Update

Martha, I'm glad to say is out of hospital (came out on Tuesday) and is keeping busy at home. She has been given lots of work by her teacher, and is having some lessons with a local friend who is home educated.

Douglas had a glucose tolerance test to find out if he really is diabetic (I doubt it, so does he). He had to drink a bottle of lucozade and have regular blood sugar levels taken. Glad it wasnt me. He has now come up with an impressive bruise on his arm where they took the blood :-) (Poor senstive Douggie!!)

I had my first meeting with our new team leader.. she is keen to help me develop and is doing all she can to help me with my goal of becoming a coach for the department. The job, amongst many other tasks, means listening into advisors calls and helping them improve their customer service skills, being "Support" for advisors who get stuck whilst on calls, and various other projects and support things. My first step on this route is "arriving" next week.. we have some new members of our team starting, fresh out of training, and I will be "buddying" one of them. This is like a low level support job :-)

Douglas had his yearly review meeting with work.. got some purple marks which mean super fantastic well done, a lot of generally "you are doing well" marks but two red ones (bad marks) one being his sickness record, which he can't help, and the other being the servcie level (how quickly his department answered calls through the year) which wasnt hit. so.. all in all hes doing really well!!

We have just had our bedroom door painted, and the upstiars landing ceiling done, and it all looks much nicer and whiter :-) Next week is the turn of the lounge.

The winter before this one, we had very bad condensation as a result of a poorly installed and ventillated gas fire. We have since had that problem sorted out, and the walls have remained dry and mould free since then. This means its safe to have the blown plaster and damaged lining paper removed, repaired and re painted.

We are hoping our house will look fresh and bright before our Best Man (wow ten years since we got married) and his Wife visit. We have not seen Stu or Janet for ages, and it will be a treat having them to stay!

If any friends or family who read this also want to come see our new paint work, wait till the beginning of March and come see!!!

Plans for the future

Well, when the painting is done, we want to replace our front door. We want a nice wooden door in Edwardian/late Victorian style. Douglas thinks a stable type door might be nice - one that we can just keep the top half open but the bottom half closed, so we can get fresh air through, but the cats can't use it as an exit and entrance.

When we have a new door, we want to replace the horrible flooring in our lounge area. We are thinking wooden laminate flooring, and a colourful rug. We would also replace the hall and stair carpet!

Plans for the far distant future..

We would love to create a conservatory in a strange spare oblong space next to our kitchen. We could have a lovely patio door into it from the lounge and use it as our green house!!

Oh... then... a jacuzzi would be nice.. mabye gold plate our car.. put diamonds on the soles of my shoes to stop them wearing out.. ;-) ... all we have to do is kill of a rich relative or win the lottery. Both are highly unlikey since we love our relatives (and we dont really have any mega rich ones..l) and we dont play the lottery very often.

The reality is that we are content being a family of two humans, two puddies and just enough lovely relatives :-)