Wish me luck update

3 pairs of jeans now have patched right side front pockets. 

It only took 5 1/2 hrs of my life and they are not the tidiest pockets sewn by any stretch of the imagination but I have made sure the stitching is study if nothing else. 

Hubby is happy and that is all that matters. 

That and I do feel a little proud of myself for persevering with something I was scared of. 

Next steps: save up for a sewing machine and take lessons from my mum on how to use it..... 

Wish me luck!

First of all I would like the manufacturers of Clonodine for making the smallest pills imaginable and the hardest blister pack to go with them. My bloodied thumb would like to thank you also.

Today is my first attempt to put a patch on my husband's pockets. His keys and coins wear the inside of his pockets away. Up until now I have relied on my mum and his mum to sew them up. Yes, I know I'm 42 and I should be able to do it myself but I am useless at sewing. 

I am old enough to have had home economics classes in school which included cooking and sewing classes. I was that useless at sewing, so useless that the teacher separated me from the rest of the class thinking I was just messing around. That was around the time I was attempting to hem a square and I finished the class 6 months later still trying to hem a piece of square material properly. Everyone else was making peg bags. My teacher told my mum and dad she despaired of me. Needless to say I have remained useless. 

I can just about sew on a button and hem a pair of trousers with the stuff you iron into the hem (badly). 

I have decided I would quite like to make a patchwork quilt. Which requires the ability to.....yes, you guessed it, hem and join pieces of square material together. So I need to practice. Yes, I am aware that really I should desire to be able to patch my husbands jeans pockets more than make a quilt but I am more scared of putting a patch on a piece of existing material than attempt to hem a square. 

So this morning I am going to attempt my first patch. Wish me luck. 

What I learned this week

Firstly work gets in the way of blogging!

It has been another busy week of meeting myself coming backwards and one of those where you feel like you haven't really achieved anything - do you know what I mean?

I spent the weekend house and dog sitting for my brother and his fiance and as Mutley, their 16 week old chocolate lab was determined to get into all sorts of mischief I had to have eyes in the back of my head so I didn't get the accounts finished.  So that is this weeks job but after that they are done because the football club is closing down - it says a lot when I am not sorry to say 'YAY' to that news.



Do his eyes make him look a bit mad to you......?

It was fun to roll around the floor playing with Mutley though. He already has more strength than is to be believed - he is going to be a huge dog!

Anyway - lessons this week:

• Standing on an uneven surface at the refuse tip results in this:

Why do bad scrapes always sting more than a straight forward cut?

• Which looks like this the following day (excuse the flab):

Rocking some bingo wings there Ribena!

• So what is the lesson you say?  Don't fall in an area where your arm is going to go down this TINY gap scraping itself along these broken tiles, that shouldn't be there.

Really?  What is that stuff on the left centre of the photo just before the post?! OMG!

•  Mostly importantly; I am so lucky to have gotten away with only that injury and a stiff shoulder and
• when the injury isn't bad enough for the Accident and Emergency Department and the medical walk-in centres are rammed the best place to go to so that you can get cleaned up is your mums

So what other random lessons are there this week?

• Hubby is becoming far too used to me playing taxi to get him to and from work;
• I am too soft especially as said taxi service adds over an hour to my working day;
• SIMS 4 is addictive;
• Oh yes, SIMS 4 addiction means I haven't really grown up;
• There is approximately 99% less dog hair in the house now that the Fredster has moved out to look after his mummy, Beautiful B;
• I have more 'proper' conversations with Beautiful B now that she has moved out and misses me;
• I really enjoy not having to moan at Beautiful B for not completing her chores;
• I still haven't transformed her bedroom into my office but the sofa bed has arrived and it is scrummy;
• My hair apparently suits me more if it is curled - if only I knew how to do that myself instead of relying on a hairdresser;
• and I knew this already but being so busy means I miss catching up with my best friends!

So what did you guys learn this week?

 
Usual rules apply - see below. I would love to hear from you if you also leave comments on my blog.To join in Julie's What I Learned This Week carnival, simply follow these steps:

1. Any time this week, publish your What I Learned This Week post on your blog and comment on my blog hyper linking to your blog.

2. Then go and visit Julie’s blog at From Inmates to Playdates, find her latest “What I learned this week” and link up with the Mr. Linky form at the bottom of the post. Please put the link to your POST, not the front page of your blog.

3. Then visit the other participants and see what they learned this week.

 

This Human of Worth - Brittany Herself

I read a lot of blogs, probably less than other bloggers do, but none the less I have a list of my favourites.  I found Brittany maybe 18 months or so and I not only love the way she writes but also the topics that she choses to write about.  She is a much better blogger than I will ever be.  Her blog Brittany Herself can be found here.

Today I read Brittany's post and was so very touched by it.  Everything she said in it hit a nerve and it was like she was reading my mind.  She has written a blog post that should go viral because of it's importance and because it has the capacity to help others undertsand how overweight people feel.

This topic has always been important to be me because my weight has yo-yo'ed for years.  I have been super thin (though could not see that at the time - numpty), thin, overweight, and obese.  Now I would be categorised as morbidly obese.  I am the biggest I have ever been and I hate myself for it and yet I continue to eat.

Half of the problem is that I seem to be an all or nothing person when it comes to weight loss.  When I lose a lot it is because I have flipped a switch, a switch that determines that I will succeed at weight loss.  The first time I lost a lot of weight was after divorcing my first husband; I went from 14 stone 6 to 9 stone 2 and now I can look at the few photos I have and think that I looked amazing; such a pity I did not see it at the time.  I put that weight back on....and more.

