to work or not to work?

Well, Ive been thinking things through, and have failed miserably to come up with any real answers. But I have put some feelers out and some things in motion which may give me some answers eventually. Or not.

Basically, i am trying to decide what to do about work. Now I only do three days a week, it's OK - I don't much like the commuting, but the actual work is fine, and gives me a break from stuff at home. But, 3 days a week does not bring in much money - I would be better off giving up altogether! And, re-training into a difficult field like law is hard enough at my age anyway, but the chances of getting a part-time job when I am academically qualified are virtually non-existant. No-one is going to give me a training contract part-time when there a literally thousends of younger, dedicated, go-getting graduates applying for each position. And the thought of remaining a secretary for the next 30 years is not that alluring.

Plus, I have to be realistic about my home life. Aggie is doing well at the moment, but his prognosis is, at best, that he will get worse slowly, and at worst, that it will continue to deteriorate as rapidly as he did in the first year of having PA. He does his best (for a man), but barely keeps up with the needed housework & child care at the moment. And if he has a bad day/week/month, pretty much nothing is done. I am going to be needed at home at least for periods of time.

And I am starting to really think through what Mstr A's asbergers is going to mean as he gets older. I have been telling myself that he will eventually learn social skills as he gets older and understands the importance of at least pretending to understand. But, honestly, that is only going to happen many years from now. He will get a lot worse before he gets better. Most people are in their twenties before they really start to understand tolerance and true empathy. Teenagers are notoriously bad at it:-) And mstr A's behaviour is unlikely to change much. 2 year old behaviour in 2 year olds is considered normal, if annoying. 2 year old behaviour in 5 years olds is considered difficult. 2 year old behaviour in 8 year olds is considered inappropriate. 2 year old behaviour in 13 year olds is considered criminal. He is already too strong for Aggie to physically control, and the chances are is physical behaviour will get worse as he gets older and more frustrated. I worry that I am not available for him/the school.

BUT, I'm not a natural "carer". It's not a role I particularly enjoy. I prefer to work outside the home. But find it important to work hard & and act professionally at work. I can not just do the minimum possible & take time off non-stop. It's a dilemma.

We are still looking at fostering, which would give me more to do at home & a bit of money. But I'm not sure it will work out with Aggie & Mstr A.

I am also starting with the CAB in a couple of weeks, so may find that gives enough "out of the home" work.

But in that case, I have to decide what to do about college. There seems little point putting so much time, effort & money into qualifying in an occupation that I will never take up. But then again, I quite like the idea of having it as an option if things work out better.

I have decided, as usual, to just wait and see for now.

Woo Hoo

I know it's been a while since my last post, but there's not been a lot to say. Life has just been continuing really!

I'm past the nice introductory bit of my college course now and it's starting to get quite complicated. I'm managing to find a bit of time each week to do some stuff, but not really enough. I really want to keep up with the work this year and try and get a reasonable pass without secluding myself away and stressing about cramming for the last two weeks!

work is trudging along. Nothing new particularly. My typing is getting faster so I run out of work every now and then, which is boring. But then again, every now and then I have tons and tons of it, so it averages out. Shame it doesn't come through in a steady stream rather than stops and starts.

LMD has decided to be a baby again and has gone back into nappies full time:-( LMB is at that "screaming" age. She screams when she is happy, she screams when she is excited. She screams when she is angry. She screams when she is hurt. 4 year old screams are very loud and ver piercing:-(

Aggie is learning how to stay at home and we were starting to get into a bit of a routine. But it's half term now, so he's on child care duties. Next week it will be back to DIY:-) He will probably be officially finishing work at the end of November, so it's a while before we get any money still.

But my mother was contacted today by the competition people and it does seem that I actually have won a car! WOO HOO. They still have to register it to her, then we have to actually sell it, but WOO HOO! I won a car!!!!

As luck would have it...

Yesterday it seemed our luck had turned. everything started to come together.

