Crepeys do Christmas...

[oldqueenie]

Will this fit the bill. Dull but seasonal?

oh yes, and dp can deal with the darned advent calender...

I was not a happy bunny this morning, I came in to find my office had been Christmasfied, bloody santas everywhere, tinsel (yuck, the stuff makes me itch) and pictures all over the wall. I am afraid the red mist desended and I took it all down. I like Christmas, but not all over my office walls thank you very much......
It's like when they decorate your desk on your birthday - makes me want to run a mile.

On a happier note, ds's group at school won the design a choc bar competition (judged by a man from Canbury - hope they patented it ;) )

MrsS, I do hope that things will look up soon. Sorry to hear you are feeling crap. I'd imagine it will help when you all know definitively where you will be off to next year.

BD, enjoy your days off. Sounds like a good plan. However, Ruby's first day off didn't sound very restful . I did have to snigger at your DD moaning because she missed Drama because of her lie-in, Ruby. We can never do anything right, can we?

This time of year makes me feel a bit "meh", but I will perk up once we get to actual Christmas. Dd and Ds are both being over-wrought and unreasonable and Dh is doing his normal "What d'you mean, it's Christmas soon - are you sure about that?" routine and flatly refusing to do anything remotely seasonally constructive such as write Christmas cards to his 1.5 remaining relatives. My mother is in her usual Yuletide fussing mode, although seems to be significantly more in need of support that she was a few months ago, which is beginning to worry me.

I think I have all the present business reasonably under control, although ds's Christmas list was astoundingly over the top and is destined to lead to disappointment. I thought we had by-passed the myth of FC having infinite resources and boundless generosity, but apparently not. Har bloody har to that list, ds.

Oh and I just need to admit that I LOVE tinsel. I realise it is probably naff and ghastly, but I love it and stick it all over the place. Gold, red and green. I like twinkly lights and tinsel.

One year I tried to go all tastefully natural at Christmas. I had a real Christmas tree in a big wooden tub in the garden that I had been nurturing for years, having grown it from seed; I collected ivy and holly from the garden (we have lots of both) and brought all of this into the house. Unfortunately, I didn't clock the fact that the dog had been lifting his leg on the Christmas tree tub for years, so when I brought it into the house, he kept pissing on it. And every bug in the country was apparently hibernating in the ivy. I had a sitting room full of dog widdle and confused ladybirds.

I've gone with the tinselly tat ever since. And an artificial tree because the dog sees no need to water it.

"A sitting room full of dog widdle and confused ladybirds" I am laughing like a loon at that. We must be twins separated at birth, Stropps, as I go for the full blown Santa's Grotto look, with silvery paperchains (the more the merrier, bought from the market or the pound shop - classy), fairy lights a go go, tinsel, baubles, all colours, get em all up, silver, red, gold, green, blue, pink, purple. Christmas is no time for good taste. I also love a nice cheesy Christmas fillum.

I was told today - informally - that I have been shortlisted for interview for one of the jobs I've applied for. Keep your fingers crossed for me, as AB will be like this if I get it, and I'm pretty sure the fact that I've been shortlisted will piss him off no end.

But I've done my back in and am hobbling round like I've just shit myself.

Woohoo, MrsS! You go and get that thar job. And may AB choke with suppressed fury

(hope the back's better before the interview)

at dog widdle and ladybirds.
at Ruby's nonchalance about grievous lack of present-purchasing.
at MrsS being shortlisted (yay!)
at BD being an office grinch. Embrace the tinsel! I'm admiring my new turquoise and silver glittery reindeer "statuette" as I type.

Have just wrapped the Ireland presents and booked a courier for £16 to transport the hefty box over the Irish Sea (way cheaper than Royal Mail, believe it or not, and no queueing in the PO for 30 minutes). 90% of cards have been written (I lost the will to live at around T in the alphabet), and I'm pretty much done on the presents. Mrs Smug of Christmas Smugtown.

but if you can live with 30 odd pictures of dogs and cats in Santa hats, Santas grotto written across your wall, 20 plastic santas dotted around and your screen festooned in tinsel you are a better woman than I. In my defense I left the decorated fig tree and may I point out I was the first one in the office to have their tree up at home!! They all were a tad at how quickly it came down and now I have a wall that is missing lumps of paint.

Stropps at dog piss and ladybirds - I dispensed with real trees sometime back because the lower branches would be denuded within a day or so as the dog would dive underneath and walk round, emerging covered in pine needles which he would then deposit all over the house.

MrsS fingers crossed for job - any idea on interview date?

I have packed for my couple of nights away, I am looking forward to not getting up early and not worrying about dinners. I intend to join CV as Mrs Smug having done all my Christmas shopping (sets self up for epic fail)

So glad I don't have any pets We have a lovely real tree and several sets of fairy lights draped around the house.

