Middle of the week heralded another stop over from E; she is a fab child to have around, i really enjoy her being in the house. Although an only child (or perhaps because of, i have no idea, not having experience of them really!) she is exceptionally adept at blending into the pack here and has some remarkable skills when it comes to inclusive play, so the 24 hours were very harmonious and stuck rather pleasantly to a “children being heard but not seen” rule 😆 We deposited her after Brownies and were rather sorry she had gone, given that she pretty much engineered 24 hours off for me!
I busied myself, among other things, with a dedicated page for Hama Bead Patterns; it all links back into BM but next time you fancy a good hama-ing 😉 please feel free to go and have a look at these Free Bead Pictures.
I’ve had a mainly busy business week and now that all my postage is online, i’ve got access to some quite alarming figures. In the last 4 weeks, i have sent 396 parcels, 99 of them this week and spent £1053 on postage. 😯 Thursday was an utterly dire day though and yesterday only marginally better, though Lucy did do her first party and made over £100 of sales, which definitely helped. Local selling is our project for next year, along with some national PR, which my SIL is going to do for me i hope. (Forgot she was a PR person!) Lucy is upped to 8 hours a week now and along with J doing some graphics for me, the load has been lightened enough for me to start being more proactive on moving the business forward, getting more organised and focusing back on my customer service. I feel like a business owner these days, not someone faffing about. Hopefully next year i will start to feel like i am making some profit! I did pay £200 into the mortgage savings account this week though, which was rather good 🙂 I officially own roughly 1square ft of the hall. (Our deposit just about makes the kitchen ours!)
Speaking of feet…. i went through some roadworks yesterday and the signs leading up to it told me how many yards i was from the roadworks. Metric for HOW many years now? 35? Didn’t quite work, did it. I’m utterly metric by birth, but i’m still more likely to work in inches and lbs that cm and kilos. 🙄
Oh – and i forgot a rant the other day… and i suppose it is entirely possible it might offend someone i don’t know about, so if you are of a religious persuasion that regularly knocks on doors, look away now or um… well… listen 🙂 …
We’re a bit of an easy target for doorstepping here, being a small and front-path-free estate and we get lots of leaflets and people who want to sell things. Now, i’m relatively polite, though less tolerant than i was admittedly, but there are a few things i really take issue with strangers coming to the door to try and discuss with me and top of the list is how i feel about religion. You don’t have to know me very well to know i am fantastically interested in religions and will talk and listen to anyone who might choose to share their faith with me, so long as they aren’t trying to convert me to their way of doing things But really, it isn’t something i’m going to discuss with a stranger on my doorstep. The last couple of times it has happened i have said this, very politely, and also refused the copy of of the magazine that was offered to me “for all those children you have in your care.” 🙄 So this time having presumably, and very laudably, decided they wouldn’t actually bother me, they just posted said leaflet through the door. Which might have been fine, except that my sensitive soul of an 8 year old reader, the one with the issues about the sun dying that keeps her awake at night, got hold of it and came sobbing to me because someone had just posted a leaflet through the door proclaiming that the end of the world was coming.
Actually, when i looked through it, briefly before i ripped it up in front of her face and reassured her that people who post things through doors always want you to do something but that doesn’t mean it will be beneficial to you, i got REALLY REALLY angry about it. Basically it had lots of depictions of Hindus and Muslims, surrounded by devils, beasts and calling down curses and was a long rant about “false religions.” WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY is it so effing difficult for us to just actually live the concept of love and tolerance that religion and faith is supposed to promote. Why can we not even begin to embrace some level of acceptance of each others path to God, if we believe that in the first place? And while i’m about it, how, in these days of prosecuting everyone in sight for promoting religious intolerance and hatred, is this an acceptable piece of unsolicited mail? Surely it isn’t? It annoys me beyond belief that i can’t even shield my children from such narrow minded bigotry as this when they are in their own home. ARGH and GRRRRRR thrice and again. :wall: :wall: :wall:
RANT OVER.
Well anyway, i’ll spare you the rant i had going in my head all night last night about peoples driving habits, because as it happened i got within 20 miles of home last night, having growled at one driver after another who felt the need to be an idiot, only to find my only road home closed with a load of grim faced policemen standing at the end of it. So that neccessitated a call home and some Max-Nav home via a 40 mile detour (who needs Scott-Scott and Tom-Tom when you have Max on the end of a phone!)
Still, that didn’t spoil our very enjoyable day spent with Charlie and Claire. Kids played Brio, Playmobile and oggled Disney while i oggled the absolutely gorgeous LilyDolls and made plans for Christmas presents. Quickbooks arrived just before i left so Claire gave me a crashcourse in that (i have so gone over to the darkside!) and we mainly hid upstairs and avoided the children while we made plans for building our respective empires 😉
On the way home Fran and i discussed cats-eyes in the road and she demonstrated her understanding of the word “compromise” very ably by describing various methods of placating Maddy/Amelie scenarios (“Amelie isn’t very good at compromising, i don’t think” she said, which made me laugh.)
And now, a weekend of trying to create 3 years of accounts backwards awaits me! We came home with a boxful of Playmobile Charlie has decided to part with, and judging by this morning, i won’t be seeing much of the children!
Oh that lot … yes. Doommongers and fearmongers and hatemongers from my perspective – but on an individual level some of them are okay. The question that I often think about, if I’ve got the right lot here, is the one about only 144,000 (I think that’s the right number) are allowed into heaven according to that belief, yet there must be more of them than that. So what happens if all your life you’ve been knocking on doors, witnessing your way about and you find out you’re the 144,001 of them and you can’t get in…?
Oh I love playmobil. And equally hate doorstep people, although I tend to find that Npower salesmen are even worse than JWs 😉
Really good to hear all the business stuff, I’m so pleased for you 🙂
The playmobile game that has gone on all morning has a married couple as the lead actors called chris and helen 🙂
well, i hope that chris is doing what he’s told for a change!!
he appears to be lying on a sunlounger 😉
sarah – quite!
I got that leaflet shoved in my hand across my doorstep too! That very one! Then a couple weeks later they came back (presumably to test my knowledge lol!) and asked if I’d read it. I said, “no, I put it in the bin” at which point they tried to give me another copy of the exact same leaflet – I guess they thought I had kinda “stumbled” and accidently trashed the leaflet heehee! 😀
The last time I had any Jws round was before I was married and I harranged them to such a degree that they started looking at their watch and saying ‘yes that’s a very good point, but we dont have time to go into here’…
OK so why did you knock my door, man?
And what does that say about me – I frighten JWs away from a doorstep!! 😐
Only 144,000 get to heave the others stay on earth the build the kingdom of da Lard.
Oh so some guy in Brooklyn sayeth.
Less said about people who knock on doors and tell you there is a limit on the number of tickets to Heaven the better…. They no longer knock on mine since I was so horribly rude to them just after DH was sacked by a company whose board was entirely made up of said people….
I think that they have already reached the magic number, and have thought of an explanation. The 144,000 in heaven is the government (i.e. first class), and the slightly less good ones are on the new earth being ruled by those in heaven (i.e. second class). This doesn’t include everyone, as there’s the Nth class which has hot and hot running brimstone.
I got stopped on the street this morning while walking to work! I declined the offer of the free magazine and the chap took it very well.