I've spent the past week at work downstairs with the rest of the admin staff covering while the main typist is sunning herself on holiday. It's worked out OK - they have seen that I'm not hiding away upsatirs drinking coffee and chatting, but actually work pretty hard;-) I have helped a couple of them with some stuff, and got a better understanding of the problems/issues in the company. All in all, I'm feeling pretty happy there at the moment, which is nice. I'm starting to really get an understanding of the cases - it's much easier when I've been there from start through to finish! And to be trusted to do a fair bit of stuff myself, which makes me feel happier.



Aggie received his letter from work saying he is permently disabled from his profession. this may not sound great, but it solves a lot of problems. not least the stress of worrying about him as really he is not able to work full time/regularly. Although it also reduces the time pressure on me as he can cover the occasional school pick up and some holidays. By being disabled out rather than sacked, we get a small pension paid, which means that, added to my salary, we may be able to afford to live. Not well, but live:-) The lump sum will (I think) cover all of our debts other than the mortgage, so our outgoings will reduce and finances will become manageable.



Of course, none of that will actually happen until they do all the paperwork - currently we're looking at the end of November. But it is all agreed and sorted and we can plan our future again.



Also I looked at our small critical illness insurance policy. I read it, and read it then read it again. then I read through all the exclusion clauses, and compared their term to Aggie's letter of medical retirement. i reckon they will have to pay out! I can't see any way out of it. I'm sure they'll try, but I think we may be able to pay of a good £40% of our mortgage! If that works out, we may even have a small disposable income each month! WOW - I can't remember what disposable income is!



Oh yes. I got a distinction in my first essay for college:-) Although, it's easy when you have the book in front of you. I'm a bit more concerned about when I have to do the essays under exam conditions.



And I think i might have won one of these:

It's a G-Wiz electric car.

I'm not getting too excited until I actually see it. But, I entered an internet competition a few months ago - one of these things where you answer some consumer questions and get entered into a prize draw for your time. And they have phoned and emailed me to say i've won. I can't find anything on the email that says it is a model car, or that i have to pay anything, or that the prize requires me to do anything. So Maybe........

I've asked for it to be delivered to my mother's as it's really only any good in London. Then with luck, it will sell easily and buy me a holiday or something. Maybe a motorbike:-)

Whaddyaknow?!

It's official

Aggie is a drain on society, a layabout, part of the non-working classes and absolutely, without doubt, a cripple.

Yep, he's finally been retired from work on health grounds. Yipee, now I can get back to my favourite passtime of planning for an improbable future:-0 It's certainly better than worrying about an actual present;-)

Of course, although it means that it's all official now, and he won't have to go back to work, it's not all finalised yet with dates and amounts etc, so no money has materialised yet! Not even the back pay for the last three months which he is owed (they stopped paying him anything when he hit 6 months sick, but they were supposed to pay him pension rate as he was going through the pension process....) But it will come. One day.

The lump sum should pay off all our debts (other than mortgage), and then we just have to re-learn how to live within our means. As no-one will be stupid enough to lend us any more money, that shouldn't be too hard:-) My salary will slowly increase - eventually. The light at the end of the tunnel is finally appearing.

Aggie is hoping to go off to uni next year - which gives him a full year to get himself and the house sorted out. he has to do it in slow time nowadays, but stuff still needs doing, so hopefully he'll have the time to do it!

It also means I will stay in my local job for a while yet - which is the easier option:-)

Here's to the future!

Kaput

My laptop is dead again. We've given up this time and admitted that, perhaps, we will have to spend a little bit of money and have paid for a brand new hard drive. It will be here in a few days and hopefully I will be back on line properly and permently. But things will be sporadic until then.

Remember the filling that took 5 months to get, and then my dentist complianed that I had "waited" too long before coming to see him? Well, it didn't take:-( So I've been in some pain for the last couple of weeks. I went back to see him last week and had my first root canal work. So I'm still in pain<:( But hopefuly it will be improving soon - I have to go back on Monday for the new filling which everyone tells me won't hurt at all. Lets hope it works.

LMD is growing at an amazing rate at the moment - and sleeping incredibly badly. Aggie reckons is growing pains making her whinge all night, but I'm inclined to believe it's bloody mindedness!

However, We have finally got LMB's bedroom redecorated to a proper standard. We're waiting to hear what "compensation" they are intending to offer on top. They suggested the idea, so who are we to argue?

