Thursday 30 July 2026: Tired…

I’m absolute rubbish at getting up early for anything. No matter the occasion or the reason, if I have to get up early, at some point it wipes me out. This week I’ve had to get up early twice on the trot. Next week I have to get up early four times on the trot. I shall be a total wreck by the end of next week!

We were up early because we were expecting the window fitters. They’d already fitted our lovely new windows the day before, but they were coming back to fit the new front door. Of course, I use the term ‘front door’ loosely, because it’s actually a side door. But it’s our main and only entrance door and I suppose they’re still called front doors.

Fifteen minutes before they were supposed to turn up we started to get up, only to see they were already here! Do people not sleep at night? Fortunately, the poet was in a better state of endressment than I was as he had to go to work. So he went to move his car to let them get on the drive and he did all the meet and greet stuff while I carried on getting up.

They thought they’d be here for three hours, but they were here for four, by which time the poet had indeed gone off to work. They carted away as much rubbish from the old windows as they could fit in their van but left the wooden framed glass window parts propped against the fence alongside the drive, saying they’d be back today either first thing in the morning, 7:30am (thank goodness the poet will still be here then too!), or later in the day. The window manufacturers also have to drop by at some point to repair a tiny little dink in one of the new frames. But I don’t have to get up for either of those as they don’t even need me to be here in order to gain access to what they want.

The windows are gorgeous. They seem to be much more sealed than the old ones. It’s quieter, and it feels as though we’re in a bit of a vacuum. I love the new front door too. I’m less in love with the handles, which I thought came with the door but they could have been changed if we’d asked. But the colour, a very pale duck egg blue, is really nice, and so different to all the pale greens everyone seems to be going with at the moment, or the charcoal blacks. I think the handles may grow on me. Everyone else loves them.

So people visiting know where the front door is, I think we may put a couple of pots outside, filled with geraniums in the summer and pansies in the winter. A pair of narrow pots will also help guide us when we’re reversing onto the drive as if we get too close to the house we may take out some of the drainage pipes.

So that’s us pretty much weather tight. The roof has been repaired, the chimney pot has been capped, the car port that collected flies has been taken down, the window and door shutters that made the tiny bungalow feel a bit like Fort Knox have been taken away, and now we have A energy-rated double-glazed windows and a solid secure front door. And even though the ‘front’ door *is* solid, the hall is so much brighter and feels a lot bigger.

Our new bedroom furniture has been assembled. The garden is being levelled and turfed next week. The week after, the bedroom, the inner hall and possibly the living room are being decorated. I think I’ve seen the office furniture that will fit us both in nicely. When we get a new shed, the old shed is being emptied ahead of demolition. And we’re getting a new bathroom in October. We may also have the joiner lined up to replace the interior doors and the loft hatch.

The money is already pegged for all of the above, with some left over for contingencies. Once the bathroom is done and paid for, I think we’ll start saving towards getting the garage conversion done as that’s where the poet is having his music studio, where he might also do a bit of art. He’ll have a small desk in the office with me, for when he’s working at home; I think I’m getting a little settee in the studio so I can go and read while he’s working in there.

Then way, way, way in the future, we’ll look at built-in furniture in the lounge. We were also considering extending the house a little at the front, to make the kitchen bigger, add a porch, move the ‘front door’, and possibly install a small cloakroom with toilet and basin. But that idea has been put on ice for now.

So we’ve done a lot, and we still have a lot to do. It would also be nice to have a single room finished, which unfortunately won’t happen until the doors have been replaced.

But oh, after the window fitters went and I’d tidied up and vacuumed, I felt really tired. And hungry. In fact, I had a bad case of the nibbles all day and couldn’t stop grazing.

I did have jobs scheduled for the afternoon, and I had to summon up the energy and the motivation to haul my ass into the office to address those. The proofreading fell by the wayside, but the short story had to be submitted. So I did a quick proofread, read it out to the poet and the dog, made a handful of corrections, and then tried to fire it off…But the submission form had disappeared…

I checked the calendar on the publication’s website, and it still said the open call finished on 29 July, and I checked the entry on Duotrope, which said there were 24 hours left in which to submit. Nowhere could I see anything that suggested they cap or close submissions after a certain cut-off. So I located their email address and their BlueSky and I sent off queries to both.

I was so disappointed after forcing myself to write this blummin story and get it finished on time…But in between me contacting them and writing this, they’d replied on BlueSky and told me to go ahead and email it to them. First, I had to format it to their preferred format, but I sent it off on its merry little way…

The story isn’t scary enough, in my opinion, I got the subject wrong on both emails, and I was technically late (the form vanished). But I wrote it as an exercise to see if I could (a) write a cosy folk horror story, and (b) write it in a week and get it sent off. Well, I did both of those. Objectives achieved.

But hey, I wrote another story! Yay!

At least no one’s coming today who needs letting in or cups of tea made or educating about leaving the gate open when there’s a puppy running around. Hopefully I’ll get to catch up on some work.

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