Wellsy's World

If you are in a possition to quit your job but are unsure how to go about it, take a look at Chive to see how Jenny did it.

Brilliant

So we’ve had the dog for nearly a week now and he’s settled in OK now – he seems more relaxed and not as nervous as he was at first. Anyway, he’s starting acting more doggy-like now.

Holly is now at the stage where she crawls around, finds something to pull herself up and then walks around the room holding on to things. While she was leaning on the coffee table the dog decided to go behind her, mounted the poor girl and started humping her until I gave him a godd wallop. Holly didn’t seem too bothered but I still stuck the damn dog outside for half an hour.

When I let him back in he went straight into the kitchen, saw his reflection in the oven and stood barking at himself for 5 minutes – until he got thrown outside again!

Then on Sunday Holly was crawling around the conservatory where the dog’s basket is and before we had chance to stop her, went for a bit of speed crawling and managed to grab a handful of dog food and shovel it into her mouth before we could stop her. She seemed to like that as well – although she will eat most things anyway.

As mentioned previously, I did a little oopsy in my car over the winter and decided to keep my insurance down by fixing it myself. That actual fixing bit went fine, everything is now put back together in as good a condition as when I get it brand new.

That last part that now needs doing is to paint the front wing which I bought pre-primed ready for spraying. Since mine is Sea Grey which is one of the most popular colours of Focus, it should be fairly easy to get the paint. So I thought I’d make sure I had a good job done on it and went to T.C. Harrisons (the local Ford dealer) to ask them how much it would be. Bearing in mind that the front wings on modern cars are really that big, their quote of £350 seems absolutely rediculous!

After waiting for a month or two while I saved up and paid off some other bills I was in true English style, spoke to a man in a pub. He gave me the name of someone he knew who sprays cars and said to give him a ring. I did and it’s booked in for tomorrow for £75. Bargain. Now just got to wait to see how good a job he does.

So after Kirsty (22) and Lucie (3) asking daily if they can have a dog and Holly (1) bouncing up and down going “woof. woof. woof.” which I think means she wants a dog, I’ve finally be convinced (or given in) and we’re now getting a dog.

I’m a cat person normally but since I wasn’t after a pet anyway, a dog isn’t really an issue – I’m allergic to both so what the hell. It does mean that I don’t know anything about this thing though. Apparently they don’t even know what type of dog it is – it might be a cross between a pug (which I thought was slang for Peugeot) and a labrador. It kind of looks like a small lab that has run into a window but apparently we’ll find out when it gets bigger – however big it gets…

Anyway, that just left the issue of names. I asked Lucie what she wanted to call it and she looked around the kitchen and said “Milky Way”. Since then we’ve had Coco Pops, cabbage and a whole array of food – but nothing we could actually call it. Luckily it’s a boy so names like Precious haven’t cropped up which is good as it means I can walk it without sounding like a right nob.

We eventually settled on Billy. I’ll post a pic when it gets out of the slammer.

I wanted to get Kirsty a car so should could run the kids about, do the shopping and most importantly, drive to the pub for a meal so I can get nicely toasted! Anyway I found a nice cheap Fiesta on eBay and went to pick it up today. I got Clint to give me a lift down there to Halesowen and I would drive it back. Simples. Or was it.

Well apart from the fact that neither of us could be bothered to listen to what the sat nav was saying so didn’t know where to go at every single junction on the way down, we got there fine, had a look at the car, bought it and filled in the paperwork. All we had to do then was head back – and that’s when things started to go wrong…

We went to leave and Clint was going to take the lead since he had my sat nav – unfortunately the sat nav was having a bit of an episode and wouldn’t turn on. So the guy we’d bought the car from was standing on his drive making sure we got off ok and instead there was me with my head stuck in the window of my mate’s Corsa looking like a couple of scallies and bringing down property values. The guy got bored and went inside.

We eventually set off and headed to Sainsbury’s to get fuel. As we got there my phone went – it was the guy we bought the car off. He was very appologetic but we’d forgotten to sign the log book, could we come back. Not a problem. So Clint shoved soem fuel in but it wasn’t so easy for me… I couldn’t get the bloody filler cap open! Slightly embarrassing what with everyone in the long queue looking at me as if I’d just dropped my trousers in public. Anyway, I heroically gave up, waited for Clint and then we went back to sign everything.

We set off again and this time everything was going well. After a few miles we hit the motorway at one of the those junctions where there’s a sliproad going onto the motorway immediately followed by one going off. I followed Clint and he pulled onto the motorway in front of a van. I had to slip in between that van and another van – not a problem, all I had to do was wait for a gap and I could pull catch Clint up – he did have the sat nav after all. Just as I got to the bit where the slip road seperates itself from the motorway and there’s no way you can get off I notice a familiar shape to my left – yes, Clint had changed his mind and headed back off the motorway – leaving me feeling slightly nervous in a car that could break down at any moment, but most importantly…. lost.

Next time I’m taking two sat navs.

Following a trip to the office Lucie decided that she wanted another hamster, I accidentally lost her 1st one. This was because she spotted the one that has appeared in the office, so we took her to “pets at home” to get one as an early birthday present.