No answer yet on the holiday though. Apart from a rather nice letter from Which! suggesting I contact Haven head office trading standards. I really must chase that up. We've definitely decided to go with Butlins next year, which I hope isn't a mistake! I've already buggered ny real hope of a quiet holiday by not only having my mother-in-law staying with us (as usual), but my mother, sister and niece are coming too! *gulp*

LMB loves school - she's staying for lunch now too which is great. It would've been even greater if I had been able to find the money to pay for them without raiding the kids money boxes this morning:-( I'm feeling a bit more at ease at college this year too - the work (so far) is making sense to me - it's subjects I'm more interested in (mostly) and I'm trying to learn it properly as I'm going along rather than cramming for two weeks before the exams again! I'm umming and ahhing about whether to move jobs. I can make a lot more money in Bristol, but it's an hours commute -and an hour away from the family if/when anything happens. The company I'm with is pretty shit on it's employee care/training/relations but the department I'm in is pretty good on all that. I think I'll probably debate it round in my mind a bit more - thereby making a decision by default!

Lets do it all again

Everything is starting over here.

I went back to college tonight. I'd forgotten how the tutor rambles on - it's amazing we learn anything really:-) Tonight was all the boring induction stuff, but this years course is mostly much more interesting subjects so I'm quite looking forward to it.

the insurance company called a couple of days ago in response to my letter of compliant. They sent a surveyor round today who was even more disgusted with the shoddy work done that I was! So that mollified me a little, and he agreed that they will have to come back and do the whole thing again. Some time. The insurance company did say they would get it fixed and then discuss compensation though, which will be nice.

Re-enactment season is over now, so it's back to the normal weekend's of kids activities and DIY etc. I'm hoping to get a nice dress made for me when i've bought some more linen, but I can't start the kids until after Xmas as they'll grow too much! But school's back so it's back to the mad rush every morning and keeping track of which child should be where, when. I can't wait for the kids to be old enough to take themselves off to all their activities!

Work has settled down a bit now too. Aggie is still off, but has been getting quite a bit oif stuff sorted out at last, so things are starting to move forward. we now have a nice new boiler, and a whole bunch of hand rails around the house so that he doesn't fall in and out of the front door, stairs and bath/shower. Even the garden is looking acceptable:-) Perhaps we can start inviting the kids friends round to play again soon.

Woo-Hoo!

We got our money out of the bank! (if you don't know what I'm talking about, see Aggies blog here and here). They agreed to settle for £30 less than we claimed - the £30 court fees we'd paid to show that we really were serious about going all the way:-) that's the mortgage sorted for the next couple of months:-) Plus one over on the banks. Woo hoo! Of course, it was coupled with a very stern letter saying it wasn't their fault, they weren't a ccepting liability or admitting fault, and that if we ever deign to even sneeze in the bank's direction again the will close our account. but that's OK, we've been wanting to close our account for years - ever since they were taken over by RBS and became shit. It's just that we were alays too overdrawn for anyone else to take us on. Now we've got an extra couple of grand in the bank, our overdraft is low enough to move. we're changing banks next month anyway.

Mstr A started swimming lessons again on tuesday evening. it's a bit of a rush for me, but he managed to almost participate in the whole lesson. Also, when I spoke to his teacher (10 secs before the lesson started - even though I wrote to the pool weeks ago) about him having aspegers, she said her day job was working with autistic children, so at least she knew what I was talking about, and did a good job of keeping him with the rest of the group.

I have decided not to attend the interview for the PGCE course tomorrow. despite having put in the effort to write up my notes of Dracula:-) Bath is really a bit far, and I like what I'm doing. If this had come up two years ago it would have been different, but I'm going to stick with law for now.

And on a totallydifferent note: I see that Cadbury's schwepps are going to split into Cadbury's and schwepps. Umm, wasn't that what they were originally?

And how come the gov't regularly complains at how much the olympics is going to cost us, and is appalled that the bill for new roads, public transport, houses, facilities, total regeneration of some really revolting slums, and unimaginable PR across the world is nearing the £10 billion mark, but the same gov't is telling us that we desperately ned to spend TWICE that much on a couple of new Trident nuclear weapons, which will be aimed out into the middle of the ocean for the next twenty years?

