belief that I have good taste - I can delude myself over this; whether I can delude anyone else is another matter.

The problem I have got though is that I'm quite observant, so notice things which perhaps others don't. Watching PowerPoint presentations becomes quite tedious when you begin to recognise the clipart that's been used; most people aren't inventive enough to use anything other than the crappy cartoons supplied free with Microsoft Office. Today though, I was preparing a presentation for an upcoming Radiation Safety Lecture (I know - I get all the good jobs, don't I?), and was using someone else's talk as the basis for the slides (it's OK, they've given us permission to do this but we've only got a printout). Such was my obsession with reproducing the slides exactly as they had that I spent a vast proportion of my day attempting to find the images that they'd used, and do you know what? Out of 30 slides and about 20 images, I found every last one of them. Scary.

It was my pleasure today to place an order for 10 pairs of male nuts. Very cheap they were at only ?1.38 a pair. Unfortunately they're out of stock at the moment, so there's obviously high demand for such things. Don't quite see the attraction myself.

For the first time since I've owned a car (almost 7 years), my insurance renewal appears to show rather a marked decrease in the amount they're demanding I pay them for the 'service' they provide; about ?132 a year less. I rang them as soon as I received the notification to make sure there wasn't some strange new clause added which would mean I'm only insured every third day when the moon is waning. There was no such nastiness involved, so I accepted before the offer was retracted.

It appears that indeed they just are lovely people, and have dropped the price mostly on account of my not having made a claim in the past year. So then, moral to the story: don't make a claim on your car insurance and the premiums will drop. Sadly this hadn't been an option in the previous six years since I've had:

5 smashed windows (perhaps more - I've lost count)
1 broken windscreen
2 stolen stereos
and a stolen car

to keep my various insurance companies busy over that time. All of this damage or theft has been 100% not my fault, and yet I've been paying the price for it in increased premiums. Not very fair, I don't think.

My neverending supply of good luck seems to have failed to materialise yet again since the text message confirming that I'd won Live 8 tickets hasn't turned up yet. I'm pretty sure it's likely to be a fault with my mobile phone rather than an absence of me winning anything.

In other news... er, there is no other news. House still not sold, work still pants. Life goes on.

Two modifications which should be mandatory for new cars, and retrofitted to old ones as a matter of urgency:

A straight ahead indicator for when you're neither turning left or right, but want to go straight on. I'm quite sure that nobody would ever use these (when do they ever use the ones they're already given?), but it would make me feel like I was doing something remotely useful whilst waiting to go straight on.

A ruddy great big sign which you can blind those behind you to indicate that they should (a) "get orf that bloody mobile", or (b) "get your seatbelt on mate, you ain't immortal". Optionally, at extra cost, you could have scrolling text messages of your own choice to indicate your displeasure at the twunts driving 2" behind you.

I have this sort of love-hate relationship with bleach. On the one hand, its marvellous cleaning properties, and ability to bring whiteness, brightness and hygiene to any manky old surface delights me every time I use it; on the other hand, I seem to have a complete inability to use it without wrecking an article of clothing. Casualties this weekend include 2 tops which received splashes of bleach due to enthusiastic scrubbing of sinks (bathroom yesterday, kitchen today), jeans (small barely-noticeable splatters) whilst I was cleaning the shower cubicle, and yet more splashes on my scabby old trainers which I don't care about anyway. I'm sure it's addictive though: I got on my hands and knees to scrub the kitchen floor today (with bleach, natch), and the filth that came off it made the job very satisfactory. Himself keeps complaining that it smells like in a swimming pool in there, and perhaps it does, but it smells clean.

Desperate for a sale on the house, I cleaned the bathroom again today; it was only done the other day, so is most probably still rather puzzled at this sudden frenzy of activity in its direction. At least today someone would benefit from all of this sparkling-clean-ness, since we had a viewing this afternoon, and according to the text message from the estate agent (oh yes, technology and everything):

viewers loved the house very impressed by the decor and size they are seeing another one on Monday then they will come back to me

Rather a shame about the lack of punctuation, but that's the second lot of people who've "loved" the place. I wish they'd just hurry up and buy it.

All this hanging about waiting to sell the house is doing my head in. Quite apart from having to levitate in order not to make a mess, the dust and "bits" seem to appear from nowhere; we're out at work for 10 hours of the day, and asleep for about another 8. What the hell's happening during the remaining 6 hours every day to cause so much mess?

Anyway, quite apart from all of that, I just can't be doing with all this waiting and not knowing. A thought occurred to me today that it would be great if I could just tell someone to sell my house for me, and I wouldn't have any bother. Oh wait: I already did that. Grr.

