Not so happy new year

Christmas was indeed lovely. It was possibly the calmest, most laid back Christmas day I've ever had. We were awake early and had opened our presents by 9.30, but then took the rest of the day to enjoy doing whatever we wanted to do. A nice walk, long lazy lunch, snooze on the sofa and Peter Kay dvd was about all we could manage. Got thrashed at Scrabble again mind you. I don't think either of us really wanted to get up and go to Shropshire on boxing day, but we made it and had a lovely time visiting all the folks.

Back again now though and plunged into the deep-freeze. It's mighty chilly. Both of us had to sleep in full thermals, socks and hats on Tuesday night. Gorgeous.

I had the challenge of collecting a urine sample from the cat this week. He's not been well, poor moggy, and in order to see if the tablets have worked, the vet needs a sample. I couldn't imagine how I was going to achieve collection, but I was given some non-absorbent stuff to put in his litter tray and once he had done his daily pee I was able to tip the tray and use a pipette. Nice job. Dropped it off proudly at the surgery this morning.

I hope his little problem has cleared up because we're about to traumatise the cat even further by taking him up to G's house next week while we attempt to blitz the place top to bottom. He may never forgive us. But it seems we're disappointing everyone at the moment. We've had to cancel the trip to Cornwall over New Year. The only time off available to both of us next month is first week of January and we need a good week with both weekends either side to tackle the redecoration required to make G's house rentable. If we go to Cornwall for New Year's weekend, we lose half the time and we just won't get everything done. I was looking forward to seeing Tabi and Sam so much, and am pretty gutted we're having to sacrifice a lovely trip in order to get the place sorted, but it's one of those things.

So it looks as if New Year's Eve and the next 9 days is going to be spent camping out in an empty house, sanding and painting like mad. Not exactly glamorous and not quite what I had in mind!