Calming down

OK, I've taken a few deep breaths, and I'm trying not to be quite so frantic about things today.

Re the interview on Friday - I've looked at the blurb again, and it's not that much work. A two page write up of some idea's rather than actual lesson/session plans, so i should be able to bang that together, um, well, maybe Thursday lunchtime - which will give me Thursday evening to tidy it up. Plus, I've been thinking, and I'll probably stay where I am whatever. Bath isn't going to be the easiest communte, even if I get a school this side of town it's a trek, I don't think I can really afford a year at Uni, and the over-riding reason that teaching seems more appealing than law is the summer holidays - which is a TERRIBLE reason to become a teacher:-) If the law thing wasn't well on track then teaching would still be top of my list, but as it is.....

Re the re-enactment clothes, I'll just do what I can do when I can do it! I'm going to prioritise the girls overdresses, and if necessary they can wear modern clothes underneath for the first event! We're off to a medieval amrket on Saturday, so i may well buy myself a dress, just to be sure I have something to wear, and I'll see if they have any hose to fit mstr A too. They're such a pain to make!

Re the college work. Pah! One thing at a time. I managed to do a couple of questions for homework at lunchtime today, so i have soemthing to hand in. Maybe next week I'll try to take the folder in on Tues & Thurs and read through it at lunchtime then. It's a start. I guess I'll panic enough about it eventually:-) I'm fairly confident that I will pass one of the exams, and that's pretty good considering. Although as they cost so much money, I'll be well pissed off if I don'y manage to pass through the whole year each time, low pass rate or not!

Re the garden. It'll happen when it happens. When the kids have time to play out there, I'll have to go out & supervise them, so i'll get on with it all then.

Work has been fairly slow recently, so I should hopefully be able to catch up with some things at lunchtimes on Tues & Thurs. Whatever - everything will get done somehow. it always does.

Phew!

The stomach bug only lasted 24 hours, so I went back to work yesterday. I expected to have a pile of stuff waiting for me, but it had all been done, leaving me at a bit of a loose end!

It was my 1 month anniversary there, and they still seem happy with me as far as I can tell (how do you know?), so that's good:-)

LMB woke up bright as the sunshine on Tuesday morning. How lovely to be 3 years old, and just sleep off nasty stomach bugs like that:-)

Aggie's GP has had permission to rewrite his report for work, so with any luck he'll be retired by the summer time (maybe), which will be the best thing on the whole. I'm quite jealous in a way - but not of the constant pain, inability to lift up the kids, flaky skin or bigotry he faces from others, so on the whole I guess i've got the better deal:-) It would certainly make it easier for me to embark on a new career if he's at home - especially considering the new report about how us mothers of young children face the most discrimination at work!

We started criminal procedure at college tonight. i was really concerned about this subject as i know very little (up to date stuff) about it, have no interest in working in the criminal law and have no experience of it. But fortunately, it all seemd fairly basic stuff on the syllabus - just general knowledge really. lets hope it stays at that level:-)

It's something to do....

Because I'm short of things to do with my time:-)

Yesterday we travelled up to a big reenactors market in Warwickshire. Having recently spent a small fortune on ebay, we didn't intend to buy a lot, but there were a few things needed. We returned with plenty of nice new material to make the rest of the clothes, a couple of pins, and Aggie got himself a new longbow, so I get to play with his old one this season.

Today was a sorting out day. We tidied up the garden, finally shifting the broken Gazebo and rotten cardboard boxes lying around. We set up the new(ish) archery target & net so we can have the occasional practise at home. It's all very well telling the public that every male had to practise archery for 1 hour a week (on a Sunday after church fyi) from the age of 5 & therefore were all practised, experienced & trained archers, but it looks pretty rubbish if you then fail to hit a single target on your demo shoot:-) Aggie discovered that his new bow was going to be too difficult to string on his own, so had a quick practise with mine. I tried hard to remember what I was doing and shot off a couple of arrows, as did Mstr A, but I think it'll take a while to build up the muscles and the callouses to practise for any length of time. Now I have to braid a stringer for Aggie's new bow before the season starts!

