Sorting sorting and more sorting …

How come when a bulb blows in the house and you rake through the vast array of light bulbs in the cupboard looking for a replacement, the nine thousand in there are NEVER one of the ones you’re actually looking for?

Sod’s law.

Mind you it did mean after a trip to B&Q after tea I discovered coloured halogen lights so got them instead of the usual boring old white ones.  Nikki had dropped off to sleep by the time I got back and didn’t wake up until this morning so the first she knew about it was when she got up to the toilet during the night and got the shock of her life – she said it felt like she was in one of these toilets you get in hospitals with the ultra-violet lights to deter drug users!!

It does kinda look like that right enough but I told her they were such a palaver to change (they’re spotlights fitted into the ceiling and one is over the bath so that needed a narrow chair with a towel underneath before I could get near it) that we’re going to try and get used to them!

Living on your own as a woman in her fifties is incredibly pleasurable most of the time but it does also mean you’re Chief Cook and Bottle Washer.

As in introvert this suits me well – I imagine an extrovert would have the screaming ab dabs within the first forty minutes and end up doing the shopping at a 24 hour TESCO’s at 3 in the morning just to talk to someone.

Not so the introvert. Our default setting is ‘alone-and-happy-with-it.’

However there is one disadvantage. There is no-one to delegate jobs to and just occasionally it would be really nice to say ‘Any chance you could sort out the car insurance for me tonight’ or ‘could you give the grass a once-over after tea and I’ll do the edges tomorrow?’

So you end up with numerous lists all over the place and for every one thing which gets scored off another six seem to get added on.

Nowadays I use my extremely useful ‘Task and Reminder’ facility on my mobile. A thought occurs – my thumb goes into action – a date and time is set and hey presto it’s taken care of.  Well it’s written down anyway …

Goodness knows how I used to cope without it though – presumably drowned in post-it notes all over the place. I remember having a rather nifty burgundy Filofax which I carried everywhere and which had a To Do section at the back which was well used – prior to that I think I had to rely on numerous tiny lined notebooks which floated around in my handbag and were forever getting lost.

However the only problem with the mobile phone facility is that it nags.

An annoying beep alerts you to the fact that Something Very Important needs doing NOW so you have a look and invariably decide that actually that can wait until tomorrow or something else has come along which is Even More Important or so significant it hasn’t even made it onto the list so the order of priority gets changed and the ‘postpone’ button gets pressed frantically.

The trouble is I’m constantly doing this. I spend more time reorganising the items on the list than actually processing them and sometimes if I leave something on there long enough it becomes obsolete and I can delete it!  There’s not quite the same satisfaction in deleting an item though as scoring through it on a piece of paper but it’s still good when I see the lists getting shorter – makes me feel in control and conversely I know when things are starting to get out of hand when I run out of space on a list and have to start another one then when I can’t see all the lists in one go on the screen and have to start scrolling that’s my cue for panic.

Part of the reason the lists take so long to get through these days though is because nobody seems to want to do a decent job any more.  Or just … their actual job.

I realised my stress levels were threatening to go through the roof the other day and was puzzled as to why. Then when I thought over what I’d been doing that week I realised almost everything I’d been trying to organise/buy/sort/find out about had been fraught with difficulty and frustration because I was being thwarted at every corner.

I actually nearly fainted with shock when I phoned the RAC to cancel my car insurance and prepared myself for the inevitable barrage of sales talk to try to get me to stay with them.  Instead there was only one obvious question – how much cheaper was the new quote and when I told them they were quite happy and cancelled without a quibble in seconds!

Unlike trying to get a new mattress delivered for Nikki’s double bed.  I’ve had such a ridiculous pantomime with the mattress company it’s unbelievable and when the courier service they use turned up last Friday afternoon without telling me I was furious initially but then thought well at least I’m finally getting this flipping mattress.  While they were unloading the van I ran upstairs, stripped the bed, shooed all cats out of the room and ran downstairs again to meet a worried face at the door.

‘There’s a problem’ said the face.

I thought WHAT?? What could possibly be a problem NOW??  You’re here.  You have my mattress.  Just give me the bloody thing.

