All I Want For Crepemas Is Youth

[MrsSchadenfreude]

Phew

Stropps, have you considered a local FB selling group for your stuff? I have done quite a lot of eBay but this is so much easier and no fees, postage, all local etc. I am putting the cash in a pot for my Mallorca trip with the contents of Dh's pockets when I do the laundry. It will buy a paella or two, I hope.

Talking of damp, one of my best MN finds ever, apart from you lovelies, is the Lakeland hot horse for drying clothes. We create loads of washing between 5 of us and no dryer, but the horse dries it overnight. It is a fairly large initial outlay but worth every penny IMO.

I am drinking sherry, contemplating work and feeling fairly relaxed as the DC have done their ty letters with only 2 pots of pens being thrown across the room. One letter had to be attempted twice due to misspelling the recipient's name but other than that all good. They only need to do them for the people they haven't seen and the two grannies, but lots of my pals are child free and very generous, so a quick note is in order .

Shall I have another sherry or shall I take the tree down? I think we all know which will win.

Stropps - I got a dehumidifier for our mouldy shower a couple of years ago and when it's wet in winter I do occasionally move it to the bedrooms. It makes the air feel a lot warmer. It is quite impressive how much moisture it can actually suck out of the air and I try not to dry anything on radiators now, apart from socks.

I have had a lovely day with addle and no annoying family members.

Stropps, I am getting really good vibes about your new job - you enjoyed the interview, you find their policies interesting and they are welcoming to Stroppdog. . Very good luck. And Crem, you must be exhausted and it must be so hard to feel optimistic about the new setup, but I am crossing everything for you.

Stropps, we are big waterproof trouser fans and have barely been out of them while travelling around wet bits of the UK this holiday.

NU, I am so sorry about your friend. I agree about the family getting closure.

Hatty, me too, about radiators now we have a dehumidifier. It is on pretty well all the time at the moment.

Monty, I considered my local FB selling group, but when I signed up I found I knew too many people to be completely comfortable with trying to sell them my old crap. #smalltownlife And the car boot sale is quite well attended by out of towners and those not necessarily on FB. Hence opting for that.
Enjoy your sherry. And the fact that you can still get yr dcs to do thank you letters! I warned dd that people would stop sending her stuff if she didn't send thank yous and that did indeed come to pass this Christmas.

I have found a bottle of baileys I didn't know we had. I have opened it. Cheers Crepeys

Cheers Rose and everyone. Have eaten 3 mince pies, 3 cookies and a choc truffle. Feel like cack.

X-posts, Lalsy and Hatte.
Lalsy, my boring waterproofs are far more restrained than the full oilskins I used to wear (inherited from my dad). Didn't have the use of a car back then either, and dd claims she is still traumatised by me turning to collect her from pre-school or wherever in giant orange oilskins with mad Stroppdog1 in tow. I remember getting some v funny looks when I stomped, all dripping and bright orange, into the foyer of the leisure centre to pick her up from a swimming lesson. I said (loudly and entirely unnecessarily), "I've just come in off the lifeboat". And no one knew whether I was serious or not.

hatte? My phone does autocorrect in German as well as English.

Stropps

I bought one of those wondrous electric dryer things, but DH pronounced it too cumbersome and forced me to return it. Do we still have washing permanently drying on all our radiators most of the year No major damp issues though AFAIK.

DD and bf are cooking having rooted loudly through the freezer under the stairs. At least she's learning to cook. After a fashion.

I haven't started Kondo'ing yet. I'm going to do it on Thursday, after the sexy oil tank man comes....I'm having to do it in secret, so dh doesn't just join in with no rules (and completely missing the point) and just throws all our stuff out.

I'm very excited about your job, Stropps. I'm less about mine, but sort of 'just carrying on' for now. I used to love our humidifier - the most satisfying piece of equipment ever - emptying that water box never ceased to give me a thrill. Not sure where it is now - never used it in this house.

We had a VERY VERY wet walk today and a circuitous route home from the pub we had lunch at due to flooding and trees being all over the place - we had a massive argument in the car, with dh trying to persuade me to drive through floods, pointing out places to pull in and generally 'just being helpful' from the back seat. He's in a very bad mood as dd1 left his coat hanging up in the pub. We're all hiding in different rooms, avoiding him!

I need waterproof trousers.....

Update on ddad's eye - we removed the final bandage on Saturday and all looks good - amazing surgeon.

Happy Sunday - I'm still enjoying that Heston vodka and tonic if I dare to go downstairs and get one!

I have an electric drier jobby from Lakeland, which is great, but still chucks out a big load of moisture, I assume. I also have a tumbledrier. I am all about the laundry, me.
Strangely, my exh also had a dehumidifier obsession. Although as half of the house was below ground level and next door had a spring that used to emerge in their kitchen every so often, it was a bit more understandable.
If you are wondering whether my life has always been a little eccentric in parts, you would be right.
Lalsy, yes, I am also feeling the positive vibes. Although dh laughed loud and long when I said I was taking Stroppdog to the staff meeting on Tuesday.

Beachy/Stropps/ whoever knows, could you post the S&B rules up here so I we all can have a go?

Beachy, glad your DDads op went well.

Stropps, so pleased you are feeling the positive vibes

X-posts, Beachy. Glad to hear your df is doing well. Sexy oil tank man?? I think my Dm needs one of those.

BTM, all I've done is squish neatly fold my clothes and stack them horizontally across the drawers, so that you can see everything you've got when you open the drawer, iyswim. Rather than having it all in a big pile and having to dig through to find the stuff at the bottom.