We also tried to work out how to weave a belt for Mstr A on the new loom, but we're obviously thick, 'cos we can't work it out. I guess we'll have to wait till we can see someone who knows what their doing. There are a couple of people in the group who have used them before, so we'll get it sorted eventually.

however, Aggie also made me a flour riddle out of the new linen I brought yesterday, which I sucessfully tried out on some granery flour. Now I just need to source some whole wheat, and I'll be ready to grind flour from scratch:-) Looking forward to pancakes over an open fire this season:-)

I've nearly finished Mstr A's tunic now - it just needs finishing touches around the neckline & buttons on the sleeves - I've made the buttons already, and he only needs 3 per sleeve. Plus three button holes oviously, which are really quite labour intensive, but still, it's well on it's way. I'm hoping to get on with the girls dresses this week, and to finish off Aggies tunic, which will just leave hose (horrible things to make), underwear (quik & easy) and, of course, all my clothing.

It's half term here this week coming, so fortunately Aggie has been able to get Mon, Wed & Thu working from home. he can drop off & pick up Mstr A at the local leisure centre, allowing me to just do the girls & so get to work on tme. I'm not sure how I would've managed it otherwise.

Half term also means I have a week off college. I really, really want to use it to get some revision sorted out. I have got quite a lot of homework to do to, but I need to get on with making up some revision cards if I want to have enough time to actually revise from them! I'm starting to get pretty stressed about the exams now. I so don't want to have to retake them next year, it seems such a waste of my time;-) But with an average 40-45% pass rate, and the knowledge the memorising is n ot my strong point, May is starting to feel very very close & scary!

I did it

I finally did some homework! this really shouldn't be an Event, but sadly it is.

I think I only managed it because college was cancelled tonight for Valentines day (I ask you!) and moved to tomorrow instead. So i had an early finish at work today, with no college to go to:-) So i settled down to half a mock exam - open book for my first attempt. If I get good results I know I am on the right track, and can concentrate on just learning the stuff!

Aggie was supposed to be looking after the kids while I worked, but there was an awful lot of shouting & screaming going on, along with a fair number of visits into the back room where i was working by a child or two compaining about something! I took a break half way through & found LMD fast asleep (fully dressed) on Aggie, who "couldn't move" to sort out the other two as it ould wake her up!

So I put LMD to bed, put LMB in her pyjama's & sent her up with daddy, sewed most of Aggies new tunic, then went back to it. I've finished now - within the alloocated time too:-)

Tomorrow is going to be hard work. A long day at work then straight to college. Ho hum.

And I am determined to do something every week now. Aggie has promised to take the kids out fo a couple of hours each weekend.

we'll see......

Domesticicity

It was absolutly throwing it down this morning. Floods of rain falling from the sky incessently.

I packd all the children into wellies & raincoats, plastic bags over their backpacks, and let them splash their way to school. I don't have a raincoat.

They were pretty wet by the time we walked the 1/4 mile to school. I was soaked. We dripped in, changed their clothes, waved goodbye and I set off, in the rain, on my bike, to work.

Any part of me that had avoided the rain while walking, immediately got soaked while on the bike.

As I parked the bike at work, the rain stopped. The sun came out. I dripped in to work looking a mess (no change of clothes for me). 5 mins later most of the rest of the staff turned up looking fresh & dry. Grrrrrrrr!

My brain didn't really kick itself into gear today. Work was OK, but everythig just seemed to take a bit of time to understand. O(h well, everyone is alloed an off day.

Tonight I managed to cook supper, clean up the kitchen (well, Nanny A did it properly yesterday, so i try to keep it nice-ish for a few days after her efforts), play with th kids a bit, then settled down to my sewing. Wow, isn't my life exciting?

I made the main body of Mstr A's wool tunic, and the first two panals of Aggies linen one. at least we are not going to be in such a rush this year - i hope:-)

Tomorrow I AM going to do some college homework.

No excuses. It needs to be done.

Going well

Everythings going pretty well for us here atm. Which means I have little to blog about;-) I mostly rant here:-)

Work is working out nicely. I am getting to grips with the different cases and things we do. There is enough work to keep me busy, but not so much that I feel overloaded with an impossible task. The level of the work is fine - it will get dull pretty quickly, but it's right for now as I find my feet. And I reckon it will probably increase as and when I am ready. The hours have panned out beautifully, and I don't think the early finishes are causing too much hassle for my colleagues.