MrsSB, good luck - can't wait to hear about AB's reaction!

BD, am very of your mate-break - I could so do with that.

DS went off to school clutching his volcano cake (yes, that bloody Y7 project) - hope it didn't erupt on the bus!

IT'S NOT FAIR.

I haven't done any Christmas shopping, put the tree up, or sent any cards. Yet. My excuse is that the sitting room is STILL full of ikea cabinets, so there's nowhere to put a tree, and I can't even envisage cooking in the kitchen at the moment. However, this doesn't not excuse the lack of cards or presents. I'll have an online blitz this evening. Though natch not via Amazon.

Bloody bloody builders. So thoroughly sick of having them here, cocking stuff up then trying to blame me. The kitchen was supposed to be finished 1 December. Still not. And boss builder is making out that it's my fault for choosing an Ikea kitchen. No, it's your fault for employing FUCKWITS who can't put flatpack furniture together. Rather than gathering all the boxes together to make a cabinet, as per the handy list, making the cabinet, then moving to the next, cabinet-making moron just opens loads of boxes, fits some bits together, than asks me 12 times an hour where this or the other bit goes. I don't know. It now no longer has a serial number on it. GIBBER GIBBER.

Oh Herbs, sounds ghastly.....
Surely you should get some money off the bill for the cockups/delays/fact they are treating you as unpaid labour?

Oh Herbs, it sounds like you have got a rum band of builders - do they have a braincell between them? The guys who put in our kitchen/bathroom didn't ask us anything - they advised us on what they would be doing!

Nightmare, Herbs.....

Make it easy on yourself - buy everyone vouchers for Christmas and forget about a tree for this year (just drape some tinsel over the Ikea boxes).

I would have suggested you spend the next couple of weeks prevailing upon the hospitality of friends and family (i.e. leaving the fuckwits alone with their instruction leaflets and the Ikea Helpline number) - that's what we did - but it does sound as if you'd come home to upside-down cabinets and wonky worktops if you left them to their own devices.

All very stressful indeed.

Lovely friends, I may need to pick your brians for a quote with pic (you'll get a tenner's worth of vouchers out of it) for something - poss S&B related, poss exercise - that you 'gave a go' to...

...and my mum has just emailed to say that the Christmas presents for the girls for which I sent her easy-click links THREE WEEKS AGO have all sold out and 'please suggest alternatives'. ARGH.

Herbs, my sympathies. This time 2 years ago we were supposed to get a new bathroom. This was timetabled to be a week's work for the installer chappies and all done and dusted (ho ho) by Dec 12th or thereabouts. It was actually finished on March 13th. We had a very cold and drafty Christmas and had to flush the loo with a bucket and if you were brave enough to get in the bath, a piece of the wall usually joined you in the tub.

That's probably not cheered you up, though, has it?

Strops

MI, is it a pic of us or an S&B product? Money is the ideal alternative!

On an S&B note, have found these beauties on sale locally. They are nearly up to my knee (usually impossible to find them long enough) and I really like them, but I have rather a lot of pairs of boots and I chickened out of getting them after cake and coffee with the DC this afternoon, but now I NEED them. Should I ring the shop and ask them to save me them till I get out of work tomorrow?

BTM, those boots are your destiny. You must have them.

Good answer Strops!

Get the boots, and stuff Amazon into the bargain!

Latest fuckwittery. Builders sent me back to Ikea (fifth time in ten days) to return the carousel pull-out, which they said was the wrong way round. Turns out they'd assembled it upside down. The instruction leaflet is perfectly explanatory. Honestly, the guy doing the cabinets is educationally subnormal.

Another two hours wasted.

And the one builder who seems to have even a tenuous grasp of arse/elbow differentiation is flying back to Poland on Sunday for four weeks.

CV - it's by leaving the house that the fuck-ups occur. I am keeping a list, so big boss man will get an entirely correctly catalogued tirade as to why none of the delay is my fault.

MI - count me in for any trials!

Herbs, maybe they need the instructions in Polish.

BTM, you know you deserve a reward for that first term back in full-time.

Ooh yes Strops!

Herbs, I have to admit that I am a prolific Amazon buyer - out of laziness but not clothes!

Oh, Herbs on your behalf. Not good and certainly not funny.

Herbs, I hope that when you tell people about the dreadfulness of your builders no one says "Oh, but it will be lovely when it's finished." I swear I nearly killed several people who said that to me. "Yes, indeedy, it bloody better be lovely when it is finished, but it was supposed to be finished last week and I'm beginning to suspect that it will never ever be finished to my satisfaction" was what I remember thinking.

Give 'em hell. And keep a record of absolutely everything.