NotSheep

We spent yesterday with friends who live a couple of hours away. We arrived about noon, and apart from brief intervals when the children arrived for meals, we didn’t really see much of them until we left. They were having too much fun :-). We didn’t get home until close to midnight though, and I’m paying for that today (living with Grumpy, Ranty, Whiny and Stroppy….any one of those can be applied to any of the four older kids!)

Today…well, first I realised I hadn’t paid last month’s Visa bill. Argh. I always pay the bill in full - haven’t paid interest on a credit card in years (having spent too many years making minimum payments…oh to have all that wasted money back *sigh*). I do all the banking stuff around here - Scratchy is willing, but not organised enough, and every time I’ve left it to him in the past, stuff has ended up not paid. Pass the humble pie…

Phoned the Visa people and said “argh…sorry…grovel…new baby…five kids…will pay on-line today…” and they looked at the account and said that since it’s always paid in full, they’d waive the late fee. We still get hit with interest, but that’s actually less than the late payment fee, so I think we got off lightly. Reading around the blogring today, I notice I’m not the only person thinking about finances today.

I also managed to sell a refrigerator today - it was only a bit over a year old, but we got a fridge along with the house, and our own is too tall to fit anywhere in the kitchen. We could really use a bigger one than the small one we’ve got in the kitchen, but I can’t be bothered to go to the garage (a whole six or so steps away) every time I want something from the fridge, and I can’t justify running a small one in the kitchen and the big one in the garage, so the small one will have to do. We also have a cooker and dishwasher for sale (we got those with the house too) - there’s someone coming this afternoon to look at the dishwasher. It would be good to have all that space freed up in the garage, and the money certainly wouldn’t be wasted.

I told the boys they should go and call for their friends today and play outside with them, as all the local kids will be back at school tomorrow. Then I found out that some of them went back today. Poor things don’t even get all of August off now! George and Freddy were out on their bikes but beat a hasty retreat when it started to rain come down in torrents. We’ve now got a bit of thunder and lightning - let’s hope the air is a bit fresher afterwards so that I can stop with the headaches already.

Must go print off “work” assignments for the kids now…it’s September tomorrow!