Mstr A seems to have settled down at school. He has lots of friends, there are rarely problems when I pick him up, and he is definitely learning more and more stuff all the time:-) He even appears to have learned that he should do his work on time! There's a bit of an issue with personal space & his infringement on other people's, but we're working on it......

I haven't got a lot further in the making of this seasons re-enactment clothes - but there's still a month to go;-) hmmm, and a stone to lose if I want to fit into my new dress........

The college course is also going well. Although I still haven't done any homework, and I really do want to start doing some mock exam papers soon! But the stuff at college all makes sense, and the papers don't look too bad - when the book is open in front of me anyway!

I've had a few enquiries for courses which I've had to turn down:-( There's just not enough time to justify traipsing aff around the country. Plus I am officially no longer self employed now, so couldn't take a profit home:-(

of course, the money situation hasn't improved much. We're still seriously overspending each month:-( I don't really have much of a solution for that except try to muddle through till LMB goes to school in September, and/or I get a pay rise (yeah, to double my salary like!), Aggie gets retired (fingers crossed), a parent drops dead (all as healthy as the proverbial horse!) or we wi the lottery.

OK, I'm just going to try and muddle through till September *sigh*.

no idea how we're going to sort out the school holidays yet either. I'll worry about them when they come up.

My mother STILL has her job, despite working for the NHS in a role that was supposed to have been cut 6 months ago, so no help there:-)

My sister S is finally splitting up with her partner, so is pretty stressed out by all the legalities and procedures and general nastiness splitting up incurs. But it's a long way away, and although I feel bad for what she's going through, I can't help much, so I can't get too stressed about it personally.

Even though I am now cycling 4 miles a day, and not snacking hardly at all, what with being at work all day, I have lost a total of...............


absolutely zero!

Yep, not even 1/2 lb of wieght lost! bah! perhaps I need to start actually practising what I preach, and eating breakfast, and a proper lunch? It's such a lot of effort though! But I was hoping to a) get into my re-enact ment dress and b) to look vaguely reasonable for my sister A's wedding in june.

Oh yes, and I've finally decided to stop being a lazy mother, and stop letting LMB be a lazy baby, and have started workig on getting her dry at night. She is still wearing napies to sleep, which I'm sure she can't really need, even though they are always soaking in the morning. So I have stopped. I put her on the toilet before she goes to bed, then again when we go to bed, and leave the potty in her room. The first night she stayed dry till 6am, then wet the bed. Last night she made it through - using the potty but keeping the bed dry. Lets hope it continues:-)

Missed opportunities.

I hope I made the right decision about the job. I turned down two interviews yesterday - one to work in a school, which is what I will need to do if I want to go off and do my teacher training (which I think is age discrimination as kids of 21, straight out of uni don't have to go work in a school for a year or two first!), and one to manage a local leisure centre. That one was hard - the money was fairly good, and the job one & could do easily. But I did promise Aggie no more shift work. And tbh, our lifestyle now is not suited for that job. It's not only the shifts but being on call 24/7, working Christmas day etc. Still, it's hard to say no to what could be a fantastic opportunity:-)

It's LMD's birthday party tomorrow. I've still not heard from any of the nursery parents so I hope some of them turn up. Sister S is visiting with cousin G for the weekend, so we should get a good goosip/whinge tonight:-) But it means I don't see when I'm going to get much studying done this week. Again:-(

A vast improvement

My new job is much better than the old one:-)

I think I'm doing pretty well there. I'm not sure what they think - but they seem happy enough. I got my contract on Friday - only two days after starting! It was wrong, but hey, no problem;-) He changed it for me without quibbling and now I've signed up for a year. yippee!

Oh yes, and finishing at 3pm three days a week is flipping fantastic! This work/life balance thing sure is true:-)

And I've made it to college without any stress, ready & willing to learn rather than trying to find reasons not to go.

See, I knew it was all for the best. Most things usually are - if you look at them in that way:-)