rabbitstew

Kids are good and bad. Initially its hard work. You get up every 2 hours in the night to change a screaming babies nappy & feed them when they are a baby so you have hardly any sleep then have to go to work the next day. 50% of the time after feeding they will they chuck their guts up over you. Then when they arnt doing any of that they just sleep - so it gives you plenty of time to get on with jobs around the house or just pass out with exhaustion. You will face the most horrendous poo & sick ever and it goes everywhere. Then, once they get about 12->18 months old it all changes. Sure they still create horrendous poo`s and occasionally sick everywhere, but they become their own little characters so you do get something back and they start to become fun. When they start to talk it gets even better, but then you have the mad temper tantrums and screaming/shouting if they dont get their way etc so it kind of evens out. As others have said, you cant go on holiday or out for a night with your mates or anything without either without getting permission from the other half that shes okay looking after the kid, or arranging babysitters. Mealtimes are out of the window as you just cant sit and eat with a kid, as they will throw food around and once finished will just want to run off and play. So you end up hoovering your dinner down as quick as can be ready to end up chasing after them in a pub/restaurant. If you do get a holiday, then you end up not being able to walk around far as kids get tired, plus when its 6pm the kid is off to bed and your stuck in your holiday room watching X Factor as you cant leave the kid alone & go for a drink. When you do get a rare night alone, with the kid packed off to your folks for the night, you end up catching up on housework then so tired you just go to bed early. Also, dont forget to factor in, once your missus gets knocked up that means no action ever again. Apparently you cant do it once pregnant "in case it hurts the baby", then once its here she wont be in the mood and/or too tired after a busy day watching telly/eating cakes/sleeping. Once all is recovered and baby is virtually off to school she still wont want to do it as she doesnt like how she looks after putting on 6 stone of "baby weight". Someone else mentioned the cost. I think I worked out it was £1500 a year just on baby formula, I dread to think how many thousands on clothes, toys. The nursery furniture alone must have cost £1200. Plus then you have £600 per child per month for a childkeeper/nursery. Thats more than my mortgage. That all said, you do get to have some really fun moments with a kid and get to play with all their toys. It can help destress you and take your mind off all the bigger worries in life. I really dont know though how people have more than 1. I struggle to cope looking after just one, so god knows how people cope with 4 or 5.

you havent seen the bedroom. My side is spotless with all my clothes in the cupboard, she has 2 double wardrobes and yet her side is piled high with clothes all over the floor like some teenagers bedroom. I have left the littler trays before but they then get so full the cats decide its better to have a crap all over the new carpets I had fitted. Sometimes a crap can stay in the corner of the living room all day until I come in and its the first thing i smell so i move it before our little kid starts to play with it. Its as if she doesnt even notice it. And ive left the dishes before but the sink then gets so full that I am unable to wash my own dishes so i end up washing everything up in order to do my own. As its my own house & ive spent a fortune redoing it all with brand new everything, I believe it should remain looking in nice new condition. It only takes a quick wipe up or putting something away in order to keep on top of stuff. I have mentioned it all before to her, especially the lack of cleaning. But in her eyes the solution to that was rather than her do any cleaning, was to get a cleaner to come in once a week. Unfortunately she thinks a cleaner giving a quick "once over" for an hour a week is enough to clean an entire 4 bed house. I used to spend an hour alone cleaning the bathroom/toilets alone every Sunday morning. At least hopefully this makes the OP feel a bit better that things could be worse!