I lost weight again and met my second husband but my weight ballooned again during our marriage; he controlled what he ate and drank and I used to sneak food and hide Coca Cola in the wardrobes as a way of defying him.

I lost weight again during the divorce and met my now husband.  He met me thin, he saw me thinner, he saw me gain weight and eventually I reached 16 stone 8 and I hated myself.  Hubby told me every day he loved me (and he still does) but I couldn't see why.  I flipped that switch and dropped 79 lbs and I felt amazing!  I knew I would look great for our wedding.  Yet by the time our wedding arrived i weighed near to 13 stone.  Now you can add over 5 stone on top of that; I hate myself and yet I still eat.

So yes, Brittany's post is important.  Because people only see the exterior and yet they form their opinion of that person on that exterior and they comment to others and make jokes and they do not see that an overweight person may well already hate themselves.  More jokes and comments hurt more and so we eat more and so the everlasting circle continues.

I urge any one reading this blog - please visit Brittany Herself!  I commented because I felt compelled to; in the hope that one person who has formed opinions on an overweight person without getting to know them should at least be able to read how it makes people feel.

Teachers shouldn't have the right to strike.....

....or so says some mother according to the radio yesterday morning. 

 

 

Returning from dropping Hubby off at work yesterday morning I was listening to the news headlines purely because I was being too lazy to turn the radio channel over.  The one person who reads this blog regularly may know that I don't really like listening to the news as it annoys or upsets me (if she read it yesterday when I was having a rant) and yesterday's news was no exception.

 

Yesterday some of the public services were striking for a pay rise (any would do as we haven't had one for 3 out of 4 years and by pay rise I mean more than 1% which is way below the rate of inflation), to stop the erosion of the pension they work damn hard for, better work conditions etc etc.  Among them was the Government Department I work for and our eucation system.

 

Now I am not a teacher and have never been one primarily because they have to teach people like me when I was a kid and I was pretty good compared to many at that time.  Nowadays society norms have dictated that our children can get away with more and more bad behaviour without punishment.  By punishment I mean almost anything that constitutes more than a stern word.  In fact, suspension or even expulsion from school is considered to be something to be proud of these days.

 

As more and more people have been unable to find work and dare I say some quarters do not feel the need to work we find our children can and do sometimes grow up with those same values.  Little excuse, therefore, for the children to want to learn or have any respect for those wonderful people in our society who do want to stand in a room full of 30 or more of our kids and try to teach them not only the syllabus but also moral standards.

 

I have always said that teaching is a vocation; if you go into teaching for a just a wage you risk learning to eventually hate going to work.  I believe you have to love the work and more so, love making a difference even if it is just to one child.  That is not me and I more than admire anyone who wants to take such a hard and sometimes unthankful role in life as a career.

 

I get annoyed, therefore, when I hear people saying that teachers should not have the right to strike.  For a start; everyone should have a right to strike.  Like me, most of us cannot afford to but that is besides the point.  Without the recourse to strike what power does the workforce have? And trust me I am using the word 'power' in the loosest of terms.

 

Today a mother spoke to a local radio station explaining that she radio felt that she shouldn't be in a postion where she has to look after her child at home when they should be in school and her comment '...if they don't like the wage they should not have taken the job' had me ranting at the radio, you know, because she could obviously hear me telling her what a narrow minded individual I thought she was.

 

Now before anyone berates me for calling them narrow minded I am not using that as a blanket term for all that feel that teachers should not be allowed to strike, of course I am not.  Merely, that this woman was annoyed that she had to look after her child for more than 2 days a week.  She did not seem to have any understanding that it is her role to look after the child she gave birth to and that eachers are more than underpaid for the job they do let alone the difference they can and do make to an individuals life as well as societies. 

 

Without teachers we would be in a state of anarchy, we would not have most of the technicological, medical and all sorts of other ...ical advancements we do in most of the world.  Our children would not have been motivated to investigate and motivate, to want to strive to be better people, to be useful membera of society and all sorts of other wonderful things.  Yes, as parents we do a lot of that but teachers support us in teaching our children those morals and I don't know about you but I may have a more than average IQ but there is so much that I could not teach my child that I have relied on teachers to do.

 

Personally, I do not think our school system has enough powers to reprimand our children and I do think that as a society we are making teachers roles in helping to bring our children up more and more difficult.  And here is where I sound old:  25 years ago I would not have dared to speak to any of my teachers the way that children do now; I would not have dared to get to the stage where the school had to contact my parents about my behavioiur; I wanted to be a productive member of society when I grew up; the idea of not working as an adult was completely alien to me; I believed and still believe that you have to work for your money; I wanted to make my parents proud of my achievements; I was brought up to and did respect my teachers and even then I knew what they did for me and every other child was invaluable.  I also had enough respect for my parents to not want to disappoint them and I dare to think that a lot of parental powers have been stripped away too in the last 25 years.  Without the ability to discipline from both teachers and parents then what do the children of today have to be scared of?

 

I, unlike teachers, do not have to go to work and gain the respect of children so that they not only sit quietly but want to listen and learn from what I say; I do not have to put up with foul mouthed language, violence, disrespect, and some parents that are as abusive as their children, etc.  I know that if I had to cope with that each day that it would wear me down and chip away at my spirit and that eventually I would hate my job.  It takes a special person and one with a vocation to teach to be able to cope with what can be 5 difficult days out of 7.

