Sam Sunday 18: In which life is mean to me in 2013

I am feeling sorry for myself today.  I am supposed to be in London on a mini-break with my husband for his birthday this weekend but the online we company we booked it through took my money but then didn't actually inform the hotel we were going or you know, make a booking.  Luckily we phoned to confirm our reservation before leaving yesterday, or we would have turned up to the news that the hotel had no record of us and that they had no vacancies.  Of course, the online company doesn't have a telephone number so I will have to wait days for my complaining email to be answered and my money to be returned (which it will be!).

I know it's not the biggest deal, because I will get my money back, but it's something we've been looking forward to for a long time.  Life hasn't been kind to us so far in 2013 and lets just say we really needed the break.  It feels like everything I do at the moment just isn't working out.  Since the beginning of the year, the following has happened:

• We lost the house we wanted to buy only three days before we were supposed to exchange contracts.  This was after spending six months going through all of the paperwork and lots of money on searches and solicitors fees.
• Luckily we did manage to find another house pretty quickly but this time things went wrong on the solicitors side.  They made so many mistakes that we almost lost this house too.  If things had gone on for even one day longer, we would have been homeless.  The home buying process wasn't a joy, to say the least.
• There are things going on at work that I am not allowed to write about but which have increased my work-load and stress-load dramatically.  
• My Dad had a health scare.  Thankfully, he is OK now.

There are other issues too, things that I wouldn't mind my blogging buddies knowing about but don't want to put on the internet in case random people that know me come across this blog!  I know that I am lucky because I have a great relationship with my husband and a supportive family, but life feels like one thing after another going wrong at the moment.

The combination of all of these things caused a flare up of my health problem this week and I ended up having to take some time off work.  I am feeling better this weekend but a bit down in the dumps.  I'm hoping that the second half of 2013 will be better than the first, and that we can get some good news soon and that the little things can start going right, instead of wrong.

The plus side of our weekend away falling through was that I was able to get a lot of reading done.  This week, I have finished three books, all of which were excellent:

  

Review posted:

The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin