I’ve not written a blog post for ages and I promised a friend some Bumpkinsville pictures but I thought I’d tell you what’s happened in my little break first.

Last week I had a week off work.  Recently, I finally got around to ordering new flooring / carpet for the house, something I’d been putting off for about three years.  In preparation I decided to paint.  As the flooring would be lower than the carpet this meant cutting out the carpet around the edges of the rooms, pulling up the grippers, sanding the skirting boards and then painting.  Then painting the walls and the ceilings.

I also managed to gloss Norman quite significantly.  I finished the house on Wednesday night, feeling rather poorly and having a spot of trouble breathing.

I spent Thursday mostly asleep and woke feeling worse.  It turns out I’m allergic to the paint.  Grrrrr.

Friday I want to visit a friend from work and meet her little girl for the first time.  That was fun and mostly filled with food and checking of handbag contents:

Earlier in the week I also went on a lampshade making course.  I now have two very unique lampshades.  I’m not entirely sure they are unique in the right way, but hey ho:

On Monday I took Norman to the vet.  We arrived, the vet asked the problem, I told him Norman didn’t love me anymore and could he please fix it.  He asked me what the problem really was, I confirmed that was the real problem.  It turns out I was right:  I had a feeling that his flea treatment hadn’t been working properly and the poor fur ball was itchy scratchy. That is why he was not happy.  (With new treatment he is now bouncing around and paying me attention again again.  We’re both much happier about the situation).

This week my aunt got rather poorly so rather than be the one being driven to hospital, I’ve taken Mum a few evenings.  I don’t like the idea of people watching me as I lie in bed so I figured my aunt would feel the same.  As a result, I talked at her.  A lot.  I have a slight concern that she now may be in a deeper coma than was intended by medical staff…  I’ve told her though:  If she wakes up I promise to stop talking quite so much – she has to wake up to tell me that though :o)

On Wednesday the new floor I’d ordered was being started (they had to put a layer of concrete type stuff down).  They had asked me if I would be moving out when I booked it all and I did wonder why.  When I got home I found out.  My lounge was COMPLETELY empty:

My cooker was on the kitchen work top:

Everything was in my bedroom:

Or my conservatory:

I couldn’t get to my bedroom light switch.  I could only get to my bed by climbing through a small gap between my upturned sofa and a bookcase.  I ended up borrowing a wind up lamp from my parents so I could climb in, in the dark!

Then there was the malfunctioning bright orange chub suit (don’t ask), 1000 cake pops, and 100 helium balloons.  I also did some shouting at a Network Rail man when he couldn’t tell me what platform the next train was on because ‘he only got back from holiday yesterday’ and was trying to put us back on the train we’d just been turfed off part way through the journey.  And the lady I accused of chipping paint off my car due to her atrocious parking.  Her parking was atrocious, but it turned out that the chipped paint wasn’t down to her.  Ooops. (she was very lovely about it, I was very apologetic).

So maybe you can see why the blog got left for a while.  On the upside, my house looks much better, I even have a brand new sofa type thing, and I have a lot to tell my aunt over the weekend :o)