Behaviour
Posted: Fri 29 February, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Domestic 1 Comment »Over the last two weeks, both of our animals have really surprised me in how they’ve handled us having builders here and so on.
Hound has been amazingly well behaved. Yes, sure, she’s been in the car during the day (with windows open when necessary) but she’s just slept. Now we’ve observed before that she’s actually probably just a lazy cow when we’re not around, and spends most of the day sleeping, but she’s proved it now. She has a basket in the back of my car, and just hops in there when the workmen arrive, and sleeps all day. I take her out for a walk at lunchtime if possible, but even then she just goes back in the car and sleeps.
Even more surprisingly, she hasn’t been a stress-head when anything goes on around her, either. The postman has walked past the car (with her in it) every day, and she hasn’t reacted at all. Window cleaners, deliveries, cesspit-emptier, skip – they’ve all gone past the car and she hasn’t reacted at all. In fact the only thing she barks at when they go past on the road are horses – for some reason she really hates horses – but that’s it. Nothing else disturbs her at all.
Psycho Cat on the other hand is really pissed off with the entire thing. He’s been stalking round the house, attacking things, and generally being a complete pain in the arse. He is seriously unimpressed with the entire thing – and is, I think, finding it all quite traumatic. He’s certainly coming to me in the evenings for more of a fuss and reassurance than he usually does.
Today though, the plumber is replacing radiators – which has also necessitated a ladder up into the loft. Psycho Cat disappeared. (You can see where this is going, can’t you?) Yes, he’d climbed the ladder, and was exploring the loft. Only he hadn’t thought about how he was going to get back down, so instead was yelling from the loft hatch for someone to come and get him.
He put up a struggle about coming down though – obviously thought that even though I’d got hold of the little pillock, he was going to fall, and kept digging his claws into the edge of the loft hatch. It ended up with me freeing his claws again and then quickly bringing him down below the level of the hatch, at which point he kind of relaxed and gave up a bit, with nothing to cling on to, just trusting me (a little bit) to bring him down to ground level. And then I’ve also moved the ladder – it seemed sensible.
He’s still not happy, mind you. So I’m sure he’ll find somewhere else to hide before long.
Bizarre House Work
Posted: Thu 28 February, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work Leave a comment »One thing we didn’t know when we bought this place is just how bad the previous work that had been done on the place really was. As time goes on, we’re realising it more and more.
In the current bathroom work, we’ve found that the floor in there is extremely non-level, and in some places has up to an 8° slope. And the corners aren’t square either. Come to that, neither are the walls. And while I know that’s not down to work done by the previous owners, it’s still a pain in the tits.
As for the work done by the previous owners, some of it is nothing short of bizarre. For instance, because the place was originally built with nowhere near enough power sockets, they had rigged up what amounted to an extension lead with two lots of wall-mounted double sockets coming off it. And they’d done that in just about every room.
There are also under-cupboard lights in the kitchen which were running from a power-feed that should be only going to be boiler. According to the electrician (who went an interesting shade of white when he saw it) that is a serious no-no.
I’ve written about the heating system before, where the wiring and pipework are – what’s the best word? – interesting. Yes, interesting – that’ll just about cover it.
Now in the bathroom we’ve found that they replaced the toilet with a new one (which, incidentally means they chose an avocado-green suite, it wasn’t forced upon them at house-purchase time) and fixed the difference in pipe-sizes with a plastic collar filled with solid cement.
All told, very bizarre people. Still, at least we’re getting these things sorted out slowly but surely.
Waiting
Posted: Wed 27 February, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work Leave a comment »One of the things most guaranteed to drive me crackers (other than the animals in the house, obviously) is when people say they’ll arrive at a certain time, and then not doing so. Particularly when we’re bloody well paying them to be here.
The current plumber is a case in point.
While the work he does is actually bloody good, saying “I’ll be there by 9am” and still not being here (currently) an hour later really fucking annoys me. And fair enough, he’ll probably stay later than 5pm too, but still – I’ve got stuff that I need to go out and do today, and if I’d know he wasn’t going to be here ’til 10am, I’d have gone and done that before he got here.
I suppose I should know all this by now – it was the same last week as well – but all the same, it’s bloody annoying, to say the least.
MOT
Posted: Wed 27 February, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Driving, Getting Organised 1 Comment »Ah, another milestone. It’s coming up for a year now since I bought the car – and that means it’s time for the first MOT test. OK, it’s the car’s second MOT, but it’s the first one I’ve had to arrange, as the place I bought the car from organised the previous one.
I’m really not sure what it’ll entail – I’m pretty sure that the car will be fine, and it’ll hopefully pass the test with flying colours.
Still, it’s all booked now for Monday, so we’ll just have to wait and see how it does.
Oh God, When Will It End?
Posted: Mon 25 February, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work 1 Comment »We’re now in the third week of the work in the bathroom, and it has to be said that the sense of humour is slowly failing. We’re at the point now where we just want it to be over and done with.
I think some of this is because we’re so nearly there – the builder is in today (and possibly tomorrow) to finish things off, then the plumber’s here Wednesday/Thursday to finish off putting in the other bits of the new suite (Sink/pedestal and toilet), and then to move around a couple of radiators. So we should be done by the end of the week.
At that point it’s “just” painting and tiling to be done, but we’re doing those – so we have to choose the colours and buy the tiles. But at least the main dollop of work will be completed.
But really now we just want to time-travel forwards to Friday so that it’s all done and we can get going on our own bits of work.
Distracting Behaviour
Posted: Sun 24 February, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Own Business, Work-related 7 Comments »All this week, Psycho Cat has been most annoyed by the continuation of the building work. Obviously it’s all disturbing his precious beauty sleep (or at least some of the essential 20 hours a day he seems to spend sleeping) and so he’s going to take it out on anyone/anything that comes close. Or – if that doesn’t work – just be bloody annoying.
His main traits so far have been:
- Jumping up to sit on the bookcase shelves (just where my wireless router is – the little fucker’ll be glowing before long) and then swiping at anything that goes past.
- Taking it out on Hound, who is currently cowering every time he comes close
- Annoying Hound by stomping in to the living room (usually Hound’s “territory”) to come and sit on/near us in the evening – and then going back to the previous option
- If no-one’s in the living room, showing his displeasure by taking a crap on one of the sofa covers
- Sitting on one of the kitchen worktops, glowering at anyone who comes in
or - Annoying me, by coming and sitting either on the keyboard I’m attempting to use, attacking my hand as it operates the mouse, or sitting in front of the monitor.
Yesterday though, was the grand finale. Not content with those, he did this…
He’s even snoring, for fuck’s sake…