After getting it home Lucie decided to call him OSO, after her favourite TV programme. Holly is also fascinated by it too, so if you want to keep 2 small children entertained by a hamster, it’ll only cost approximately £30 to set it up with a cage and everything.

Once we’d got it tamed Kirsty brought it upstairs to show Lucie, which would of been fine except Kirsty let it go and it escaped under our bed! This then involved me shifting the bed while Kirsty tried to catch it, which Lucie found hilarious. This wasn’t working so I tried to catch it, which I eventually did, then the bloody thing crapped on me!

The moral to this story? Don’t let the hamster out of the cage without it’s ball. Failing that don’t let Kirsty loose with it.

The other day Kirsty took the kids to feed the ducks. After all the bread had gone Lucie decided that she was going to pretend to be a duck, so Lucie was quacking and waddling along following a duck. This in itself was very funny to watch but to make it funnier Holly started flapping her arms and quacking too!

Lucie then started pretending to be other animals. At first it was regular animals, (dog, cat, lion). Then she started walking sideways doing what looked like a mexican wave, when asked what she was doing her response was: “I’m being a spider of course”. She then started crouching saying “snuffle, snuffle”. When asked what she was pretending to be this time she said: “A hedgehog of course, silly mummy”. It makes it more amusing when Holly attempts to copy her big sister.

She makes it sound so obvious you’re left thinking of course, why didn’t I think of that?

So when it snowed the other week I was driving back into the carpark at work and hit a patch of ice under the snow. I was only in second, not going very fast but slid into the fence post by the gate. In the old days when car bumpers were made of metal I think I would have gotten away with a dent in the bumper and nothing else. With modern cars and their plastic matching bumpers though it’s a different matter.

I ended up sliding into the post at an angle catching the corner of the car (Ford Focus, 2008 model) – it ended up trashing the bumper and the fog light which is mounted in the bumper then stopping the car by hitting the wing which deformed it slightly. Even though this was at low speed because of the angle I ended up doing quite a bit of damage so although there was no structural damage it was going to be quite expensive to fix.

The first thing that most people would do is ring the insurance company and get them to fix it, however to keep my insurance premium below £1000 a year I had opted for a £500 excess. That with the loss of two years no claims would mean that an insurance fix would end up costing me around £650. That’s a lot. I figured I could get it done cheaper without involving the insurance company. Something that worked out quite well as in the same week my neighbourgh but the same thing and the insurance company shipped her car off to a garage for nearly a month – at great expense to her ultimately.

Anyway, I could have gone to a garage privately but since I like doing mechanical stuff I thought I’d give it a go myself. I started by hitting eBay and seeing what I could get. I basically needed a new bumper, wing, fog light and then getting it painted the right colour – Sea Grey. The best bit was the bumper. I found a guy selling Focus 08 bumpers in various colours so I contacted him and asked if he’d got one in grey – it is a popular colour for the new MKIII Focus. I’m guessing he has the bumpers in stock and sprays them on request as next morning he put a Sea Grey one on ebay for me. The fog light wasn’t a problem either but the wing I could only get primed in black ready for painting. Still – I got all the parts I needed for under £200. Having the wing sprayed will cost me a £100 at a Ford dealership so if you exclude my time then I will have saved over £350 by doing it myself.

So, putting it all together. I set aside last weekend to strip it all down and put the new stuff on. I spent most of the day on Sataurday removing the old bumper and wing and was just managing to get the wing on as it was going dark. That just left Sunday to put the rest of the wing on and then the bumper followed by the trimmings like radiator grill and fog lights. It’s not as hard as I thought it was going to be – most of it is clips holding the bumper in place with a few bolts here and there. The wing was most difficult but still easy enough to do yourself if you were considering it.

All I need to do now is take it into the Ford dealership for a spray one day and it’s done. Here’s a quick shot of what it looked like Saturday afternoon.

I was following a new Ford Ka in green this morning and thought “Hang on, that looks familiar”. Then it struck me – it looks like an ood from Doctor Who. Just imagine it with it’s boot full of spaghetti…

The other night I was invited out for a night with the ‘girls..’ I told my husband that I would be home by midnight, ‘I promise!’ Well, the hours passed and the margaritas went down way too easily. Around 3 a.m., a bit loaded, I headed for home.

Just as I got in the door, the cuckoo clock in the hallway started up and cuckooed 3 times. Quickly, realizing my husband would probably wake up, I cuckooed another 9 times.

I was really proud of myself for coming up with such a quick-witted solution, in order to escape a possible conflict with him. Even when totally smashed… 3 cuckoos plus 9 cuckoos totals = 12 Cuckoos (MIDNIGHT!)

The next morning my husband asked me what time I got in, I told him ‘MIDNIGHT’… he didn’t seem pissed off in the least.
Whew, I got away with that one!

Then he said ‘We need a new cuckoo clock.’

When I asked him why, he said, ‘Well, last night our clock cuckooed three times, then said ‘oh shit.’ Cuckooed 4 more times, cleared its throat, cuckooed another three times, giggled, cuckooed twice more, and then tripped over the coffee table and farted.