Yay!

Sissy and Pingu are away from the house until tomorrow afternoon! I know I shouldn't feel like doing the happy dance, but I do. The house feels so much lighter when they are gone (or should that be when he is gone).

At the moment he has a chest infection and a cough that always has him bringing stuff up from his lungs when he finishes. I know he can't help it, but just hearing him bringing up phlegm makes me want to throw up! He did it when he came in early today and I had just made myself a ham sandwich - as I went to bite it he finished coughing... I thought I was going to heave and I couldn't even start my sandwich until he had left the house. Had I been eating when he had finished coughing I just know that I would have been physically sick!! I'm determined to not get another cold, so am using Vicks First Defence nasal spray... weird stuff (and a bit stinging if you inhale it too deeply, which of course I did on my first attempt). It's a thin gel stuff that you spray up your nose - it traps the cold virus, then renders it inactivate and you either blow your nose to get rid of it or sniff up and swallow it... sounds gross, but it works, and if it lessens the length of the cold (or better yet, stops it in its tracks as the box says it can do) it will be worth it.

The weather has taken a turn for the worst here... the temperature is plummeting and the sky is turning a leaden grey colour, which is bad. I heard on the news last week that the north of the country is going to have snow from today, and that is could spread south until we might get it nearer the weekend. My right wrist has been aching for two days (my left upper arm, too), always a sign of bad/cold weather... and I'm hoping that it is not an omen of weather to come!

Our boiler has stopped working!! (Plus a right old moan-fest!)

Meaning we have no central heating and no hot water!

I never knew this house could be so cold... my bedroom is recording a temperature of 56F or 13C! No wonder I'm having trouble sleeping. Funnily enough it's not the central heating I miss, it's the hot water... if I had water I wouldn't care about the heating, we have electric fires and blankets so it's not a huge problem, and if things get too chilly then you just go to bed (well, I do - must remember to add another blanket tonight).

The only problem I'm having is washing my hair - I have scalp problems and have to wash it daily or else the itching and soreness get too great and I'm in a foul mood and I feel dreadful (like I have swarms of headlice - not a pleasant sensation). I literally have 24 hours before I have to wash my hair again and any time over that and I can feel the tingling and itching creeping back again. Maybe it's psychological, maybe its me subconsciously clock-watching and making my head itch... I have no idea, but the burning and the consequent scabbing from scratching is real, and hurts and I really want to avoid that if possible!

Pingu has a friend that was meant to be coming round yesterday to have a look at the boiler and see if he could see the problem... then he was meant to be coming today, but now John (the friend) has miraculously discovered the problem without even looking at the boiler and has ordered a part (which is costing almost £100) and he will come and do it for us and waive the labour charge. The only problem is that it will take THREE DAYS to get the part and then he has to come down from Essex (about 70-85 miles, depending where in Essex he is based) to do it for us... on top of working his regular job.

Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful to him for helping us out, but part of me wishes that Pingu had kept his nose out of it! As soon as the boiler went wrong he was straight on the phone calling his mates and trying to get it fixed... without even asking us first! He had no clue as to what kind of breakdown cover we had in place, he never even asked, he just did the usual and "Super Builder" came to the rescue!

Regardless of the problem, be it big or small, he thinks he is the only one that can fix it or get it fixed, and I actually find that blanket assumption very insulting! Just because he's a qualified carpenter (though is now a delivery driver) he thinks that he is the be all and end all of odd jobs and how a house should be run! He regularly tells Mum when to pay the bills and says what he thinks the rent money he gives us should be spent on, he complains when we buy food, yet never complains when he eats it (and then never replaces it). He just pisses me off... he even tells Dad off for pinching cigarettes and when he sees him coming will hide Mum's or give them to me so that Dad can't take any. He thinks he's helping, but in reality he is just pissing people off - big time, with his constant poking his nose in where it doesn't belong! Any more of it and I'm going to have to say something... along the lines of "how the hell do you think we coped before you came here, Bob the fucking Builder?"

I wouldn't mind if the work I've seen him do was good, but it wasn't, it was half-hearted and unfinished, we are still waiting for him to put all of the screws in a ceiling fan, for instance - from July... he gets so far and "that's good enough" and he stops - so why he feels that the opinion of "Mr Bodge-Up" is more important than my Dad's, who was a fully qualified plumber/multi-tradesman his ENTIRE CAREER, I have absolutely no idea. My Dad is a depressive, not brain-dead, FFS! When my Dad does a job it's done properly, it's done well and I trust him, Pingu put up a ceiling fan so poorly that it wobbles ominously when it goes above the first setting and scares me so much that I won't turn it past that, if I turn it on at all (I'd rather be hot than have it fall on me!!)

And to top it all off, Mum now cannot find her bank card so has had to cancel it! The card that is tied to the account with all of our money in it! She also has a tax rebate check to pay in there so this is just turning out to be a very bad day! The Gods help Pingu and Sissy if they start complaining today... I know Sissy will be in a bad mood as she started her new temp xmas job in HMV today... the HMV that is an hour's travelling from here... on a bus, in the cold (Pingu was the one that convinced her to take it... purely for the money, everything he does is based on money... you don't need happiness in a job, according to him if the money is good enough... the man is an ignoramus!! *sigh*)

Ever have one of those days?

One of those days where you feel dreadful, but you just cannot put your finger on what it is that is making you feel that way? Well, that's how I feel today.

For one thing, I feel so cold! It's August and I'm sat here wearing a cardigan!! Both of my arms ache because it's cold and damp outside (and I have some arthritis in both my arms as I've broken both over the years, and my right wrist was set badly and so it aches all the time, but it's worse when it's chilly and wet, like now).

I'm also so incredibly tired... nothing unusual there, though, lol!