who on earth text messages home phones?????

cos when I find out who it is I’m gonna wring their neck….

picture the scene… It’s just past 7:30 am, the time your other half goes off to work. You’ve had a disturbed night with a small sad child (who had a bad dream) and then struggled to get back to sleep because of a husband who doesn’t quite understand the concept of early nights and who snores like a freight train when he’s too tired. The phone rings and you shoot out of bed like a scalded cat thinking that any phone call this early in the morning has got to be an emergency (cos even your mother in law doesn’t phone this early….) You pick it up to hear some metallic voice telling you that you have a text message, reels off the number it’s from too quickly for most of it to register with your half asleep brain (not that I can recognise mobile phone numbers but at least if it had been slower I may have been able to scrawl it on a bit of paper) and then reads out the text which is from someone wanting a phone number off Other Half. And then, to cap it all, even though I hit the save button not the delete button, the damned thing didn’t save so I can’t even play it back to attempt to write the sodding phone number down

I do not condiser this to be a good start to a morning you know.

petty humph!

I want to start getting stuff ready for camp which is next Saturday, I know i@m getting all previous here but I’d rather know in advance if I don’t have enough of anything seeing as I’m restricted to guiding colours.  This requires me being able to reach into my clothes shelves which shouldn’t be a problem apart from a small matter….. so in a fit of utter temper I’ve just thrown anything that isn’t mine over in front of “his” side of the shelving and topped it off with the winter duvet which I can’t put away because his stereo is where it should be and he can’t decide what to do with it (it was in his office until the Great Office Make Over but he doesn’t seem to have space for 80% of what he took out of there now……)  It’s taken me over half an hour and now I’m all hot and sweaty and grumpy!

And to make it worse I didn’t realise my MOT has expired (the garage send Duke reminders for his car but somehow not for mine, much to their confusion as well as mine!)  so I couldn’t tax the car and now I can’t use it til Monday when I take it to be done.  Which means my planned afternoon at Ikea getting some  dirt cheap fabric to trial my Kung Fu suit pattern (I’ve adapted a lady’s suit pattern but I need to know ti’s right before using better fabric)  is messed up too and I just don’t fancy trialing it in velvet (curtaining!) or fleece which are the only things I have enough of in stock. Humph!

“I think tiny families are odd”

so sayeth some baby factory type on a home ed list.  Well, actually dear, that’s just a matter of persepective.  Your 5 children are supported by The State (and, I assume some maintenance from your ex although I’m not sure he works either unless I’m confusing you with someone else) and actually last I heard they didn’t all live with you anyway so you aren’t bearing the brunt of raising 5 children on your own, just the youngest 2 full time and the others when they visit your rent-assisted house.  My 1 child is supported predominantly by my husband’s job, with a little top up from The State, we pay our own mortgage and thus all our own maintenance costs, it all adds up you know.  So when you dismiss financial considerations as not being a valid reason for restricting your family size I don’t feel we are singing from the same hymn sheet, not that I’m suggesting that living on benefits is easy, we’ve been there, done that too, we just didn’t have the housing benefit to cushion the blow cos we were bloody stupid enough to buy a house rather than renting.

But actually, although I do feel that finances is a perfectly justified reason to limit family size, that’s not why an awful lot of us have small families.  There are those of us who just can’t make babies at all, no matter how loved up we are.  There are those of us who can make them okay but just can’t keep hold of them long enough to be any more than a sad little clot of cells and a late period.  Then there are those who are advised against pregnancy due to dangers to their own health, how heartbreaking could that be to know that much as you would love more babies, it would possibly kill you to do so?  And those whose children are likely to be born with a genetic condition that would limit their life, is it odd to weigh that risk and decide that you aren’t strong enough to deal with watching a longed for child whither before your eyes even if there’s only a 50% or even 25% chance of it happening?  I couldn’t do it, I admire those who can.