 

Therefore, when someone says to me that a person should not have a right to strike because they have to take a day off to look after their own child while that teacher exercises their right my response is that if you only wanted to look after your child for two days a week then maybe you shouldn't have had children in the first place!  Those teachers provide us parents with a gift - the gift of knowledge and I would defy many people in society to be able to impart the same level of knowledge to their child.  Our role as parents is also to support the teachers in teaching our young.  If wages continue to stay as they are in the teaching arena it becomes harder to attract teachers, let alone good quality ones - then where will our children be?  Where will society be?

 

Rant over and I will say flippantly - this is why I do not listen to the news often....

 

 

 

 

 

Random facts of the day

As you know last week I shared some random facts from my daily calendar.  Here are this weeks selection:

• Though treatable today through medical advancements, impotence has been considered grounds for divorce in many different cultures for centuries
• Herman Mudgett, also known as Dr Henry Howard Holmes, was America's first serial killer.  He built a massive mansion in Chicago complete with trap doors, secret passageways, hidden staircases, fake walls, and rooms lined with asbestos that could be turned into gas chambers.  When caught in 1894 he confessed to 27 murders but researchers believed there could be more.
• In the US at least 7 fatalities and numerous severe injuries have been reported among bungee jumpers using a hot air balloon as a platform.  In 2 instances, no-one noticed the balloon lost altitute making the jump cord too long and the jumpers hit the ground.
• If you urinate when swimming in a South American river you might encouter the candiru, a tiny fish that will follow the stream of urine to its source, enter the body and flare its barbed fins requiring surgical removal.
• Bottled drinking water has been marketed as clearner and more pure than tap water but, in a recent study, a 1/3 of bottled water showed significant chemical or bacterial contamination.
• A 998 storm pelted Quebec in Canada with freezing rain and enveloped the city in a layer of cement-like ice, causing 30 deaths and weeks of electric power outages for millions of Canadians.

After reading these facts which, as you can see, are not light-hearted facts I have already decided to return to a funny daily calendar next year.

Not that I am.....

stressed or anything but this looks appealing right now!  Oh and let's not forget it is Tired Thursday.  Yes I have been travelling again and I am almost sure that I am still recovering from a big drinking session on Saturday for the Grand National horse race.  That is what aging does to you - be warned.  No longer can I spring out of bed at noon after sleeping off a hangover and look as spritely as I did the day before.

I have a procurement where different stakeholders will not compromise with a Commercial Board meeting at 4pm and not much of an idea what to do.  I do need to get something sorted today but it is very unlikely and that is just plain depressing. So the lack of a compromise and the digging in of heels makes me want to tear my hair out.  This is why I didn't have more than 1 child!

In addition, I support on another procurement which is MASSIVE and that is about seriously ramp up.  I have been asked to upskill another team member who is new to the team and when I read that request I almost choked on my pepsi max because I have almost as little experience as he has.  The blind leading the blind springs to mind

So today, I am not sure where to start as I seem to be chasing my tail and not really getting anywhere.  If nothing else, I know how Freddy feels when he chases his tail and achieves nothing.

So, I am going to take a leaf out of Rachel's book and make a list and try and stick to it, hoping to avoid anything else jumping the queue unexpectedly.

As an aside the fact that I work from home and Hubby is at home watching The Masters only makes me want to take a day off and spend it with him reading a really good book.

I really should stop going into WH Smith when at a train station because I always decide to 'window shop' books and come away having bought at least 1.  Yesterday I bought 2 and have read half of one on the journey home.   It is that good I want to lie in bed and read the rest.....

Well, thanks for your advice Rachel, given to me a long time ago, I am going to see if it works for me today and if not then I want coaching tips over cocktails on Friday night!

Can't quite put my finger on it

This last week or two I have been feeling somewhat strange, stranger than normal.  Kind of 'meh' some days and others, and more so lately, I feel as though something heavy is sat on my chest. I know this is anxiety and as I am already on two different medications that should help it, one of which is a by-product of medication diagnosed for something else they don't seem to be working so well.  Maybe I should stop taking all of my medications, every one of them and see if they are causing 'meh'....

 

'Meh' would be a good name for the diagnosis of a condition.  After all, more and more people are saying they feel 'meh', more so on facebook as that is a Smiley Face icon description.  If it was the name of a condition you could respond to a question asking you how you are by say 'I'm okay, just feeling a bit Meh today' and they will have no idea if you are referring to the condition or just feeling meh.

 

There is precedent for this kind of thing because it already work in general converstion.  People say they are going to kill someone when they have no intention of doing so or you hear 'I could murder a pint' when referring to the desire to drink alcohol and you cannot physically murder a pint of anything really can you?

 

You hear people say 'I have work coming out of my ears' or 'I have work up to my eyeballs.'  Neither of which is true.  It's physically impossible to have work coming out of your ears although the mental picture I have of it at the moment is quite amusing but lets face it, it would really hurt in reality and would not be funny at all.  

 

As for work up to my eyeballs; rarely seen although 20 years ago my place of work supplied 'pigeon racks'.  Essentially a set of 5 document holders held up on metal legs that was placed on your desk at work.  The files and paperwork were placed in the document holders so it was constantly in your eyeline.  A dual purpose in my mind; you cannot see anyone else's face to talk too and the pressure of the work constantly in front of your face provided the incentive to get it done.  We aren't tortured to that extent now, after all, ingenious people such as myself learnt to bend downwards and have a conversation with the person on the opposite desk through the legs of the rack.  Good riddance to the pigeon holders I say; bending down could have caused back injuries......

 

How about someone saying 'He is doing my head in'....?  That is more likely than the ability to murder a pint, after all it is physically possible for someone to do your head in by bashing you over the head with a baseball bat.  Unlikely though as many of us do not wish to spend the rest of our lives sharing a 6x10 space with another person.

