Relaxing…..or not!

Yesterday I mentioned that I blitzed the house this weekend.  Well I did that plus a lot of other chores that needed doing.  As Beautiful B was away on a short holiday and Hubby was spending Saturday with my brother and staying at his house overnight it was an ideal time to sit and relax by myself with a good book or catch up on the Sky planner which was screaming out to be watched with only had 18% of free space.  The only problem is that I cannot sit and relax when I decide a lot of jobs need completing. 

Beautiful B was on a long weekend away with Ry and his family.  Having dropped Hubby off to spend the day watching the horse racing and Grand National and win us a fortune I formed a plan of attack.

My plan was:

Saturday Morning:                 Blitz the house

Saturday Afternoon:              Do more accounts (I have been doing these for days)

Saturday Night:                    Catch up on the planner with a cross-stitch and the fluff bags

That didn’t work out – what actually happened:

Saturday                             cleaning, scrubbing and throwing stuff away

Saturday night                     less than an hour in front of the TV

Sunday                                more cleaning, scrubbing and throwing away of stuff with bit                                     of accounts thrown in

So what on earth did I do I hear you ask?

Friday

On Thursday night I had thrown some old clothes in a big bag ready for the recycling centre on Friday. 

• On Friday morning I ordered some clothes for our forthcoming long weekend at Centerparcs; seen as I am not fitting in a lot of my clothes; a result of being more than content in my marriage and having a preference for snuggling with Hubby instead of going to the gym
• Systematically emptied every bin in the house to take to the recycling centre with the old clothes and then took off to the recycling centre after work
• Played at being a Treasurer of the Football Club for a while paying for the annual memberships and collecting cash to balance and bank for last 3 weeks having a sneaky non-alcoholic drink in the process
• Rang 2 banks to discuss documentation needed for my name change on the 2 Treasury Accounts I do – what a pain!  It is such a good job he is worth it.
• Issued duplicate invoices to 2 of the snooker clubs
• Admitted to apparently being a professional person on a passport application for one of Beautiful B’s friends
• Collected mum to do the weekly shop
• Having delivered mum safely home, I picked Hubby up from work, made a quick stop at home to collect Cala and took her to the vet as she has a worrying lump near one of her legs –given the all clear thankfully though Cala deciding to leave the vet a very special present was mortifying! REALLY Cala really!!!!.
• Picked up and filled enough medication to make me rattle like a maraca.
• Took the car to the beauty salon, otherwise known as Halfords for some new eyelashes windscreen wipers and rear lights including those for the number plate – how I hadn’t already been stopped by the police I do not know (shame though; men in uniform are usually worth stopping for).
• After ½ hour of fiddling the nice Halfords man had fitted the lights (badly I was to find out) and I visited the pet shop to pick up some food for the girlie fluffs.  Despite instructions to the contrary I returned home with no only the required dog food but 2 essential fluffy squeaky dog toys because they do not have enough, they don’t, they don’t, they don’t – their toy box is just too small.
• I noticed the car sounded like it was on speed when using the indicator – great!  Less than 5 minutes out of the beauty parlour and already she was sulking.
• Drove the car to the nice doctor man at our usual garage who, after telling me off for taking her to a quack, fixed her lights up good as new so she could flash her lights at random strangers who dared to stare at her behind.
• I left vowing to never treat the car badly by providing inferior plastic surgery in the future.
• Having been out of the house for over 2 hours to do one simple job I decided to treat myself Hubby to McD’s – while the cat’s away the mice will play eat fast food.
• Snuggled with Hubby watching our daily quiz show together, bit of a play on computer games to quiet the brain and bed.

Almost forgot - fit a 7.5 hour day in at work around all of the above.

So far so good……and other than a couple of additional things, all of the above is the norm for me.

Saturday

Having been woken up at 4.30am by the fluff bags I made an early start on the dining room:

• Emptied the entire wall unit to determine what was needed and what wasn’t, splitting the items we didn’t need into recyling and the charity shop
• Removed all overflow items from the top of the wall unit as they drive me mental (I mean what must people think when they walk past the house and nosy through the window!) determined to store at least half in the cupboard space freed up by my ruthlessness
• Started in on the storage held in the bay window, throwing accountancy monthlies in recycling (Yes I have read them )
• Separated books to be flown to Spain and lovingly handed over to my Aunty S who loves reading the same thriller/crime/serial murder books as me
• Wrote a letter to include in said box to Aunty Sylvia
• Transferred pop to fridge for Hubby; I am sure he would put them in the freezer if they didn’t explode when defrosting!
• Removed loving verse from the frame given to me by my gorgeous mum over 10 years ago. 
• Hung framed photos on the wall
• Polished and swept the room 
• During this time I washed and dried two loads of washing
• Hubby woke up so I made him some breakfast and put more washing on
• While catching up with Hubby, or rather Hubby being bombarded with a blow by blow account of my dreams while he had no choice but to listen because I had made him breakfast and it would just be rude, I sorted this weeks pills into neat little piles and popped them in an organiser to make sure I a) remembered to take them and b) didn’t overdose on them.
• Following Hubby out to the car ½ hour later with a handful of bags for the charity shop, recyling and a bottle of windscreen washer fluid tucked under one arm I insisted on filling the water bottle first while convincing him what a fantastic idea it was to stop at the recycling plant before I dropped him off at my brothers - after all 2 people are quicker than one, aren’t they?
• Dropped Hubby off at my brothers with a kiss and a cuddle and drove the car directly to the garage for her annual check up desperately hoping I wasn’t going to be told she needed to be put out to pasture
• Potentially scaring the man half to death with a look of total disbelief I informed him I would not take him up on his offer of waiting around for 45 minutes when I could be home completing a job on my ‘must do today list’
• Returned home to remove everything stored in the storage area under our bed.  Abi jumped in to help investigate sniffing around the Christmas wrapping I had stored under there.  She soon jumped out when I started throwing stuff out over my shoulder for speed
• An hour in and I received a phone call to say my little car had passed it’s MOT with no repairs (hurrah).  After negotiating a later pick up I decided to throw away half of our spare bedding along with various other ex-necessities
• Returned to pick up the little car and treated her to a beauty session the car wash.  After being scrubbed and polished to show off all her bumps we took off to the shop to treat the dogs to new dog beds – after all, I had money to spare now that the little car had taken good care of herself this year
• 3 dogs beds, printer ink and an extension cable later (which by the way I think I have broken already) I surprised Fred with a dog bed big enough for him to stretch out on; ignoring the fact that it takes up half of the floor space in the living room
• Another load of washing and I returned upstairs to sort out the wardrobes – all 3 stretch 12 foot across the bedroom.  After an hour I felt much better as all clothes were now stored in colour and type order (not that I have Organised Cleaning Disorder or anything)
• I had found a pair of my shoes I could throw away and impressed myself by throwing away at least 5 handbags – none of them Radley though – oh no, they can stay in my house until they are falling apart!
• Next to be stripped bare was my bedside cabinet drawer; after a ½ hour that was cleaned and organised into nice neat compartments courtesy of Lakeland Plastics drawer dividers.
• All bedroom drawers were next on the list and two of them are now wonderfully neat and organised with more dividers (Hubby looked more perplexed at my excitement at the organisation of the drawers than impressed on Sunday when I showed him).
• Another 3 bin bags later for recycling and I was ready to polish and hoover that room after changing the bedding and deciding all this work is not good for my back complaint.  Something to do with the fact that it had started screaming in despair at what I was putting it through
• Having blitzed the two rooms it could be in I did a quick search of the living room cupboards and resigned myself to having thrown my Kindle and Season 7 of Supernatural away during a mad cleaning session on return from our honeymoon – no point crying over spilt milk; it won’t fetch them back.
• Next on the list was the ordering of Hubby’s 40^th birthday present and it was probably the quickest job I did all day long.
• After clipping the dogs nails, a quick sweep up downstairs and I was ready to play some more computer games to relax.
• An hour later and another load of washing later I was in Tesco buying a new Kindle!
• Half way through the first programme I sit down to relax too a phone call from A had me out of the house in a rush to see her and pick up Hubby who decided not stay overnight at my brothers after all.