And is chosing a smaller family on grounds of knowing what you can and can’t cope with wrong?  All this crap about natural parenting meaning you won’t burn out is just taht, total crap.  I breast fed (well, okay, I tried but she didn’t latch on no matter who tried to help me so I expressed and bottled it into her)  I used various slings, I had her next to me in the bed and you know what?  I was still exhausted to the point of not being able to stand the constant crying some days and had to leave her safe in the house and walk away for a few minutes to get away from teh noise.  I’m not proud of that but offered a choice of a baby unattended safely in a cot for 5 minutes or a baby shaken into silence I know which is less likely to result in harm don’t you?  And I’m sure that if I lived in Mexico or some other less Westernised country things would be different cos I’d have SUPPORT from the extended family and community, I’d have someone else nearby who would take the strain with me and I would also probably have at least a faint idea about what having a small child was actually about.  Aprilia was the first baby i had held, my baby, the one I was wholey responsible for, and I just about knew which end was which.  My own mother died when I was 1, my step mum doesn’t like babies, my MIL is older and doesn’t drive, her daughter a busy working mum, that left me, on my own all day, every day for days on end whilst Duke worked away from home.  So yes, another baby was always going to be something that needed to wait until I’d healed mentally and physically from number 1, even if number 2 was only ever going to be as remote a posibility as number 1 had been.

So, I’m odd then, fine, I’ve been odd all my life sweetie, so are you.  So is whoever else reads this (not least because you must have a masochistic streak to get through this raving!)  because no one is the same as anyone else, we are all DIFFERENT, all odd in our own ways.  Lets not judge hey?

it’s that Tax Credit cock up once more!

just to summarise the story so far.  several years ago they failed to update their system on Duke’s latest employer.  This would be despite the fact that I was phoning on a damned near weekly basis to tell them changes in income and employer and despite the fact that the agency who “run” tax credits know damned well who everyone works for and how much they get paid cos they take our taxes off us before giving some of it back again.

Last month i finally got it all sorted, found exact starting dates for all previous employments and addresses for them too.  Got a letter acknowleging that, because the change in working was more than X years ago they would be unable to change the award given for that year (which was fine because updating the name of your employer is hardly likely to change the numbers attached to your income now is it, although I bet if it had led to an overpayment they would ahve been able to do somethign about it) and got this year’s award.  Not a fantastic amount of money but enough to keep us afloat as long as we don’t have days out often, buy luxuries or eat expensive food.  I can do that.  I can feed us for the week on under £40, including the cat and the guinea pigs, and that was pretty much what budget I had.

Until today.  Today I got a letter saying that my circumstances have changed and thus my tax credits are going down by £60 a month.  Bear in mind here that I need £40 a week to feed the hungry hoards, that’s 1.5 week’s worth of grub I can’t buy.  Now obviously we can eat cheaper, or we could if Duke would eat beans/pulses cos they are dirt cheap and filling.  But he won’t and to be honest I can think of better things to eat too.  So I phoned.  Got through after 6 minutes, spent 15 minutes trying to explain that NOTHING IN OUR CIRCUMSTANCES HAS CHANGED in the last month.  Eventually, Sonny Jim spots that Duke doesn’t appear to be working any hours at all according to their system.  He was last year, adn was credited with the extra bonus point for working 40 hours a week, but this year he isn’t.  It’s a glitch on the system he says.  He will try to sort it out for us he says.  It still doesn’t explain why it’s happened though does it?  And he’s only going to try to put it right, no promises.  So, menus needed please for a weekly food budget of £25 for 3 carnivores.  Alternately, of course, I could get some nice little job, send child to school where she belongs and be good little citizens, grateful for the crumbs of assistance offered by our great and glorious leader.  No, wait, if I went to work full time we wouldn’t get crumbs of assistance would we?  We’d be earning too much to qualify.  And in the mean time, those lucky sods who know how to milk the system are in council housing with means tested rent, getting all their maintenance done FOC and new bathrooms or kitchens put in every 4 years or so paid for by the rest of us idiots who own our own homes.  Should have stayed where we were in a condemned terrace and demanded the council do something about it.

reasons to be grumpy, 1,2,3 (and then some)

Right, before I start, I know non of this is exactly life threatening but then when has that ever stopped me?