 

I am conscious that many of my readers (see how I say that like there are lots when there are very few if any...) will have never heard these references, even those in other parts of the UK, as they may be regional in nature so forgive me as I am just rambling after all.

 

On another note; today is the 24th March and we woke up this morning to a frozen car!  Now what is that all about?  Does Jack Frost not know that spring is here and he should be hibernating?!  It is no wonder my dogs are trying to wrap themselves in tiny tiny balls of fluff.  The fire is roaring as my feet are freezing but it has a habit of blowing out on it's own lately. I will know when it does as my feet will start to freeze up rather than thaw. 

 

One of the problems with working at home out of your front room is that it is easy to get distracted as the world goes by.  So far this morning I have deduced that someone's drains are blocked and someone is having some work completed on their roof.

 

The problem with feeling 'meh' is that I do not have any energy or desire to do any work (it is my non-working day so I am not slacking as such) but I have to find the energy as I need to spend most of the day preparing evidence for my end of year report.  I am not one to sell myself; I go to work, do it as well as I can and then come home.  The need to have to use flowery language and buzz words to show what I do for the year is just 'not me' and I hate it.  Besides always having a good result in my end of year reports I wish I could opt out.  The need to get this work done is very important yet I cannot find the desire to do it at all.  I just want to put my PJs back on and snuggle up in bed with a good book and snooze as needed!

 

So far I have distracted myself with a stupid programme, an hour on a computer game and the blog.  I have wasted 3 hours and what for.  Just because I am feeling 'meh'.  Well, I had better get a 'shift on' and do it. 

 

What I learned this week tomorrow folks and I will try to make it more upbeat than my last 2 paragraphs!

 

Two ways in and out of Sheffield and one was closed

It sounds like the beginning of a joke, I know.  The hire company were supposed to deliver a car on Sunday evening except it never arrived.  Having no choice but to give my new manager a headache on my first week in the job I had to drive my own car to Sheffield which is pretty much against the rules.  At least I knew how to use the controls in my car and didn't have to worry about whether an automatic locking system was working or not.  

Yes, I would seriously have tried to work out if that was the case and I would hope that I would have remembered not to walk towards the car with the fob in my pocket wondering why the car was not locked when in fact it was until I started walking towards the car.  I don't overthink things at all, honestly!

Sheffield is over the hills and far away....literally; it's over the Pennines.  This means you have to drive over them trying to get the car to hug the side of the hill/mountain.  All very well when it is Summer but in Winter you tend to drive into a lot of fog.  And the world and his wife think it is safe to drive over them at 60 mph because that is the speed limit whether there be fog or not.  Except me.  

I plugged the iPhone into the car radio before I set off so I could listen to an audio book; shut up!  It's the only way I ensure I don't get sleepy on a long journey and I am sure the other motorists on the road were more than grateful for that.  Quite happy, I stopped at McD's for a spot of breakfast and then drove over the pennines.   I arrived at the outskirts of Sheffield to find a diversion.   Okay, no need to panic, I could ignore the sat nav and follow diversion signs and I did quite easily and was at the office safely by 10.30am.  It had taken me 4 hours instead of the expected 2 and half but that's my fault for setting off at 6.30am instead of some godforsaken time of the morning to miss the 7 mile tailback on the motorway that peak traffic creates anytime after 5.30am these days.

All went well in Sheffield, the hotel was gorgeous and the air conditioning blasted out lots of very warm air when I asked it to instead of the usual poor mans substitute. I stayed awake until stupid o'clock the first night almost giddy at the idea of no cooking, cleaning, washing etc. only to be away with the sandman by 8.30pm the following evening.  I was even sensible enough to set off at a reasonable time to travel home knowing that I had a diversion to follow to find my way back out of Sheffield.

Silly me; I forgot that it gets dark at 4pm these days and I stupidly did not take account of the ridiculous amount of traffic on the Sheffield roads at that time.  Not being able to find the diversion signs I drove the way sat nav directed me back to the road closure and doubled back following the diversion signs.  

Obviously, Sheffield council deemed that diversion signs are for people who live in Sheffield and not for people who live in what can be described as a reasonably small town that I lived in for 35 years and therefore know reasonably well.  The diversion signs were placed approximately every 4 miles apart and were of no help if you were in the right hand lane as they were placed on the left side of the road.  So I shook my fist at the world more than once or twice and may have had a slight panic attack at the idea of driving around Sheffield looking for a police station so they could direct me out of Sheffield before I decided to follow the signs for the MI motorway to the south - after all, surely there had to be a turn off for the M1 north? (Update: as my mother reminded me yesterday Sheffield is higher up the country than my home town so I did actually need to M1 South - doh).

Judging by the fact that the world and his wife were trying to follow that same road I deduced I had finally found the way I was looking for - it had only taken me 45 minutes.  I then sat in traffic creeping along for another 45 minutes but by that time I was quite happy listening to my audio book about the aquisition (from very shady and dangerous characters) and sale (to unsuspecting naive housewives) of fake handbags (have these people never heard of the downfall of legitimate businesses) and the murder and mayhem that ensued safe in the knowledge that I was not going to have to find an unsuspecting policeman to help me find my way back to those rolling hills I had driven over merely 2 days before.

Having found my way out of Sheffield I can only say that if what I drove down was a motorway then fine, but it didn't look like any motorway near my hometown.  Then again, I guess they cannot really plough a 6 lane motorway through the gorgeous pennines without some people throwing a fit or two.  

