House Update

A very busy week of meeting plumbers, builders and fireplace removal men to get what feels like hundreds of quotes for our moneypit of a house!  Every new person who comes in says something along the lines of 'blimey, you've got a lot of work to do', then tells me something that's wrong with the house that I hadn't even vaguely considered might be a problem.  Jobs that I thought would be difficult, like removing the fireplace, seem quite straight forward, yet jobs that I thought would be easy peasy, like replacing the toilet, are really complicated.  Oh well, it will get done eventually, and we may as well make a good job of it.  It can only increase the value of the house, so anything we spend is really an investment.

Mum and I have done a bit of hole-filling and some sanding in the baby's room and some of the wood has gone off to the dump.  Upstairs is mostly just a decorating project.  Mum and I went to IKEA on Tuesday to get some ideas, so i've been designing soft furnishings for various rooms all week, which has been fun.

I had two half-day INSETS this week.  I'm back at after school club from tomorrow.  Matt went back for INSETS on Tuesday and then the students came back in on Thursday.  It's been very full on for him.  Long days and so many new names, faces and ways of working.  Still, he's doing well - he was at the pub with some new colleagues on Friday night, and then out with his new football team training and then watching/drinking at another match.  He seems to be making friends easily as usual, which is wonderful.

Today has been more of a chill-out recovery day for him.  Mum and Dad have gone away in the van for a few days and we've spent the afternoon playing with the cats and watching the Formula 1, while Matt slow-roasts some beef to have a roast dinner later.

Here are some photos of our pets noses.  I was going for a nose-in-focus, the rest of the photo out of focus look.  My friend's cat died this week - he was very old - and she posted a photo online of his paw print.  It made me want to document the details of the cats, when usually it is the whole cat in each photo I take.  Their noses are my favourite part of Sooty and Snowball.  Snowball's pink nose, with it's gorgeous line down to his mouth is so cute.  And Sooty; every time I go to give him a kiss on the head, he looks up at me and we bump noses instead.  He always gives me a lovely meow too and I just love it.  So, you're probably thinking that i'm a very strange person by now, but anyway, there we are... cat noses.