1. Amazon e-mailed on Monday to say 2 of my 3 videos had been sent, they still aren’t here (it’s Friday)

2. On teh 9th May I filled in a whole new set of paperwork for Guiding as the person who was dealing with the lot I filled in last August had filed them in a stacking crate and done bugger all else. So Tuesday (6 weeks later) I e-mailed the lady to see if there was a projected date for at least my CRB to be finished (shall we gloss over the fact that I’m not supposed to be left alone with the girls until this has been done?) and got a terse “it’s only been a short while” reply. So I phoned the CRB office to make sure something was being done and yes, they had my form, it had got to them 3 days ago. So it’s going to be at least another 3 weeks before that’s processed. This is “fast tracking your membership” Guiding style then is it? I’m on a camp the first week in August and I need the paperwork to be finalised before I go otherwise they won’t let me on the site! and yes, when we filled in teh May set of paperwork they KNEW that and assured me it wouldn’t take very long….

3. Someone phoned yesterday asking if they could come round and collect an aerial Duke had ordered on their behalf a few weeks ago. I said yes and wandered off to put it by the door. I then spent the next hour looking for it and apologised when the lady arrived as I’d not found it, had phoned Duke who assured me it was where I had looked and phoned Harley in case Duke had forgotten that he ahd given it to him to pass to this lady (which had been the plan) Duke now thinks it may be in the ambi but he’s not sure….

4. The Freeloader we got for Aprilia so she could charge the DS when we are camping without power will ONLY carge in FULL SUNLIGHT not daylight, sunlight. So that’s a waste of time in the UK then really isn’t it. It’s been sat on our window ledge for 4 days and didn’t have the power to even put the charging light on her DS.

5. and whilst on the subject of her DS, she’s lost the charging cable.

6. Harley phoned at lunchtime to eat worms at me (must tell him to get a blog, that way you can vent all you like and not inflict it on anyone who doesn’t want to waste large chunks of their life listening) about how their pre-holiday chat in teh pub after a meeting had been totally ruined by other people from teh same meeting thinking it was okay for them to go to teh pub afterwards too and sit chatting with them. Gee honey, you didn’t get to plan next February’s Florida trip already? How sad am I about that?

7. Same phonecall but different subject. The ambi was in for repairs for the umpteenth time and needed picking up from the other side of Chester. Harley had said I might need to do it with him (not asked you note here, said.) but as Duke had gone off with my car, what with it being more economical and not having a slow puncture, I told Harley that I wouldn’t be available to do it. So he said me and Duke could do it as soon as he got in from work at just past 4. I pointed out that as last night was the Computer Fair, Duke wasn’t available. Not a problem says Harley, we can do it and still ahve Duke to the Computer Fair by 6pm (it starts at 5) I got blunt and informed him that if he thought we were going to go across a major city at rush hour and back again he could think again. He didn’t seem terribly happy. I still don’t care that he didn’t seem terribly happy although I do feel slightly sorry for his wife who will have had chapter and verse of how unhelpful members of his centre are.

8. I stubbed my toe on the “loft ladder” which is propped up on the landing (again)

9. it rained all day

10.  I’m sure there was a 10 but I can’t remember it now!

am I being unreasonable here?

I have been laid low enough by this cold that actually moving is an effort, it makes me cough, it makes me dizzy and, as I ache all over, it makes me bloody miserable.  So I’ve been negligent in my household duties.  Trouble is Duke has no concept taht if I’m ill he’d better bloody do something instead.  So, today, feeling marginally better I venture into the kitchen to find everywhere heaped with dirty pots, to that point taht I couldn’t open teh dishwasher because of the stuff in front of it.

it it really unreasonable to expect a grown man to figure out taht I may just need a bit of help here?

“caring for people in crisis”

used to be the tag line for a certain organisation that Duke works for.  But they dropped it because it didn’t fit their remit anymore.  And now I see why.  It is, aparently, not acceptable for Duke to work for them anymore as (horror of horrors) he can’t do the last 2 hours of the shift as he has to go to his day job.  Instead he has an arrangement with 3 other collegues that they take it in turns to work the last 2 hours and in return they save taht “debt” up until they want a half night off or whatever and Duke does it for them.  So everyone works the right hours.  But if you are a dim witted cow sitting in a nice office, working 7 hour days on more damned near three times the salary of the poor buggers who  actually go out there for 14 hour shifts at night with an hell of a lot extra training that you need to push paper and ignore e-mails then it’s not fair that you aren’t completing your shift.  So would you like to give up your day job please.  Because, of course, this contract is for 3 months and it’s almost certain there will be another 3 months after that one and we are quite hopeful to get the full 3 year contract when that is offered so taht’s a secure job isn’t it.  And you can make up the money you lose by jacking in your other crappily paid job by working for the same caring organisation at Oulton for £30 a day (which works out at less than minimum wage but as it’s an allowance not a wage it’s okay)

