Gifted?

It's been a pretty hectic few days again this week, what with having various "trades" come to the house to give quotes for work. I decided, that depending on the quotes, I would have all the electrics done, the second bathroom installed (I've given up on the other guy) and the upstairs hall and top bedroom redecorated - the top bedroom being where the electrical fire was in December. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about the bit where the carpet was burned but my brain just doesn't have the bandwidth for that at the moment! I think I mentioned in my previous post that the Bangladeshi guy had come back with a quote for the electricals of €9,400 - which shocked me - but then I haven't had electrical work done in years. His two brothers then came back with a total quote of €3,200 for both installing the second bathroom and the painting and decorating work I want doing. However, the French electrician who showed up first got hold of me to say that he was having trouble getting his quote through, but when it finally arrived it came in at €4,600 - which is a helluva big difference from the €9,400 quote! So I accepted the French electrician's quote and the Bangldeshi brothers' quote for everything except the electrical work and let their electrician brother know why - that he was just too expensive! And that was when he suggested that "maybe we can come to some arrangement"! Well that only pissed me off even more because that was when I knew he was obviously taking the piss - either taking advantage of a woman alone or just the fact that I obviously didn't know anything about the cost of trades! I did have Jordan take a look at the quote for the plumbing work and he said it looked fair to him, so that's where I stand right now, with the electrician coming on Tuesday to install all the new plugs, light switches and an electric radiator, and then coming back whenever the new electric panel/box(?) shows up. After that it'll be lining up the plumber, the decorator and the tiler, on top of baby-sitting duties etc., so it will very definitely be a busy few days/weeks. Still, if I don't drop from the exhaustion of shifting stuff out their way, it will be a means of getting the entire house cleaned from top to bottom after they leave!

Mind you, the Bangladeshi brothers asked if I would be interested in giving them English lessons (??) but I told them that I'm not a teacher by nature and don't have the time in any case. But what a cheek - or was it? Am I just being too sensitive? And talking of being too sensitive, before Christmas B, from sewing club, was asking if anyone knew where to get a military-style uniform for a five year old as her little grandson was army-mad. I told her to look on Amazon as you can get pretty much anything there but she told me she wouldn't go on Amazon because she would be afraid to put her credit card into their system. But when she did indeed find something she liked she asked me if I would order it for her! It strikes me as somewhat odd that she doesn't mind me putting my credit card into the system though. In any case, I ordered it for her before Christmas and she paid me back immediately, so no problem there. But then this week she asked me if I would order her a trolley on wheels for her to tote around her sewing machine, plus all the attendant gear that goes with it. Well this cost around €100 and the client would have to be present to sign for it, so I had to ask her for her home address and told her that I didn't want it delivered to my address because it was a huge parcel and I wouldn't be home on that day in any case (baby-sitting duties)! I don't know though, am I just being too sensitive about this because while I know she will pay me back, I also don't want to get into the habit of being her P.O. box when she isn't a little old lady (she's six years younger than me) and has three adult children of her own who could do it for her! I don't know, maybe I am just having a bad few days!

I'd had a sore throat for about a week and was feeling pretty tired, but even though I'd been gargling with warm salt water, it didn't seem to be going away, so I stopped in at the chemist's and she asked me if I was allergic or averse to essential oils. I told her not that I was aware of, and blow me but within about two days that sore throat was gone. I just love what I would call natural medicine or "old wives' remedies", so I'm always willing to give them a shot, and even happier when they seem to work! Talking of which, if One Family happens to read this, you were asking about vitamins etc. and when I left a comment on your blog I forgot to mention the wonderful Dr. Eric Berg on Youtube. His videos aren't very long at all but he seems to have made nutrition and natural remedies his speciality, so you might enjoy checking him out! I also seem to wake up every morning with a stuffed up nose, even though I don't have the heating on in the bedroom, so today I decided to hell with everything that I could/should be doing and took myself off down to the lake at Passy for a walk. The weather was wonderful and listening to a good book on my walk and then sitting there afterwards with homemade cake and a flask of tea has got to be my idea of (cheap) heaven - and of course, no more stuffy nose!

In other news, on one of the private FB groups I follow a few of the members have been saying that they swear some of the communcations received from their other halves (usually in the case of an adversarial divorce) seem to have been written by AI. So now these same people are raving about Chatgpt's Brenda and Frank feature, which allows you to feed someone's incoming correspondence into it and it analyses the "real" meaning behind the often pleasant words. You can, of course, also run your own correspondence through it and "Brenda and Frank" give their thoughts on it, help you to tone it down or make it more succint, whatever you choose! So while I have my doubts about some of the nefarious uses for AI, I can see, conversely, that it could on occasion be very useful indeed!

And finally, on Friday I looked after Charlie for about eight hours and while he is absolutely adorable, god he wears me out. He's an intelligent little thing (you can see Jen, in particular, spends ages with him) and when one time he asked me how to do something and I said I didn't know, he said "not to worry Nanny, there's always a solution"! Yikes! Around 5 o'clock we walked down to the daycare to pick Elynn up and since his feet are too small for the special slippers you have to wear inside and I had my giant clodhopper snow boots on, I took both of our boots off and we went in in our socks. The new lady didn't recognize me so I had Elynn in my arms while trying to wriggle my ID out of my bag, then was quite flustered trying to dress Elynn in her outdoor clothes, put mine and Charlie's boots back on without dropping Elynn and making sure the stroller didn't blow away in the wind. There's got to be a more rational way of doing all this (I was a sweaty mess by the time we made it home) and Jordan said there was, he just waited till Jen got home to keep Charlie before he went to pick Elynn up! While we were at daycare two of the older ladies recognized Charlie and asked how he was, and how he was getting on at school, so he told them that he liked it very much but that he would soon be finished with it and be going to work with his dad to help him in his plumbing job! They (like me) roared laughing, but in the end I think they were pretty mean. I mean, what if the kid really is gifted huh?