So, that was Saturday concluded and I will admit I was grateful for my bed that night.

Sunday

For the third day in a row the fluff bags woke me up at stupid o’clock 4am so in retaliation I systematically brushed every single dog until the girlies looked like teddy bears and Freddy had at least started shredding hair quite as much.

Having woke up to an empty space Hubby came downstairs to see if I was okay; like he does every weekend; I am still unsure what he expects to find. I am always okay and have been for the past 6 years that he has lived with us.

After making Hubby coffee and crumpets we got dressed while the fluff bags danced around our ankles somehow knowing we were going to take them for a carefree run around a nearby field.

An hour and half later, I realised what a mistake it was to take the fluff bags out before 8am as the dew had assisted in the collection of enough mud on the fluff bags to turn their legs and underbellies a dark brown instead of white.  Like a little old woman I twittered about what a waste of time it was to brush them not 3 hours earlier.

Returning home I sorted through nearly 100 books to find the ones I had read so that mum and dad could take them to my Aunty S when the visit Spain. 

When visiting mum and dad and the attempt to pass secret messages about birthday presents and deliveries between mum and I without Sean noticing began.  If only he was so much easier to buy birthday presents for.  This year the whole family is clubbing together to buy him a huge present and the working together as a family will mean as much, if not more, as the present itself.

The need for heavy medication was called for to cope with the back pain as I was still insistent that I had more chores to do but today I had Hubby to help – hurrah.  He does not recall offering to power wash the garden in his drunken state the night before so after a negotiation I began power washing the garden while Hubby hovered the stairs for me.

After attempting to put the hose back on the power washer without turning the water off, the power washer switched itself off in disgust at my laziness and so far has refused to help me again.  Not to be outdone and prove to it that I could cope without its help I finished the garden with the good old hose and a brush.

As Beautiful B is insistent that she wants to move in with her boyfriend later in the year I have started to save household items for her.  As a result, I could next be found under her bed trying to store an ironing board and iron for her.

Next on the list was the need to clean the extractor fan and replace the filter.  The steamer is a great help in this area and does a much better job than simple elbow grease.  Already working near the oven dictated to my cleaning mode that it was time to clean the trays in the oven while I was there.

After sweeping up Hubby took advantage of the steamer insisting I was in too much pain to clean the floors.  I retaliated by negotiated polishing the house instead.

Hubby then banned me from doing more cleaning after noticing that I was walking around the house very gently and grimacing once I was more than half way up the stairs – blasted face, it hides nothing!

So I found jobs I could do that did not involve manual handing;

• ordering Sean’s birthday card which took an age!  Wanting to put my own verse inside requires the need to use one of the stupid card sites on the internet and trying to find an appropriate card takes far too long for my liking.
• Ordering the Apple iPad cleaner for my dad (mum and I are still in a debate as to whether I will accept the money for it from them – I insist not!)
• Completed forms for the car’s log book and my driving licence to change them to my married name
• Start yet more accounting – I am beginning to wonder if it will ever end

Since then my job has been to manage the resulting back pain which isn’t going too well, especially after a day of trying to cope with the side effects of such strong painkillers.  Even I have put off any cleaning chores and have concentrated on accounts instead.

So you see, while there aren’t a tremendous amount of chores there, some of them took ages and clearly my initial timetable of blitzing the house in ½ a day was a tad optimistic.  It’s a good job I am better at judging the time required to do tasks at work!