Category: Ramblings

Posted on by Vicki Verona

 

Picking it Back Up

I started this blog 5 years ago and didn’t do anything with it. But I came across it today and thought I’d try again.

The last couple of years have been rough to be honest. My husband was in hospital at the of 2024 and into the new year with pneumonia which found he has a problem with his heart. 1.5 years later and we’re facing him needing an ICD and the prospect of a heart transplant. He’d 44. 

Also in December 2024 the cat kept sneezing blood and we spent the first 6 months of 2025 taking him to Chemotherapy, so now he hates vets. But as of last month he does seem to be in remission. it might never go away but he’s healthy at the moment and we have him around still. 

I know you always expect to lose your cat, that they cannot be with you forever but looking at that alongside the possibility of losing Guy too – it’s all too much sometimes. I don’t know how I am meant to cope with losing either of them, let along both.

 

Work is .. well boring, I still love my job but so much as been automated or farmed out to Indians that I don’t really have a lot to do, and with the potential of be widowed down the line I need to start thinking about how to support myself and my sick cat and mortgage. So now I am looking at the future and other jobs and how to make more money without losing the perks I have now, like working from home.

 

Anyway, that’s my 2026 update. It’s my birthday next week so I have 2 weeks off. Guy has some things planned for us, as well as 2 hospital visits for him, but we are going to try and enjoy the time off together before we’re back at the grindstone of work again!

 

 

Muffins are not Doughnuts

Posted on by Vicki Verona

Muffins are not Doughnuts

What a weird week….

Supermarket shelves are pretty empty at the moment and I’m saying that as someone who shops online. Lots of things unavailable lots of digital shelves are empty and then when the shopping does arrive half the things are substituted with nonsensical replacements. Are blueberry muffins equal to jam doughnuts? Not a chance mate. Did I accept them from the Sainsburys deliver driver even though they are more money and wouldn’t feature in my top 10? Well of course I still have a sweet tooth after all! 

And just to point out in case you have any doubts … its not ‘pingdemic’ (groan) it’s Brexit,. Same as prices going up and everything else that’s happening alongside Covid. Yes some is Covid, but let’s be real, Brexit is going to continue fucking us for a long time to come.

The  valuation on the house we were looking to buy came back from the mortgage lender at a hefty 15k less than the offer price (this is after the current occupants refused to go lower then said offer) so they won’t lend us the full amount we asked to borrow. So now I am waiting to see, will then come down to the valuation price or are we going to try and find another mortgage lender and hope they value the house higher. I knew there was a lot of crap to deal with in buying a house but this is one of the things I did not expect and obsess over endlessly. Just goes to show that you do need to obsess over every detail or you get caught in between greed and sensible logic!

So now thats being disputed and we are in limbo waiting to see ….. something!

Is it working yet?

Posted on by Vicki Verona

Is it Working Yet?

 

Well is it?

For some reason setting up a blog site is a whole lot harder than I expected it to be. I am cheating and using a plugin to WordPress that make nice blocks of content and allows some nice customisation but can I get the blog section I want to work …. no! 
I thought about getting a new template, maybe that will help, but I’ve spent a lot of time on this and I really like what I’ve done. It’s super colourful and bold and yes maybe pushing it close to the line of being nice vs god awful but dammit I don’t want to change it now! 

So here is my 2nd post, not because I have anything to say but because i needed more content to work with and what better way to generate that then to bitch about the problem within in the problem!

 

The Beginning …. cos everything needs to start somewhere

Posted on by Vicki Verona

The Beginning …. cos everything needs to start somewhere

Welcome

Today I decided that I would start a blog.

Why?

I don’t really have a good answer. I have my art site and another site which is kind of being used for in character Hunt a Killer posts, but I also have this site that I decided should be used. But for what? Yea again I don’t know. I figure anything vaguely interesting, or at least anything that I can be bothered to put into words! 

Right now we are in the middle .. ish … of the COVID-19 pandemic. I and my husband, Guy, are vulnerable so for almost 18 months we have barley left the house. It has been easy to do and hard and boring and long and really frelling quick! 

We have made an offer on a house, but we don’t know how long its going to take to complete, when we can move and so we haven’t really DONE anything to prepare. There is one packed box and a house that we’ve basically stopped bothering with as we won’t be here ‘much longer’. We’ve talked about everything we need to buy, but not bought a thing, we’ve even planned the cat run to allow Jenson, our grey tabby tom, to go outside straight away while giving him time to acclimatise to the new area. I’m scared – we are moving out of Cambridge to a rather small area 45 mins away – but also it doesn’t feel like anything is happening so it’s easy to push it all down! 

Ultimately this first post is one written in limbo, awaiting something or nothing but definitely something…. right?