I didn't care that the speed limits were 60-70 miles per hour - it was pitch black and while I may not have been able to see the perilous drop which was now immediately to my left past that flimsy barrier I knew it was there, damn it.  So me and my car started the mechanical equivalent of the conga across the peninnes.

Suddenly, I noticed that my fuel gauge was getting lower and lower.  Okay, technically I already knew this was happening but the first flutterings of panic were starting.  I did have plenty of fuel to get me across the pennines so I could stop for petrol before I got to the motorway originally but remember I had driven aimlessly around Sheffield and then sat in idling traffic for 90 minutes.  Being a relatively new car I did not have the 8 years of experience I had with my previous car to know it would get me another 30 miles once the petrol guage started blinking at me begging for petrol.   

Breathing a sigh of relief I thought I was approaching the small village of Glossop only to rachet that panic up a bit more when we started climbing again. As much as they dared, my eyes flicked from the road to the dashboard like they had a nervous twitch.  Honestly, when I realised I was approaching Glossop and therefore that beaon of light otherwise known as a petrol station I actually sang out "Hallelujah" in the car.

From there the rest of the drive was a breeze and I could once again concentrate on just the road and the audio book; with a brief interlude at the same McD's I stopped at 2 days before to grab some McBites coupled with a side of a bump on the top of my head from the top of the door sill.

I know some of you are asking why I did not go by train and you would be right in wondering but bulky IT equipment does not bode well on a train nor can my cabbage hands cope with the weight of the equipment.  You can be rest assured, however, that next weeks journey (and the weekly/fortnightly ones thereafter) will be made by train.  I may be cold stood on a station platform but at least if I fall off the edge of a platform I only have 4 feet to fall instead of the hundreds me and my car would have over Snake Pass.

So you see, my first trip to visit my new team was not only interesting but eventful.

 

A week and counting

So, this is it guys!  One more week and I start my new role in commercials.  As much as this move has been forced on me, because let's face it when the doctor asks you if you still want to be using your hands in 10 years it's a bit of an eyeopener and one really can't be like an ostrich any longer.

 

It has come at the right time and as commercial teams go it is the best I could go to as they do the financial aspect for contracts such as financial evalutions so I can maintein my accounting professional development and therefore qualification.  I already have a commercials qualification and as you may well have guessed I have worked in commercials before.  It's unlikely that someone has a commercials qualification if they haven't worked in that arena before after all.  I know I like the work and so a forced move doesn't feel as bad as it could have done.

 

I have also been a burden to my current management team, one woman in particular and it has reflected on my mid-year report.  I could raise a grievance and it would be won without a doubt, after all, there is an Equality Law for people like me but as my new team has to liaise with my current team I really don't want to rock the boat and ruin a working relationship. 

 

I think because of the latter it has made the forced move that much more difficult to accept.  No-one wants to accept that their disability is dictating their career path.  No-one wants to admit the pain they are in, let alone want to stand out as 'different' in the workplace because emotions sometimes rule the way you are treated.  We struggle enough, both at work and home, and we don't need to have to feel like we are fighting a battle every single day in the workplace.  Trust me, it is bad enough being reminded of how painful and weak my hands are every time I attempt to open a bottle or sqeeze conditioner out of a bottle; I don't need reminding of it by my management chain let alone have the lack of understanding reflected in my report.

 

However, having said all of that the move to commercials is a light at the end of what has been a very long and painful tunnel.  I am still seeing a counsellor to try and learn how to accept the lack of control I feel but my new manager is the completely different end of the spectrum to my current manager and has already arranged for duplicate equipment to be placed in my second work place and for me to work my hours around the worst of the medication side-effects.

 

So the sun is shining, I am training my replacement at work and then I am off to drive into the sunset that is Sheffield for the first 3 days of my new role. 

 

Life at work is about to get better, I am about to be treated to doggie cuddles regularly throughout the days I will work from home and I will be at home at least 2 days of next week to check that my Beautiful B, who has an arm in a sling and is popping painkillers 4 times a day after an accident, isn't doing any activity that can make her shoulder injury worse.  The pretend nursing bit I wasn't expecting but on the upside I get daughter snuggles throughout the day too.  Bonus!

IT - the bane of my life

I used to laugh at my mum when I was younger - you may know what I mean; video players were new, cable and satellite TV were years away and VHS had just started replacing BETA Max players.

It's not that they scared your mum but more that they were electronic and that tended to be the husbands domain.  Unless it meant putting a video on to just to play a film mum was stuck as she needed my dad to put the timer on to record anything.  No matter how many times he showed her how to set the timer she couldn't or didn't care to remember.  Looking back on it now maybe she preferred to leave it to my dad as it reinforced how much he cared for her.

Now I look back and think I should never have laughed at my mum. Although I can set a planner quite happily that is about it. In today's world of sky and cable planners there is no need to set the TV timer to record programmes. I'm not much use if something goes wrong with them though which explains why I make a monthly payment to have the satellite company come out and fix it if it isn't easily fixable over the telephone line and some simple instructions!

However, when it comes to computers they are the bane of my life!  Both at work and home so that doesn't make for a lot of stress.......

I have the added problems of having to use voice activated equipment of which I need to spend some serious time getting familiar with the majority of its added features yet the word 'macros' sends fear through my bones. 

I can find my way around MS products quite well though should be able to utilise Excel formulas much better than I do seen as I am an accountant but that is unlikely now that medical advice is that I can't use a keyboard and mouse most of the time if I don't want the pain from RSI and the bulging disc to march on at a pace quicker than a greyhound chases a pretend rabbit!

