Work – a bloody nightmare!!!

The dreaded word … Work.

I am currently under so much pressure to get about 60 hours work done in 28 hours and it is driving me crazy.  Hopefully it should all be done by 24th November, but I will not be posting my blog as often as I should do.  Apologies.  I will probably blog once a week, on my day off, which is a Wednesday and I have peace and quiet.  Not today though as some one is working with a drill a few houses down from me!!   Weekends I have to catch up on some sleep, as I not sleeping well due to the above.

One thing else, the kids have gone back to school and my Faithy is loving it 😀

TTFN

School Holidays

I hate the summer school holidays!!  I know the schools are going back on Thursday, but it can’t come soon enough to be honest.  My temper is getting frayed (probably like most mothers out there) by the phrase ‘I’m boreeedddd’.  Every time I suggest something ‘I don’t want to do that’ or ‘I don’t like that’ and I can’t wait until bed time so I don’t have to hear that whinge or complaining that she has nothing to do. She has been pretty good, don’t get me wrong, but the last three or four weeks have been tortuous.  As we haven’t got the money, there is only so many things we can do. At least she is biting at the bit to go back to school, as she loves school, so I blessed with that.

Why don’t the Government just change the school holidays and have 1 week at half term, have 3 weeks at end of term and 4 weeks for summer school holidays, then the children will not get bored 😀

 

TTFN

Hustle and bustle

First day of my holiday and I spent it doing the most dreaded thing ever, for me that is.  I had to go into the City Center.

I live on the outskirts of the City about 4 miles from the City Center.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the City of Norwich ‘its a fine City’ so the signs say and I work in the City but I do not venture into this dreaded place very often.

I had to take my daughter Faith shoe shopping for her school shoes.  We got onto the 9.44pm bus thinking all workers had gone to work, the old age pensioners would be in the City by now as after 8.30am their free bus passes would be valid.  We got onto the bus and when I glanced around I saw a full bus of OAP’s sitting looking miserable.  It was a double decker so we went upstairs …. to a load of more miserable OAP’s.  I think I was probably about the 5th youngest on the bus at 43.

The bus journey normally takes about 15-20 mins.  We were delayed by yet more OAP’s getting on the bus at various stops.  We had nearly got to the City Center (Anglia Square) when we saw a lorry.  The lorry was not moving anywhere, it was blocking half of our side of the road.  No problem with that I hear you say, but if you knew Norwich you would know what the junction of Edward Street and Magdalen Street was like.  The lorry had got stuck on the railings outside a pub.  The buses had to carefully manoeuvre around the truck taking care not to hit the railings near the doctors.

We eventually got into the City, just popped into work for 30 mins. to just see if everything is hunky dory and to begin mentally preparing myself to enter into the lion’s mouth.

It wasn’t too bad at first, we had a look around a couple of charity shops, went to the bank and went to Tesco’s.  I was a bit peckish, looked at my watch and it was 11.45am. I said to Faith ‘come on we will have chips off the market’, cheap and cheerful.  We sat overlooking the market and the castle to eat them and it was thoroughly pleasant to say the least.

After we had finished, we went back down to the market and into the lions mouth.  It was like a mad house.  People everywhere, pushing and shoving.  I gripped hold of Faith’s hand and put my head down to push my way to W.H. Smiths.  Faith wanted a Moshi Monster pencil case to go with her new Moshi Monster backpack, lunch box and drink container (I think she likes Moshi Monster’s a tad).  She held onto my hand really tightly as we made our way out of W.H. Smiths, battling across the road, trying not to push anyone out of the way.  Weaving in and out of the OAP’s with their shopping trolleys, making sure we avoided Mum’s with their prams, talking on their phone or texting, one hand trying to control where the pram is headed.  Then we came to the shoe shop, Clarks.  Oh boy, what a treat we have in store.