From my experience, children is the easy bit. Its the wife/girlfriend/other half and their pets which is the problem. Since I met my other half, I have one by one given up every single one of my hobbies as I just do not have any spare time to do them. I now do 3 times as many chores / daily house tasks as I had when I lived on my own as not only do I have to do all my own washing/cooking/cleaning but also clean up after her, plus all her pets, plus the kids. Take today for instance, and this is pretty much every single day off my life now.... I got up at 6am well before anyone else in the house. I stuck the washing machine on as it was full. I washed up the food plates & stuff the wife left over in the sink from last night (id already washed my stuff up the night before), I tidied the lounge as sweet wrappers, drink bottles, used tissues etc. left everywhere. Quickly hoovered around downstairs. Cleared out the litter trays, fed the animals, made my lunch, ironed my shirt, had a shower. Quickly checked work emails and made myself a cup of tea. I could then hear the little one waking up, so made his milk ready, got him up & dressed. Other half was still in bed. Take little one downstairs to allow the other half to "get ready". Washing machine now finished, so I sort clothes out, put dryer on. Make little one breakfast, make myself some. Play with little one for about 15mins. Clear litter trays out again as the animals have now had their morning dumps. One now throws up all over the floor so I clean that up. Other half now comes down stairs, so I go back up stairs, pick wet towels up off the bedroom floor and put on the radiators to dry, make the beds, tidy rubbish up off the floor which other half has left there, tidy little ones room up, then come down stairs again. Dryer is finished now so I sort clothes out and put them away whilst other half watches telly whilst playing on her phone. I then down my cup of tea which is now stone cold & leave for work, dropping the little one off at his childminder/nursery on the way. Ive been up 2 hours already and now have a 1hr 30min drive into work. At the other end of the day, its pretty similar, get home from work after another 1hr 30mins drive, clean out litter trays, tidy up all the new rubbish which seems to have appeared in the lounge during the day, wash up the new load of plates & stuff which have appeared in the washing up bowl whilst ive been at work. The clothes/towels which were left on the radiators during the day are now dry so I fold up them and put them away. Run bath for little one, get his milk ready, feed the animals their evening meal & let them outside to play. Put little one to bed and by now its rapidly approaching 8pm. Ive still got to make my own tea if I want anything to eat and so that maybe gives me 1hr to have a workout if I want to end up sitting down at 10pm for my evening meal, although by then im very often so shattered I just want to go to bed and sleep. Out of all that if I do a time/motion study, id guess only a small fraction is down to children, getting them up, dressed, fed and off to nursery doesnt take long. Compare all this with how it used to be.... id get up at 6.30am, have a workout for 1 hour, then make my breakfast & lunch, eat a relaxing breakfast and have a nice warm cup of tea, then drive to work. Get home from work at 6pm, have a workout for an hour, have a shower and then it would still only be 7.30pm and id have the whole evening ahead of me to go out with mates, play on xbox, watch a movie etc. Weekends id have so much free time I could spent all Sunday morning on the car, or out on the bike or playing football, whatever I wanted and still spend the rest of the weekend with my girlfriend. From what TT350 says, realistically the only way forward will be to end it. You can look back at the good old days of the relationship but things have changed and in my experience they wont go back even if both of you tried. In my situation I just dont know how the OH would cope looking after a kid plus a whole zoo of animals by herself if she cant look after them now, and my pride/stubbornness says that I made my bed so I must lie in it. Plus I dont want some other bloke hanging around my kid as a "dad figure". Maybe when they are older things can change.

I noticed this with the wifes insurance on her Kuga. I got a quote on a Monday, then when I got another quote on the wednesday the premium they quoted was miles less! Same company, same details! Mad.

I love how the main "solution" they seem to immediately give in the article is lets reduce the speed limit. From the looks of it, these people are not adhering to the 60mph limit, so they are hardly likely to suddenly start sticking to a 40mph limit.

Heading south on the M1 past luton at around 7.30am yesterday (10th March) Morning. Silver 350z coupe with what looked like an aftermarket exhaust on it. Private plate was something like... C** CJA

Any update yet? Or did the police lock you up after finding 60kilo`s in the car?

Im getting 6 meals at least a day in etc, and due to the amount of steps im doing running about the house etc i burn it all off. The other year I was getting up at 5.30am in order to get an hours workout in before work, but thats not ideal.

Still trying to workout but really struggling with lack of spare time atm. Im getting up at 6am just to get into work and dont get in the door until 7pm after which I have to put the little one to bed etc by which time it ends up its 8pm before I even can think about a workout. Managed to free up an hour on Saturday which was the only spare time I had all weekend and fitted in a shoulder workout. I am managing to fit 1 run in a week. 5.30am when its -3 degrees outside certainly helps you run quicker. Managed to knock 20 seconds a mile of my best 4 mile time this last week. In Jan made decent progress, but looking at the scales ive not put anything on in Feb and my weights are all stuck at the same as they were back in Dec. TBH im not expecting much of an increase or chance with the lack of workouts this last few weeks. Am hoping I can get some more free time over the next few weeks else I may as well just jack it all in.