The worst of it is when PC's and laptops go wrong or the Internet drops.  Having a PC, 2 laptops, an iPad and 2 iPhones in the house everyone looks to me when something goes wrong which is laughable because the first thing I want to do is drop to my knees, pull my hair out and force cocktail sticks under my fingernails!

If the Internet drops Hubby has got used to calling the broadband supplier for me as it is the only thing that will take me from peace and tranquility to tears and desperation in a matter of minutes.  Luckily Hubby knows this and my guess is that he would avoid my tears like his life depended on it. So he sorts it out for me and I am eternally grateful for his patience and understanding. 

When it comes to PC's no such luck.  I am the one to try and get them running faster or decide when it's time to find the money to buy a new one - or should I say wish for a new one.  Luckily Beautiful B now being of working age, and having the majority of her wage available because I was daft enough not to charge her the going rate for board, bought herself a new Apple laptop and is a gift from the gods if she is to be believed.

Hubby's laptop is annoying for him in that the battery no longer holds its charge but he never has it unplugged and only uses it to keep on top of sports results or to play online golf so....meh.  

I use the home PC to do accounts for 2 clubs as well as play the computer games that take my attention away from those accounts. It has been running slow for ages; Beautiful B moaned to me when Zoo Tycoon 2 wouldn't play. Since she installed that the PC has all but gone on strike. Having got to the stage that it takes 10 minutes to wake up, decide intermittently if it wants to shut down the Excel spreadsheet I'm working on, and insist on only allowing me to one one application at a time I decided it needed a vacation to the PC hospital before I lost my last nerve. 

All good you think. No.  Although I have it back cleaned up the hospital could not locate the MS Office key that I should know as Dell installed it for me when I bought it. Problem is I am going to have to locate the receipt and other documents to see if it is listed on there as I certainly wasn't provided with a disc. 

Now is the time to be grateful that my dad always told me to keep documents for 7 years. I knew there was a reason I have 3 or 4 box files of paper in the storage space under my bed.  Matter of haste required as I have accounts to do. If it is lost I can see where some of Beautiful B's board is going to this month!

What I need is one of these: 

To top it all for the past week I have been at my brothers who left me a brand new laptop to play with while he was on holiday. Awful, awful, awful.  Fast I admit but whether it is windows 7 or 8 I hate it. The sidebars are so annoying, popping up whenever they feel like it. When using blogger the zoom decides it wants to move up or down at will. I did wonder whether my belly was getting in the way of something  on the keyboard or maybe messing about with the mouse. Luckily not because I may have booked myself in for gastric band surgery at a rate of knots.  

So I'm glad that I didn't take up the PC shops offer to install Windows 7 on my PC for £99.  

If only I could get the iPad version of blogger to allow me to change the font, colour of the text and justify I wouldn't need to tidy my posts up on a laptop or PC. Maybe I should suggest it in the hope that a) lots of people are telling Blogger its needed, b) they are actually taking note of suggestions and c) they care.  

Of course I could move to a blogger site that allows me to do all of this on an iPad but the idea of moving my archives without losing them and working out how to get the dates of the post correct is terrifying.  Any chance you bloggers out there use such a site and can provide instructions on moving archives?

Grrrrrrrrr is for...............(and it's not a grissly bear!)

Friday I was back in the office having had a wonderful 4 days on leave and then 2 days in Newcastle.  91 emails isn't so bad and normally I can plough through them in a couple of hours, separating the wheat from the chaff quite happily.  I was happily doing this until I happened upon a weekly update email that everyone gets in the department I work in, including my 2 immediate bosses.

Highlighted on both the email and more so in the update itself was a note about 6 vacancies for qualified accountants at the grade above mine.  Normally I get quite excited about this and print off the said vacancy and spend an exorbitant amount of my free time at home writing competency examples for the application.

Except on this occasion I can't because the closing date is FRIDAY, as in the day I first found out about it, as in YESTERDAY. As work have very recently changed our performance framework I cannot tweak and use my previous competency examples so it was impossible to apply for the post in time.

To say that I was annoyed was a slight understatement and I banged off an email to both managers asking them if they would be so kind as to notify me of any future vacancies that are published while I am on leave.  As the application can be submitted on an internet site (as in not on our work intranet) I can make an application while on leave if I so wish.  It is not as if both managers did not know I was actively seeking promotion.

To her credit my line managers manager immediately called me and said she would note it for the future and although she did not specifically apologise it was very much implied and for that I have respect for her. 

Maybe I am expecting too much and maybe this would not happen in most other work places but I am a firm believer of treating people how you would want to be treated.  If I had staff (and I have had a lot in the past) I would know which of those wanted promotion and besides ensuring that their work was tailored to give them the best possible evidence and examples would actively let them know if a suitable vacancy arose that they could apply for.

Granted I was on leave but a quick text message does not hurt, offend or take 2 minutes to send.  This could just be a genuine oversight or a deeper seated (either realised or not) need to keep me on the team because there is NO succession planning or they want to develop me to take over my managers role should she leave - after all, she is also actively seeking promotion.

Either way; I am annoyed, upset and feel that their needs have been put above my development which goes against every part of my own manager/leader beliefs.  

There is no point staying angry and I will certainly be taking up the need to a) obtain a lower graded resource as I am being paid far too much for some of the work that I do and the resource I put into it detracts from my development and ability to do higher level strategic work and b) have some succession planning.

It is a good job I am not a grissly bear (and a good job my immediate line manager was not in the office) because I would have likely ripped someone's head off and how much trouble would that have gotten me into?
 
In the meantime, Hubby whisked me off to our favourite restaurant last night, Sapori, where we had our wedding reception to make sure I relaxed, sounded off and drank enough alcohol to help me put these feelings aside (somewhat) until next week.

