It’s so much easier to complain than offer praise!

A friend of mine posted about how her rather curt e-mail to a supplier had obviously hit a nerve.  The supplier had responded by explaining her oversight had been caused by the pressure of Christmas orders and trying to run a small business while nursing a sick husband (man flu) and keeping a 4 year old son entertained.

Personally, I felt the reply didn’t address my friend’s complaint but she may not have reproduced the whole response.  However I was a bit surprised at other responses which were critical of the supplier quoting personal reasons for an oversight.  The feeling seemed to be that business issues should be kept separate form personal ones.

I can agree with that to some extent but there are many people out there who have bravely, in my opinion, set up small businesses to try and support their families.  This must take an incredible amount of work and must be stressful.  Starting up new ventures in the current economic climate is risky, even if you do have a good product/service to offer.  If you also have young children to work around it just adds another factor into the work/life balance.  I’m grateful that both my husband and I have good jobs and stability that don’t require us to have to look at alternative methods of making a living although it would be nice to have the drive and imagination required to set up a business.

But the point I also wanted to make here is that we are so much quicker to complain than we are to praise.  Perhaps anger is a stronger emotion.  It can certainly motivate us to pick up pen and paper (or turn on the computer) and rattle off a complaint when things are not to our satisfaction but can you remember the last time you wrote a letter of thanks for good service?  I’m not sure I can.  Note to self: must do better!

Wake me in the New Year!

This time of year has been difficult for me the past few years and 2012 is proving no exception.  I'm trying to focus on the positives - we have invites for Christmas Day (Nick's brother and his family) and Boxing Day (one of Nick's sisters and most of the family) and most things are ok in our little world.

But I'm still struggling with the run up to christmas.  I don't know if it's the weather/winter season - it has been very cold here although today is warmer or if it's the first christmas without Mum although she wasn't exactly here for the last few years.  It's probably a combination of all these things together with a horrendous work schedule and other complications.

My kitchen looks so much better but there are still things to be done.  My house looks a tip.  Our daughter is back home indefinitely and hasn't yet got all her things organised in her room so there are still things around the house.  I'm trying not to pressure her too much as she has split from her boyfriend of 7 years and is also having to look for a job as her contract expires in March.  She too is not in a good place.

My youngest will be home in January after over 7 months in the states so all 3 kids will be back at home.  Good job we have 2 bathrooms.  So I'm trying to be positive but that takes energy that I don't seem to have at the moment.  Today will be a wasted day - it was the staff christmas party last night which was a really nice evening, a much needed distraction, but too much wine consumed and too little water has produced the very predictable hangover.  Some lessons it seems are never learned!

Work anecdote for yesterday:
I'm definitely getting a reputation for being a grinch at work but there are a few others around.  We are also developing a group of microwave grinches.  Changes to lunch arrangements has meant that sometimes there is a high demand for the 2 microwaves we have in the staff kitchen.  It seems it's especially annoying when someone "cooks" in the microwave rather than just "reheating" because it takes more time.  A meeting set up to discuss the role of teaching assistants in the classroom got hijacked with their moans and complaints about rotas and the ongoing microwave saga.  The complaint seemed to really be what are management going to do about it?  Well they should be warned - if anyone raises the question directly to me the answer will be:
If you lot cannot resolve this conflict my answer will be to remove the thing causing it, i.e. the microwaves, because we are not obliged to provide them!  Or I might just cut the plugs off anyway!

Calm before the storm

Well we have finally finished emptying the kitchen out ready for the work to start.  It's taken a lot longer than I thought it would so it was just as well that we had this week to get prepared.  There is stuff all over the house.  Good thing Matt is away - a lot of it is in his room!  

It was strange yesterday as all 3 of our kids were out of the country.  But Rebecca is home today after a nice relaxing week in Tunisia..  

Tomorrow we're all back at work.  So I'm managing to relax for a bit this evening.  Can still get to the sofa and the remote controls for the TV!  It's been an awful day weatherwise - woke up to pouring rain.  The rain has been so bad overnight that the fireworks display by us has been cancelled.  Apparently the ground is too sodden.  Unfortunately the area of ground they use for the display is where they had the temporary police quarters during the olympics, including horse stabling.  The ground hasn't fully recovered from that yet so no display tonight.  Hopefully the event will be rescheduled.  The site is so close to us that we can see much of the display from our bedroom window although I usually walk nearer to the site to see it more clearly.

The cats of course hate the firework displays!  Although they are not particularly happy right now as they're not sure what's going on with the kitchen.  I've had to move their food and the litter tray so it's all a bit confusing for them and of course when the builders arrive they will probably just run for cover! 

This week could be a bit trying.

Being Productive

Well this has certainly been a productive week - we have produced lots of rubbish!  Actually the rubbish was already here and now a lot of it is not!   One of the things we are having done with the kitchen improvements is to fit a TV aerial socket in the kitchen - our roof aerial is currently connected in the lounge but we want a socket in the kitchen as well - since the UK switched to digital the reception on the portable via an internal aerial is pretty useless.

To be able to do that means taking a wire down from the lounge into the cellar - under the floorboards and across to the kitchen.  Actually it's a pretty simple job - now that we have cleared the rubbish from the cellar!  The cellar extends underneath the hallway and lounge but only part of it can be walked in.  The other part is a ledge that is about 3 feet higher than the ground level and 3 feel below the lounge floor level.  The ledge had lots of rubbish on it - you know the sort of thing - offcuts of wood, etc, those things you keep - just in case you might need them one day!  Some of it was left by the previous owners, such as a bath panel and an overhead drying rack amongst other things.  No way could we expect someone to go crawling around that to sort out the wiring.  So the rubbish had to go.

It was a horrible job but the cellar is already looking so much better.  We had accumulated lots of other stuff too like tins of paint - kept for when you need to do that bit of touching up!  Well as most of the tins hadn't been touched in years I didn't think we were likely to start using them now - especially as I'm on a mission to get lots of decorating done.

We're fortunate that our dump/tip (or civic amenity centre as it's also known) takes all household rubbish for free and there are various collection points for wood, paint, recyceable goods so we've made a few trips there this week and hopefully not too much has had to end up in landfill.  That's the royal we of course!  I've been once and then only because it was on the way to somewhere else. Nick's done the trips but then I did venture onto the cellar ledge to pass out the stuff - it was very dusty down there so we're about even.

As to our other tasks for the week, we both had a clean bill of health from the dentist but both need new glasses as our prescriptions have changed.  The car also had a pain free service - nothing needed doing and as we'd arranged an extended warranty when we bought the car there was no charge. I'm plodding on with my physio exercises and today I finally got my foot looked at.  As I suspected this has only led to a referral to the hospital orthopaedic team.  I wonder how long that will take to come through!

The floor tiles for the kitchen have arrived.  There are just a couple of bits we still need to get from IKEA which we'll do over the weekend.  Matthew has picked a good week to be away.  He is off to Switzerland tomorrow for a week for training.  Fortunately he is not one of the many people that have been laid off by UBS this week.

Well now I need to get on with packing up the kitchen - it's another good exercise in sorting out what we really need to keep and what needs to be recycled/rehomed.

Never a dull moment here!