Other What Makes Your Life, Meh?

Muck spreading.

That time of year, innit: starting to get sunnier, the shorts are well and truly out, and I can start putting washing out on the line, washing the car, washing the long-neglected bike, and so on.

And it’s utterly reeked of **** all week.

 

I've lived in rural Somerset most of my life, the annual smell is something I got used to a long time ago. The smell of muck spreading is preferable to that of urban exhaust fumes. When there is high pressure and little or no wind, the stench of fumes in Taunton is foul and, it's a tiny place, compared to Cardiff.

Of course, when it comes down to it, it's just a matter of what you are used to. To me, the smells of the countryside and farming, are a very small price to pay for the pleasures of living on the edge of a small village.

 

I’m used to it, of course - I’ve always live relatively rurally, and I don’t live anywhere near the city centre now.

But that doesn't mean I have to like the fact that my clothes come in off the line having absorbed a faint but persistent reek of ****

 

Currently renting on a farm.

Can't wait to find a house to buy, it's not just the smell (and I grew up in farming country so I'm used to it) but it's full on on a farm.

It's the flies though. The flies that hang around cows. They're a different breed, hundreds of them and they just want to nip. They take effort to squash as well.

Can't hang washing or really go out on a sunny day.

Yeah, continually house hunting...

 

Been getting the bike back up & running. Washed it thoroughly the other day, swapped in a new battery, topped up the tyres, checked all the fluids, and just took it out to give it some fresh fuel and stretch its legs a bit.

I haven’t been on it in nearly a year, and I’ve missed it a lot. A hell of a lot.

And I’m mentioning it in this thread because I said that if we got a new car I would sell it. And we got a new car in July last year.

It was a question of upkeep & maintenance. It’s an old bike now (2011), and corrosion is just going to be more and more of a problem; the front forks are corroded almost to the point of abrading the seals, and god knows how bad it is underneath.

I didn’t want to sell it in the first place, I really didn’t want to sell it after washing it, and now I’ve literally just done 60-odd miles, I absolutely definitely do not want to sell it. It’s not just not having any motorbike, I absolutely love this bike.

And that means I need to have a quite uncomfortable conversation with my other half about it.

 

Dons, the little Devil on your shoulder attire ...... to sell it you'll have to do those bits you mentioned and tart it by the time that is done it'll be even better, why would you sell it and let someone else have it in that state to enjoy, keep it, you deserve it at least for the summer, I mean its peak motorbike time right now, suns out and temps not too high

 

Just found out that my son's ex girlfriend from 7 years ago has died...at 25
Engaged to long term boyfriend with 1yr old baby, she died from nut allergy anaphylactic shock, such a tragedy

 

I split the back of my shorts this morning when I squatted down to tie my boot laces... It's 24 degrees today and I split my only shorts...

Id say the gym is paying off but I can't lie to myself

 

It is worth it, I’m 61, overweight and was very unfit. I started going to the gym about 2 months ago and, I’m already stronger, a bit fitter and, together with eating less, losing a little of the lard. Keep going and you WILL feel better for it.

 

It's Friday (yay) and I am really not feeling any of it. Still got another 3 hours to go in the office and it has felt like a very long week.

On top of that, my lower legs are restless again and my knee feels like someone is stabbing the joint with a needle, but hey, not too long to go I suppose and a long weekend to look forward to, even if my wife is going to be working all 2 days of it...

 

Seeing two young idiots in a shitty car smoking at the petrol station.

 

If they had caused an explosion, they would have earned their Darwin Awards.

 

If that’s osteoarthritis and restless leg syndrome, welcome to the club!

 

Doing up the garden because most of the grass areas are rubbish, so I’m replacing it with stone/patio slabs. I jumped into it two-footed with the weather turning, but now I’m about 40% in and honestly regret starting it at all. We are making progress, but it’s painfully slow.

Add in a 15-week-old puppy, and even with proper barricading to keep a safe work area (and stop him eating something he shouldn’t), he’s a menace and will do anything to get my attention — including ripping up the small patch of grass I actually want to keep. That means I’m either stopping every 15 seconds or putting him inside for a nap… which lasts about an hour before he’s back up and ready to cause chaos again.

I even took the day off yesterday to make a proper push at it. We’d already booked the dog walker, so I kept that in to give myself a bit more time, and while it helped, we still didn’t get that much further forward.

We’ve also got this massive mound of earth from digging everything out. I’ve built one planter that’s taken a good chunk of it — it’s not great quality and pretty clay-heavy, but it’s hidden in the base, so really I’m just passing that problem on to whoever buys the house one day if they don’t like my planters. Realistically we need one or two more to absorb the rest — and to be fair, the garden has no plants at the moment, so they’d probably balance it out nicely.

Then the wife adds:
Her: “Do we really need more planters? It’s going to cost money.”
Me: “What else are we doing with all that earth? Because getting rid of it will cost a fortune anyway.”
Her: “Can’t it just go to the dump?”
Me, completely straight-faced: “Yeah… the 3 tonnes of earth… in the boot of my BMW 3 Series?”
Her, also straight-faced: “Well yeah… how else would it go?”

She’s also in this mad rush, which usually means she cuts corners even when you tell her 20x to do something for a very specific reason. Example, I said to make sure the liner went right down into the base and corners of the planter so the wood takes the load, not the liner. So she whacked it in, stapled it, and filled it. Came out later that evening — my side looking perfectly fine, her side… the liner had basically ripped out because it wasn’t touching the base, so all the weight of the soil just pulled it straight through the staples. Probably something I can botch around or its going to take twice the time to redo had I just done it myself...

I’m just holding onto this vision of it being done, pint in hand and the pup settling down into some sort of normality, but right now it feels a million miles away. Weekend’s coming up too, and it looks like rain, so not sure I’ll get much done there either....

 

@DeadP1xels Take a photo of the extra soil and post it to Facebook marketplace “free topsoil collection only no delivery first come first serve”.

 

My lower legs tend to get restless (especially the left one) when I get a combination of tired and low (for me) blood sugar, which would be about normal for anyone else (so used to being high over the years, still working on it). As for the knee pain, always had the odd bits and pieces, so no idea what that might be

 

Restless Leg is most likely later in the day, when you’re tired. It usually gets me in the last hour before going to bed. As for the knee pain, arthritis can irritate the nerves, causing the stabbing pain and, sometimes, pain which goes down your lower leg, I get both from time to time.

 

My other half gets really restless legs, it’s enough to stop her getting to sleep sometimes.

And also she sometimes kicks the crap out of me when she’s asleep…

 

Thankfully, my legs calm right down as soon as I am asleep, and yes it mostly happens at night, but the other day I just couldn't keep them still without things just getting too uncomfortable.