As ever it was delicious.



 

An anticipated but nervous move

So you all know I twitter on about my manky hands and I may or may not have (because I have a brain made of mush and aliens) alluded to having special equipment at work.  I have a bulging disc at C5/C6 which gets lazy and leans against a nerve or two when it feels like it sending weird and not so wonderful pains down my arms and hands.  

Anyhoo, I have a specialist desk, chair, keyboard, mouse and voice activated equipment at work. The only problem is that I am a touch typist and can type faster than the voice activated equipment wants to work.  As for excel work, we the voice activated equipment may as well go on strike.  If it was an actual person it would be sacked for being about as useful as ice-cream in hell.  In a room with other people it just flat out sulks.

I am in a little room of my own which does get lonely but I have some wonderful photos of Beautiful B and Damon from The Vampire Diaries on the wall and a nice magnetic white board with fridge magnets on that say things such as "It's been Monday all week" and "Real women don't have hot flushes - they have power surges".  

These buildings are being closed and we are moving to an office which is open plan with very few cellular rooms.  This means I have to move to a room full of people and today I moved to a room full of people to prepare the voice activated equipment to pull up its socks, suck it up and just do it's job.  Maybe with more memory and better microphone and sound card but that is what this initial move is for.

Except I hate talking in a room full of people - it's embarrassing and that doesn't count the frustration I am going to feel when the voice activated equipment doesn't work as I want it to.  

I spend too much time typing, it is too tempting for me to type when busy, which at the moment is ALL THE TIME so being in a room sat next to my boss who is going to remind me to use the right equipment will be good for me.

I need to suck it up and get on with it and accept if it slows my productivity.  The pain I experience is affecting home life and that sucks.  I have had 6 inches chopped off my hair as I couldn't brush it after a shower, I use special equipment to chop vegetables, Hubby does the ironing because using the strength needed causes pain for days.  To top it off now I can't play my beloved computer games and do my cross-stitch which leave me the TV and reading.  I am hoping that using the voice-activated equipment as I should, even though it will make me slow (which I already know I will find so hard to swallow) will allow me to do more housework at home and be able to stitch again as well as play computer games.  

Time will tell.  In the meantime, until the rest of the people in this room learn to tune my voice out, I am off to annoy each and every single one of them while I lose my temper with the voice activated equipment.

Wish me luck......

Christmas - where it went wrong

Christmas and New Year were wonderful this year for the most part.  In other parts my scattiness and lack of attention to detail got in the way and so did the baby fluffer Abi!

Hubby and I house sat for my brother and his fiance this Christmas.  They took off for a helicopter ride above the Grand Canyon among other things for his 40th birthday.  I offered to look after their 2 dogs rather than see them in kennels - all before asking Hubby if it was okay.  The immediate "oooh, it is okay with you isn't it darling?" followed with 3-4 reasons why it was such a good idea rattled forth along with his laughter. 

We stayed in their house which gave Beautiful B and the BF, R a week on their own house sitting and dog caring at our house.

It took me almost a week to work out how to use their tumble dryer and I think I have shrunk an XXL polo shirt to a medium at best...

Getting spooked about the blinds being open when it is dark in the back garden and anyone could be looking in at me....after scaling a 10 foot brick wall.....meant shutting them and not checking whether the cord is sat underneath a glass ornament.  Quickly realised when it smashed.  Ebay is a wonderful thing even if the replacement did not arrive before my brother returned.

Getting told off by my brother and his fiance for ordering another one.  His reaction "I didn't like it anyway." Her reaction "It already had a crack in it honey." Not including the telling off for ordering a replacement.

Beautiful B and BF, R spending an evening with us and his car being a bit worse for wear when he tried to get out of the tight spot on the driveway that he was so impressed getting into on arrival.

The lack of a huge amount of cleaning in my house when I returned.  Oh yes, the floors were swept and mopped but Beautiful B either didn't realise or didn't care that I would see the state of the kitchen and the stairs; the latter of which looked like Fredster fluff had shred all of his hair on there on the last week.

And last but not least, lets not forget Abi - who having already chewed 3 holes in 3 different parts of a new leather suite decided to have a go at tinsel.  Bright blue tinsel all over the house on the day we returned.  Not content with that she went after the tree decoration hooks yesterday, taking the bag upstairs and scattering them all over the stairs and landing.  Something tells me she is fed up with her own chewy toys.

So all told, not much went wrong.  I am still trying to find the energy to get the house as clean as when I left it but procrastination keeps getting in the way.

KIV - this was written on 8th Jan, the day I made the resolution to stop procrastinating so in theory the house might be tidier now as long as I managed to get a huge chunk of the accounts done with time left over before getting on the train to go to an accountants conference today.

Always pack a spare

The problem with security doors that require a security pass to open automatically is that sometimes they just don't work no matter how many times you wave your pass in front of the sensor.....

Who knew I would want to get into work so desperately that I would wander aimlessly around the building until I found one of the 4 doors that provides access that works?!

But that is all besides the point....

Today I decided that I would wear stockings. With a pretty pattern no less.  I'm not a fan of tights mostly because I have a habit of putting holes in them each time I need to pull them up.  I rarely wear them mostly because I am lazy but also because I am a shortass....and so I spend a lot of the day straightening them up, more so when they are patterned. 

I did well on the way to work and walking into the office.  I thought I would straighten them up before I started my work day only to stick a hole in one right under the knee.  I've had them on for less than an hour! 

In future, I might just stay lazy....