In this modern age of technology and suchlike, isn't it just the pits when you have to actually resort to speaking down a telephone at a machine? Why is it that you have a method of entering numbers right there on the phone, and yet they insist you "speak your answer". I'm quite sure that voice recognition software is nowhere nearly good enough to recognise every single pronunciation of the number 3, so why do companies* persist in using it, and succeed only in pissing their customers off? I'm baffled.

*I'm not saying they're all at it, but there's a worrying trend: Royal Mail and Powergen have caught the bug, and there's no telling where it'll end. In tears, no doubt

Stare at the cross in the middle

There is no green dot... or is there?

Isn't it supposed to be about Thursday by now? This week surely is dragging itself out a bit, and quite honestly I'm not sure I can be bothered with anything. The house cleaning and tidying is now an automatic part of the daily routine. Going to work and spending 8 hours being mindnumbed by typing lists of numbers for a patent application, fixing everyone else's problems and my mind being slowly, slowly reduced to dust - that's just normal too. No movement on the house selling front: is it really for sale, or is that sign outside just to make us think it is?

I dunno. I just can't be bothered.

There's a bit more fun to be had from that darned frog

Himself's best effort:

Mine:

Can you tell he spent all afternoon doing nothing but launch the crazy frog from a catapult?

Oh, and Scott J, you have a lot to answer for; I'm now into CelebDaq. Ah well, there's tomorrow's entertainment in work :-)

Every morning, on my way to work, I pass a Royal Mail van which has a sticker on the back saying "carrying internal mail only". Is this for the benefit of the postal thieves who might otherwise waste their time looting the cargo if such a sign wasn't present? I really cannot imagine why on earth that sign is necessary.

Since LordHutton was asking about plotting CNPS on Paul's blog, I decided to show my CNPS progress so far. The black wiggly line is what I've achieved, and the straight red line is a forecast based on my previous trend. At this rate, the date on which I'll spot 999 will be 21 May 2012, and the question I ask myself is: will we still have number plates to spot then? Perhaps I'd better get a bit of a move on.

So, no news from the house-viewers of yesterday. Maybe that's good news; maybe not.

Tomorrow we shall be mostly tidying the house. Honestly, we're like demons possessed with the cleaning these days: Himself vacuumed the other evening whilst I mopped the kitchen floor; tonight I cleaned the cooker less than a week after it was last done - I really don't know what's come over us.

Ooh, I'm all excited! We had the first viewing of our house today, and the estate agent, who seems to be marginally useful because she's the manager of the branch, sent me this email:

mother and daughter really liked only one they did said they will go home
and discuss it this evening I will chase them tomorrow and let you know
what they say

I'm not quite sure what that all means, but I think it means they liked it, and we'll know more tomorrow.

Himself is just setting up the webcam so we can spy on anyone looking around the house and see if they're suitable to purchase our home.

At this rate, I'm getting through books faster than CNPS numbers, so perhaps I should give the CNPS up, but if nothing else it gives me something to do on the way to and from work. Speaking of work - isn't it hellish? They expect us to go every day, and not just that, but the best hours of the day too. Surely if we went in the middle of the night it'd be a better deal for everyone. Maybe. Talk in the tea-room today turned to someone local who'd won ?13 million in last week's lottery or something, and how we might spend the money if it was us who'd won. Obviously we'd all leave work, and buy a nice house (at least ?1 million for that), and a few cars. I think my colleagues have very moderate tastes because I then went on to explain about the helicopter(s) and servants. None of them had considered servants! Being rich is all about bossing people around, or else what's the point?

This leads me nicely onto my current bit of bossing-around: the estate agent who will be receiving a lovely large sum of money if we do actually manage to sell the house, so far has failed to:

• put the house up for sale at the correct price (I had to have a hissy fit for this to be changed "straight away")


• take any decent photos (we did this ourselves after the hash they made of it)


• measure the rooms accurately (again, we did this ourselves since they didn't seem capable of using a laser measuring device)


• write a description of the house which has some semblance of fact. Despite us telling estate agent chummy that the house has partial aluminium double glazing, he managed to transmogrify one of those to UPVC. The stone porch is actually made of brick, and the coved ceiling in the kitchen is only actually along one wall. Never mind though, we rewrote the description ourselves too

Given that they want to charge us 1.5% to sell the house, I reckon we can remove 0.1% for everything they've failed to do which makes it 1.1% so far. Since there's still no sign of a "For Sale" board outside, and they don't seem in any hurry to organise that, a reckon that'll knock it down to 1%. A bit more like it, I reckon.