My enthusiasm for entertaining sadly ran out before the last set of Christmas guests, so I had a struggle to get up early & cook & clean today. The guests have Form for being awkward, too, but behaved beautifully today and were only an hour late (so no crisp roasties for them).

Glad I haven't invited anyone else for a while. Like Herbs and BD, I don't seem to get invited back. A (very) few couples do reciprocate, though rarely. There's an astonishing number of people who've been here over and over again and never once invited us back. It's not that they don't entertain, in fact they take recipes from me to make for their friends

Yesterday's lunch guests asked if they could bring anything and I suggested pudding. The one they brought almost blocked out all the sunlight from the dining room. Four boxes of Maltesers were sacrificed to garnish it it would have comfortably fed 50 people. There were seven of us.

On the other hand, I've known someone to volunteer pudding and then bring a very out-of-date bought chocolate tart. Your way would probably work better, GGG because people know they have entire responsibility for a course with no fall-back option.

Don't think DD has done much revision but she's had a good rest. I'm another one who likes getting back into routines but our tree will stay up till Twelfth Night, we're still delighted with it.

Feel pleased to have kept DH, DM and the cat alive all year. In DH's case, for the first time since 2009, this didn't involve undue effort on my part. DD is flourishing & still likes us. Looking good for 2016

Good luck with the up-girding of loins, everyone

NU - I didn't think you'd want to get involved in that thread (lots of people who know nothing expostulating at length) but I was just checking you'd spotted it. It's all very sad.

BTM - DS's match was also on 3G (yes, posh astro), but it went ahead. No mud, but great lakes of water, so whenever he fell over it was like landing in a huge puddle. Poor lad was so cold he could hardly speak, and I had to defrost him with hot chocolate and toast.

Strops - you sound on Very Good Form, which bodes well for the coming week, does it not?

Beachy - poor you, with a grumpy DH. I had one of those earlier, as he took DS to football without having breakfast before he left, and came back ravenous and vile-tempered. Funny how I drill it into the DCs that they must always have breakfast to sustain their little brains for the morning, but DH doesn't seem to have grasped the concept.

I have a dehumidifier for the DDs' bedrooms, which grow black mould in the corners every winter (one of the perils of bungalow living is that you can't just throw open the windows and go out). I'm lucky in having a utility room large enough for all laundry drying (I have a massive rack....oo-er) so no radiator-draping. BTM - that would drive me potty.

I have been very productive today, though - tree and decs all back in the loft, paperwork up to date, and I bit the bullet and extended the mosaic tiles across the width of the bathroom, rather than just behind the basin (as advised by the MN Interior Design jury). I'm about to embark on the last festive chore of the year; in time-honoured tradition I shall be cutting all my Christmas cards into tags for next year. Oh yes. Hand me those pinking shears.

We have some mildew in our en suite on the ceiling, and our bedroom always seems to have condensation on the windows in the winter. We had a dehumidifier but it didn't seem to do any good (or collect any water ). I think it is because both rooms have three outside walls (sort of) and have tiny, inadequate radiators.

CV - do you iron and reuse wrapping paper too?

Not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow, not least because my boss called me between Christmas and New Year, when I was in, to ask me what I was doing, as she had several helpful suggestions if I was bored... I am fairly sure that she was only checking that I was actually in the office.

X-post Auriga - funny what you said about bringing pudding - I was caught out on Christmas Day, when DSis asked me to bring a pudding "as an alternative to Christmas Pud". By which I thought she meant an alternative for those who don't like Christmas Pud. As this is mainly the children (and DH) I made some chocolate brownies and cut up some pineapple.

But as we sat down for dessert it became apparent that I had misinterpreted, and there WAS no Christmas Pudding. Embarrassingly, the main dessert for the festive meal was my chocolate bloody brownies. I didn't even make enough for one each! I adore Christmas Pudding, and was really looking forward to it too.

On the fighting damp front - you have to close your doors and windows with dehumidifiers or they try and dry the seas and rivers instead of your washing, apparently. And we have all given thanks for our waterproof trousers this hol, hd a great time despite the weather, so I am with you Stropps.

I am drinking ginger tea and anticipating an early start. Also I have spotted a bit of narrative that is Historically Inaccurate ( cue weeks of chasing yet more emeritus profs) and two other strands that need elaboration. Why did I embark on this writing lark in the first place?

Stropps, I am so pleased DH is finally stepping up to the mop.

Stropps - If you have hardback copies of Missie Lee & Great Northern, I would be v.v.v happy to buy them off you, to complete my collection. And happy to pay postage.

I have had a dehumidifier for about 20 years & it is wonderous at drying washing. It sits in a small room & will dry jeans and/or towels in 12 hours.

Haven't caught up yet, but popping in to send good wishes to everyone going back to work tomorrow. And to say to Monty that I've told dh we can't watch any recorded episodes of War and Peace until we've both read it. In English, mind. I'm not insisting on Russian.

CV it's easy to see how that could happen, so it's made me think about how I communicate with people about food. I suspect I'm not clear enough, for example I don't remember ever saying to anyone 'Make sure you bring enough for N people because yours is the only pudding/salad'. I probably always have a back-up, which is just wasteful, even if they don't bring a pudding that blocks out the sun

I do give people puddings to take home. I've completely given up asking people to bring salads, after receiving supermarket bags of limp bitter leaves.

Sounds as though I'm moaning a lot but it was nice to see people round our own table and good for DM as we didn't have to take her out in the wind and rain.