I'll have the biggest slice

My sister has a habit of calling my mum and inviting herself to dinner.  Not a bone in my body is happy doing that - surely if my mum wanted me to come to dinner then she would invite me?  Even though she has said that we are welcome anytime as long as we give her a days notice it just feels wrong.  Shame really because I could enjoy my mum's cooking any time....

On the same day that I thought I had an appointment that day when it had been the day before, I found myself sat at work contemplating what to make for dinner when I really could not be bothered.  It took me 5 minutes to realise we had arranged to go round to mums for dinner.  Not scatty at all, really not....

My mum makes a mean homemade meat and potato pie.  She used to make it every Christmas Eve and the whole family would have it for supper before we went to bed to wait for Father Christmas - after I had tried opening the gifts and wrapping them back up again having found them in the cupboard earlier that month.  As much as I am seriously not a lover of pastry, especially on a pie the crust on this pie is by far the best I have ever tasted and regularly Beautiful B and I are arguing over who is getting the biggest piece.

Except this year I had Beautiful B's boyfriend R wading in telling me he was having the biggest piece!  Hubby just sat there taking it all in; not defending me at all!  As this argument occurs every time mum cooks it my dad took a measuring tape out yesterday to ensure we had equal amounts of pie crust - not that you can tell he is ex-army at all.

I sat opposite Hubby and despite giving the best impression of puss in boots from the Shrek movies he did not give me any of his crust - in fact, mum asked me if I was feeling okay so I guess the impression was nothing like what I was trying to convey.

I had initially asked for Jager Schnitzel but seen as Hubby doesn't like most sauces let alone the mushrooms in that sauce it was a bit unfair.  Mum explained that when we next go for dinner she will make Jager Schnitzel but make Hubby a small meat and potato pie at which point I nearly choked on the beautiful pie crust I was eating!

Me:   "You can't do that!"
Mum: "Technically I can but why not?"
Me:   "Because it leaves me with a dilemma."
Mum: "What dilemma would that be honey?" (with a twinkle in her eye)
Me:   "Well they are both my favourite meals and so I will be torn and I really can't be eating two meals now can I?"
Mum: "Well don't - you just pick one."
Me:    "That is like asking me to choose between which arm I want to chop off!"
Mum:  "Well, you could eat two meals."
Me:    "No I shouldn't because I am going to have to try, at some stage, to lose this weight I put on recovering from this major surgery."
Mum:  "But you could though...."
Me:    "Make him meat pie instead then I don't have to sit at the table crying in my dinner."
Hubby:"Why meat pie?"
Me:    "I'm not keen on the meat pie crust."
Hubby:"You are weird."
Me:    "Yes, I am.  We all know that but I maintain the crust is different so therefore I'm not keen on it and I won't face a dilemma."
Mum:  "It has the same ingredients."
Me:    "That may be so, but my taste buds prefer this crust because it is flavoured with the meat and potato pie and it has no stupid edges that haven't been soaked in the filling like normal pies so I don't have to pick all the edges off and put them on Hubby's plate."
Hubby:"You are one of a kind."
Me:    "Yes I am and you wouldn't have me any other way."
Hubby:"True, don't ever change."

Beautiful B's boyfriend R sat and laughed his head off.  He wasn't laughing his head off later in the evening while he sat in a chair in-between mum and I while we discussed the virtue of using hot wax when having your bikini line done as opposed to normal wax.  At which point Beauitful B said "R, you get used to it honey."

Born Beautiful

This is one of three posts that I wrote and had problems uploading:

Angel’s mum passed away, it was horrid.  It is still horrid.  The funeral was awful.  

Watching Angel, my sister in every thing but name get up and give such a lovely eulogy was heart breaking.  I said I would drink with her for as long as she needed me to, and I did, until midnight that day.

Angel’s mum lived a full life, she was loved and obviously still is.  She loved Angel’s dad who was also horribly robbed of a wonderful life when Angel was only 21.  She learned to love again and was loved unconditionally back.  She gave up a lovely life abroad to return home when Angel got sick, then she got sick herself. 

What has happened sucks, big time.  On the glass half full side, Angel’s mum moving back to the UK gave opportunity for the family to grow extremely close again and to spend some much needed, and at the time, short time with her.  On the glass half empty side, Angel has lost both parents and feels lost at sea.  She has lived the last 6 months at her mother’s side and finds herself wandering around aimlessly.  I related to that because I did it for 3 days after Angel’s mum died – losing time stood in a shop only to have been in there for over an hour when I got back in the car.

I feel like I am not helping Angel, because I don’t know what to do other than be there and listen.  I watch Angel like a hawk, who is in danger of a relapse while going through such a stressful time but not knowing what I can do to prevent it.  Telling her to slow down is like trying to stop a whirlwind.  I know this is all she needs right now, but it feels like it is not enough.

Life sucks sometimes.  You realise that your parents and loved ones are not indestructible and watching my parents, who were Angel’s mums best friends, fall apart as they waited for the inevitable and then grieved was truly awful. 

I am angry, I was angry in an earlier post and I am still angry.  I don’t like feeling this way.  I don’t know what to do to stop it.  I hate what has happened to Angel, and her family, and my parents, I hate feeling useless and out of control.  I hate feeling like we are all on a hamster wheel and for what at the end of it?

I have decided that we are on that hamster wheel so that we can be loved, we can find someone who will love us unconditionally, for who we are and for what we stand for.  Angel’s mum had that with both husbands and of course her children and grandchildren.  Maybe the heartache is the price we pay for that love.

Rest in peace Angel’s mum.  We will look after each other and Angel will continue to do the good and love the family the way you did.  She is already taking over your role and looking after her sisters as you would and for that I know you are proud.