Welcome. I thought it was my old 2007 HR Roadster for a minute as it looked identical. Different reg tho!

I thought you normally just mot & insure the car using the vin number, then pop down dvla office with mot and car details and they issue a reg number?

Personally id never buy a car in a colour I didnt like. Id rather walk & wait for one to come along in the condition & colour I wanted. When I bought my HR Roadster, I looked at a Midnight Blue one first and just hated the colour. Id have been happy with Azure Blue, Orange, Yellow or Grey. I didnt want Silver or Black as I didnt feel those colours looked as good on the roadster. The one I ended up with was Twilight Grey which is similar to the Gunmetal but for 2007 onwards cars.

Someone's been watching Essex Boys! Dont you mean Layer Cake?

Sometimes the dealers just try and cut their nose off to despite their face. One of the HR`s I saw, I offered the bloke a grand less than he wanted for a "quick sale". He laughed at me and wouldnt even entertain giving me 6 months road tax (250quid). I walked. I then noticed he couldnt shift the car and in the end he dropped about £2500 off the screen price before he got rid of it. With the 370z`s dropping in price you certainly would assume that the 350z prices would drop accordingly. 370z or 350z is very much a personal preference. I had a 3 day loan of a brand new 370z when my 350z HR was in for some work. Personally I preferred the looks of the HR over a 370z, performance wise, I didnt feel there was anything in it on the road. However, the 370z was definitely much nicer inside. The dash/steering wheel, plus the media centre were all miles better (imo) than the HR.

My thoughts exactly. Maybe theres a Henry or something stashed somewhere. Should provide a good weekends entertainment stripping the car down lol!

"Traffic police said six drivers were forced to brake and swerve to overtake the vehicle"??!! I hope they had words with those drivers also, as that sounds like those drivers were driving without due care if they had to do that!

Good luck. When I was looking for my HR, there were only a couple for sale within 100miles of my house. It seemed dealers knew how rare they were & like you say, priced them very strongly. One dealer refused to even drop a penny off the full screen price, and after much haggling the 2nd dealer threw in a new MOT & Service but that was all as they already had someone else ready to buy the car if I didnt buy it. Still, well worth it, the HR`s are cracking cars.

Brilliant!

Don't suppose you can cook as well? Strange you mention that, I actually do all the cooking as well!

Man this looks so wrong, even though im a marmite fan!

Oh dear. From my experience, best off selling your car now, cancelling that gym membership and saying goodbye to all your friends. Once you get married you`ll have no time for anything other than housework & cleaning. EDIT: Congratulations tho!

I am just down the road from Kettering and in 18 months of owning my 350z I could count on one hand the number of 350z/370z`s I saw around our area. On the other hand, youd see literally millions of Z4`s, Porsches and other similar cars.

Too right. I had the roof down on my zed nearly everytime I took it out, winter or not. If it was freezing then you could bung the heaters on and you`d soon be in a nice bubble of hot air.

I used to read a lot. Mainly autobiographies as I find it really interesting finding out how people got to where they are in life, and finding out a bit more about peoples characters/backgrounds. I just havent had the spare time recently to read much. But on my honeymoon the other year I actually managed to get through 8 books in 2 weeks as there wasnt anything else to do.

I nearly bought this jack last year, but in the end I got the Halfords low profile 2 tonne trolley jack. It was on offer for 1/2 price and worked out at around £25. Im pretty impressed with the Halfords one, seems really sturdy, pretty low as it manages to get under my 123d coupe which seems to sit lower than my 350z did. The handle rotates 180 degrees so you can jack it up from any angle which makes access easier. Ive just checked and it looks like the Halfords one is back upto full price at £50, but it might be worth keeping an eye on it, depending upon how desperate you are for one.