So he informed them that he would be leaving their employment as from March. leaving them to fill not just the 2 hours at the end of his shift but his full 14 hour shift 3 or 4 days each week (and they struggle to cover holiday and sickness as it is) and leaves us back on half the money again but because Tax Credits are calculated on your last year’s wages until they get their head around your sudden drop in money we shall be a bit skint again.

Hmph

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The light at the end of the tunnel….

…. is some ***** with a torch come to laugh at us.

Duke’s CV got sent to a company who were after someone “just like him” and who were offering a starting salary of £18k plus car.  They took on one of the other lads he worked with a few months ago and he recomended Duke (as Duke taught him most of what he knew)  Trouble is we live too far away.  But, naturally, they will keep his details at the top of the pile for our area and as soon as a post is available he’s right at the top of the shortlist.

and then there’s the Red Cross work.  Duke’s been pointing out that the working time directive is being violated by the fact taht staff are working  14 hour shifts overnight for 2 or 3 consecutive nights meaning that not only are they working more than the allowed 12 hours in a single shift but they aren’t getting the required minimum of 11 hours off in between.  He’s been ignored but sadly they have now remembered that he has a day job and they need to talk to him about it (which of course serves him right for not keeping his head down and blending in with the scenery…..) and we are expecting them to throw the working time directive back in his face by pointing out that working 2 jobs both of 36+ hours a week takes him over the allowed weekly hours (which is 60, unless you are superhuman and qualify as a doctor at which point you are capable of working 60 hours a day…..)

I’m vaguely hoping they will just offer him reduced hours or something but I can’t see it.  They have got what they wanted from him (all the information they needed to set up the service in the first place on the offer of a management role once it got going….. need I say the management role went to someone already at Branch whose contract was coming to an end?) so tehy can just throw him away like everyone else does now can’t they.

a minor train rant and anything else I feel like bickering about

We’re off on a train journey tomorrow and I am looking forward to it, BUT, I hvae to change several times and no-where, no-how can I find platform information.  Which means I’m going to need to find a board or a real live person who knows these things and negotiate a station I’ve never been to before in 7 minutes to be sure I get on my train onwards.  I know, I know 7 minutes is probably going to be oodles of time but I have lasting memories of there being 14 platforms at Manchester Pic and needing to be on the furthest one out to catch my train home and regularly watching it dissapearing out of the station just as I was legging it over the bridge.  Which is fine when it’s just half an hour to wait for the next one but not so fine when you have a further two connections to catch and a lift waiting for you at the far end of the country.  So I have to be a big brave girl and grab the first person I see in  a railway uniform and hope it’s not the trainee really don’t I!  But really, how hard would it be on these journey planners to list the platform?  From memory, unless there is a problem each line has it’s “own” platform so as long as it came with a proviso that it could possibley be running from elsewhere but try here first it would just be so much easier!  It’s not as if I know which line these stations are on!  I know all the stations I used to use, which lines, where you could hop off one line and get a train on a different one to get places not on the line in my old town but Clapham Junction?  Watford Junction?  All I know about them is that EVERYTHING goes through there!!!!  Ho hum.  There was me thinking that going by train would be oh so much easier than by car (well, okay, so it still is easier but not as easy as I’d hoped)

And whilst I’m feeling grumpy…. Duke’s new rota.  Three consecutive nights every 3rd week.  Fine, for everyone for whom this is their only job, not fine for those for whom there is a day job to get up for really.  And I know they can’t work things just to suit Duke but FFS!!!  And we think they are breaking employment law as the shifts are 14 hours but no one is listening.  Of course, he could just chuck that job in and settle for one lousy low wage and get undisturbed sleep every night but he’s put his heart and soul into getting this set up for the Red Cross, been offered all sorts of posts at some point in the future and seen the co-ordinator’s role go to some woman who already works part time at Branch and is therefore part of the in crowd of middle aged bored housewives who take all the glory for what the volenteers work for.

hmph.