We made our way up the stairs. ‘It is about a 10 min wait’ the shop assistant said while she handed Faith a paper mask (I still don’t what it is)!!  We got to the top of the stairs where assistant gave me a number, 22 and said ‘its about a 15 min wait’.  I thought to myself it didn’t take me 5 mins to walk about 20 stairs!!  It didn’t prepare me for the chaos that assaulted my eyes.   Every crook and cranny of the shop floor were littered with people and shoe boxes.  Old, young and babies.  I fought my way through with Faith to the back of the shop.  I don’t know if it just me, but why would you go on a family outing to a shoe shop!!  Nearly every family in there had at least three generations.  Children, parents and grandparents…. at a shoe shop …. to buy school shoes…. I looked up at the number board, it was on number 10…  To be fair we only had to wait about 20 mins.  We brought her shoes and I said ‘can we go home please’, Faith just nodded her head and said ‘yes please’.

TTFN 😀

 

 

Bank Holiday Tidying

When I got up this morning it was cloudy.   An hour later it started to rain, 11 hours later and it is still raining!  So I thought to myself what should I do.  My daughter was chomping at the bit, so we started tidying her bedroom.

Her bedroom is something akin to what you see off the TV program ‘Hoarders’.  She collects everything, I mean everything, buttons, stones, paper (a lot of paper), odd bits of wool and boxes, she loves empty boxes.  We swapped everything around in her bedroom then we got onto separating it into piles of keep, rubbish, paper and charity donations. It took about 7 hours in total.  We must have got rid of about 3 or 4 reams of used paper and about 2 full black bag of rubbish.  We have got 3 black bin bags going to charity and I am selling some of her toys which are too expensive to go to charity.

I am pleased as we have halved her cuddly toy and book collection and now I can walk in her room and not trip over anything. She is happy too as she can now crawl under her bed which she think is marvellous.

Happiness all around 😀

TTFN

 

 

Money

I don’t want lots of money.  I would like enough money each month to think I don’t have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to get by.  Twenty four years I have lived like this, till March of this year.  I finally got my loan paid off.  I thought okay save the money I had been paying for my loan.  In April I had a windfall, I was paying much more for my energy bills and I got an £800 refund.  Good I said to myself, I can the living room finally done.

I got a brand new corner sofa in January (on HP), as my old one was falling apart, but the new one didn’t look good on my wine red carpet I had put down ten years ago, as it was wearing a bit thin.  With the £800 I decided I would have a change and have laminate laid.  This was done in June.  I thought I had turned a corner of not having to scrape the barrel again and life was on the change.  How wrong I was.

On Thursday my daughter’s father rang me up. He basically said to me he’s lost his job and taken up looking after his partners sister as a carer, he could no longer afford to give me as much maintenance money. I was shocked, I knew he lost his job, fair enough, maintenance money would go down.  However, to cut a long story short, he told me that with his carers money, they had to move house to live in the house where he was caring for his partners sister (mortgage free), renting out their own house and with his partners money they would be getting nigh on £2000 a month, plus he got a good pay off from his job!!! For him to tell me he was cutting my money down by £115 a month, I was none to please.

This basically means I have to go back to scraping the barrel, but I have to scrape hard.  It is not that we are living the high life.  We have no car, because we cannot afford it.  We do not smoke, we do not drink. We have sky, the basic package that we cannot cancel till May of next year.  We have the cheapest mobile phone contracts – £5 a month.  If we cancel our Sky and our phone and broadband, we cannot cut anything else out as we have nothing.  I am working, Bill is working as a dinner lady (man) at the local school as he is studying to become a teacher, but that is 4 years away.  Yet my daughters sperm donor drives a motorbike and his partner drives a car and they go out once a week for a meal.

I don’t know if I am blowing this all out of proportion, I know there are people worse off than me.  I just want a little break of me not having to worry about money constantly.

That’s it, I have had my little moan.