‘We can’t find it’ continued the face.

I just stared at him.

The courier was YODEL and at least one diarist reading this will be nodding his head sagely on hearing that name having had recent problems with them in the not too distant past.  Let’s just say they’re not known for their brilliant customer service skills.

Apparently the drivers check through the paperwork but someone else loads up the actual van.  Does that sound like ‘checking the paperwork’ is a pretty useless exercise to you seeing as how they don’t actually check it against anything?  I knew it was pointless getting annoyed with the delivery drivers so after they left I took my frustration out on a long e-mail to the only named person on my order confirmation whilst waiting to get through to the mattress company’s customer service line.  Forty bloody minutes I sat listening to that tinpot ice-cream-van plinky-plonky music before finally speaking to a human being who transferred me to the warehouse to reorganise delivery – twenty bloody minutes I sat listening to even worse plinky-plonky rubbish before they cut me off!  That’s an hour of my life I won’t get back again.  However given it was a very stressful steam-coming-out-of-my-ears hour perhaps I don’t want it back again to be fair.

Anyway stuff is being waded through slow but sure –

the main baby stuff is bought – buggy/travel system, crib, swing, bath seat;
baby clothes of Nikki’s which I’d kept have all been washed and put away all ready;
car insurance is renewed;
home insurance is renewed;
books are starting to get put on ebay;
papasan chair cushion has been cleaned (too big for a normal machine) and the chair is on Gumtree with someone interested already;
sorted through some of my old files and passed on some literacy stuff to a friend who has just completed the training;
ordered a new chest of drawers for Nikki’s bedroom because her old one is falling to bits;
sorted out the top drawer in my desk which had become a dumping ground for things-to-be-put-off-till-God-knows-when;
finally got a pair of curtains for the sitting room;
got a copy of the inventory for Nikki’s old house and waded through it with a fine toothcomb because the leasing agents are threatening to deduct all sorts of rubbish off the deposit;
organised a refund for the bit of Nikki’s TV licence she won’t be using;
chased up the bank arrestment for Shaun-the-bathroom-guy to see what else I can do to get my money back;
finally organised a decent window cleaner;
organised meet-ups with a couple of friends I haven’t seen for ages;
waded through numerous moneysavingexpert e-mails which were clogging up my Inbox;
replied to other e-mails which had been sitting there for months;
sorted through a box of family documents which I found in the shed;
sorted through a box of ancient family photos of my aunt’s also found in the shed;
fixed both the hoovers;
sorted out the backup thingie on the pc;
cleared out the large kitchen cupboard to make more storage space;
took loads of stuff down to the skip;
sorted out stuff for charity bags;
worked out Nikki’s finances once she starts getting maternity pay to stop her panicking;
uploaded heaps of photos off the phone and edited them;
wrote every day for at least an hour even if I haven’t felt like it;
got the ball rolling with sending stuff off to magazines (ok only 3 things so far but it’s a start);
de-nuded my wardrobe of stuff-I’ll-never-wear/get into-again;

and in between it all bought this cute little bike for the garden!

As well as these two wifies having a good old gossip.

And this cheeky chappie joined us yesterday.

And five brightly coloured toadstools completed the picture today but I haven’t taken a photo of them yet.  Before Nikki had seen them, she heard the neighbours coming out of the house next door and saying ‘Oh aren’t they cute‘ and was scared to look out the window to see what the latest acquisition was!

And for this one I feel like saying ‘I hereby present Exhibit A from the Murder Scene m’lud’ …

… kinda looks like that doesn’t it??

God knows what it is but it’s done its job anyway.

And can someone please tell me why I wasted ten minutes trying to work out what my latest spam e-mail was actually saying??

‘Week were no more thoroughbred by the grove of these inventor-eaters than soldiers in an armored imaginings are articulated by ants letting comfortably the armor style. Jada Houston  Once this one adverb of burgundy in his favor had timorous primarily. To derive the feelings or the home of Mrs. The men fixed, and the two were know him actually. Byway knew Stiva had a sameness after dining for _faire jouer le tlgraphe.’

Well I suppose it made a change from the usual penis enhancement.