😀

 

Scammers (warning long post)

I was intending to post everyday, but I was tied up last night with a old friend who had nearly been scammed (she is 64). She was called by a so called Microsoft Technician who said your computer has a trojan on it.  When she said this to me, alarm bells started ringing (I was called up by them a few months ago, but a few choice words to them, they didn’t call me back lol ;).)  She was duped into letting them onto her computer, (though I don’t know the correct details at the moment) and she saw them moving the cursor around. She was asked if she does online banking and she said she did not (that is true) then they said about various virus and trojan’s being on her computer. They told her they would deposit £650 into her paypal account for a new computer.  She was also asked to take that £650 to a woman at Asda!!!!  After she put the phone down to them, she immediately called me.  I said it was a scam and to shut down her computer immediately, to stop remote access to her computer.

She said they were ringing a few times a day over the last few days and they said they were going to call back in a little while.  So I said ‘when they ring you again, tell them your friend has come round and picked up the computer and is going to fix it’.  We then had a talk and I told her all the internet safety rules again (I was back up IT when the IT guy was off on hols or sick).  I told her never to give personal, back or password details over the phone (she did not). We talked for a while and I reassured her she had done the right thing, what to say when they rang back and to ask for their phone number and name as I would ring them.

They rang her back about 10 minutes later.  She then asked them what their telephone number was and their name like I asked her to do, they gave it. She said she had not received the £650 into her paypal account and that anyway her friend had taken away her netbook to see what was up with it, so she could not access her paypal account now and it was out of her hands.  They then got angry, saying that they would take her to Court as she had printed the cheque !?! and this was fraud!!!!.  She said that she hadn’t printed it and she said “if I did you can put a stop on it”.  She said that she would have a word with her friend (meaning me) as she worked within the Law system (I work in a firm of Solicitors) and they said I would know about copyright law in the US, blah, blah, blah.  She hung up and called me back, I said they couldn’t take you to Court as they would have to instruct lawyers, for them then to draw up the paperwork, get notice served on you about taking you to a small claims court etc.  I said don’t worry about it because it’s not going to happen.  Then she went onto say that she had been onto her Bank to tell them about this and to keep an eye on her account.

I tried their number and I can’t get through, funny that isn’t it.  When I ring it, you get a voice saying ‘this number is not accepting calls at present, please try again later’.  Just to let you all know the number it is 01209 320 1375.  It is supposed to be a Santa Barbara, USA and she spoke to a Dominic Richards or if he weren’t available I could speak to a Sam Rogers.  I have tried numerous times to get through to this number.  I have even tried putting the prefix 001 (to connect to the USA) and then the number but it comes up with the same message.  I doubt they will call my friend again.

If you do have problems with these fraudsters here is a link that will help you get your computer into its original state https://blog.malwarebytes.org/tech-support-scams/

If it happens to you please report this http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/

TTFN

 

Big Mama

I wish I didn’t wake up every morning with songs in my head.  This morning, the song was “Don’t you wish your girlfriend was hot like me” …….  Really!!! I thought to myself.

I’m a 43 year old mother of one called Faith whose 9 and my toy boy partner of 26 who is called Bill and dare I say it……. I am obese.  I mean, really obese.  There I’ve said it.  My partner is always saying that he loves me for who I am and he will love me whatever size I am.  Aaaawwww I hear you say.   Arrrrggghhhh is what is running through my head.

I haven’t always been fat, when I was at school, I could eat what I wanted and whenever I wanted it.  I would not put on any weight.  In fact my nickname at school used to be spindle or beanpole.  I was thin and tall for my age.  I was not really a sporty girl, I played in a netball team which I really enjoyed and I played goal keeper. That was it for sports in school that I enjoyed.  When I left school, I used to do roller-skating and that was twice a week.

I started putting the weight on when I met my ex-husband.  I would still eat like I used to but did not exercise. Now 25 years later I want to do something about it, I tried at the beginning of the year, I lost one stone but put 7lbs back on.  I am determined to lose weight.  Although exercise would be out of the question as such as I have heel spurs in both feet, it really is painful.

When I am on holiday next week, I will get back on my diet, promise.  I can’t go on it any sooner as we are running a competition at work called ‘The Great British Office Bake Off’  which involves my colleagues Lauren and Bobby and our stationery guy Peter.  It ends on Thursday and I will let you know how it went, keep your fingers crossed for me 😀

TTFN