Pollyanna

ChopinonaBudget

Good news :j
I did indeed get the Natwest 0% credit card. :j:j:j:j:j
So I can only assume that the reason I was declined over the phone was because I actually already had one!

I now have a bank account with them too, I'll use it to filter off money for annual spends and the grocery shop, I'm going to keep my overdrawn account for bills only now. That makes it lovely and tidy

And Barclaycard can indeed go and do unspeakable things to themselves as I now haev 0% elsewhere :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:
With a to boot

With my new lower minimum payment, my plan is to split the £110 I've been paying Barclaycard into 2, throw half at the Natwest card and half at my Mum. All overpayments will be split 50/50

It's just dawned on me that after spending the last year being refued credit left, right, and centre, Natwest chucked £9000 credit at me. I refused their £4000 overdraft, but my god, I'm still flabbergasted. (My daughter says that only fat people can be flabbergasted, due to the Flab) :rotfl:

£9000

Sainsburys wouldn't even give me £1000, and that b*****d snotfaced condescending little playground bully of a manager from Barclays watched me grovel last year for enough money to cover the rent, which he must have known had little chance of being accepted.

New lower Debt repayment figure due to timetable screwup. I've just had to lose a student I think. Unless I can clone myself :cool:

ChopinonaBudget

Today's been an odd mix - I started my new timetable, and due to the craziness of my day, I earned more in one day than I have EVER done in a single day in my life :j Next week should be even slightly higher as I had one cancellation today that I'll make up later but technically won't get paid for till I do so I can't count it.
Happy Bunny!!!

We did get a takeaway though, as my daughter's birthday sleepover failed to materialise and by 8pm I was too shattered to cook and she was really rather annoyed and upset at being let down, so I paid for a curry.:o (Birthday is monday!!!!!!, she's going to be 15, I feel so old writing that!!!!!!)

Printed off returns lable for Amazon for a stupidly small rucksack I bought for daughter for school, that neither of us spotted the size as it wasn't marked up as "small" or "mini" or "useless for anything other than a can of coke and a packet of pom bears" and the picture made it look full size.
So I'm £25 down till I get the refund and have already had to pay out £35 for a replacement one. I tried the cheap ones but they don't last, and she carries a MASSIVE amount now she's in year 10.

I keep looking at cars online, roughly in the price range of £1200, low insurance group fiestas, that sort of thing. I can't afford one yet, but I've got my eye on clearing enough of the debt to function, saving £1700 for the car and the insurance (insurance will be extortionate as I haven't driven for 7/8 years so no no claims bonus) :eek: and then getting on as soon as poss so I can stop paying over the odds for the ridiculous price of public transport round here, and the cost of taxis. And to add insult to injury, I got provisionally offered cover work by the Music Service as a result of my CV I sent them, (I must have been impressive as they called immediately), but as soon as I said I don't have a car, they changed their tune and said I wouldn't be able to get from school to school fast enough on public transport to be able to manage the workload. That p*****s me off a bit. I can't afford a car as I don't do enough hours, but I can't get the hours as I don't have a car.
Ah well. Sod them. Their loss. And there's still the 2 private schools ....

In the meantime, I have been fleabaying like a fury today. I've put my daughter's ipod nano on, and her portable DVD player, I'm selling every DVD boxset I own as I only really watch things once. (And some I never even watched, I have DVDs still sealed! And I wonder how I got into this mess ) eBay lifted my 10 items per month limit on thursday so I'm 100% in the ebay game now, (nearly wrote 100% ON the game ) so it's all systems go. I have an iPod nano to sell too, (I tend to only use my classic for music, the nano was a pointless buy as I wildly underestimated the amount of storage space I would need) but I'm not selling it till my 99p charger cable arrives from Amazon as I'm not convinced I'll get as many bids without a cable.

I'm knackered, but I've earned a load today, and potentially earned something on ebay from my listings (FREE LISTING WEEKEND!)

Note to self - Must stop overusing parenthesis. I have a problem. I need help

Although I suspect I need more help for my desire to correct all the grammar and punctuation when I was writing out the blurb on the back of the DVD boxsets for my eBay listings.
I nearly used "(sic)" as I just couldn't cope with the lack of commas any more

Then I remembered a truism "Anal retentiveness wins neither friends nor bids"

I should get that on a t-shirt

ChopinonaBudget

I have finally finished eBay listings for today! :T I've got 17 items up for sale (2 are my daughter's), and I have two more to do for next free listing day.
I'm going to hit the clothes and LPs once These are completed (I bought a massive amount of LPs years ago with the intention of selling on eBay and never got round to it; some are worth considerable amounts of money but it's going to take time & patience to go through them all!)

Out next for groceries, daughter is cooking soup for dinner tonight, yum!

Rainbow_Bridge

You are a busy lady! It's great that you have so many income streams coming to fruition x.

Heffi1

ChopinonaBudget wrote: »

Incidentally, as your nephew is young enough to appreciate this one, get his mum to ask for Barkat animal pasta on prescription, it is AWESOME! Little ducks made out of corn, and if she's in the stupid sort of mood I was in one day, she can cook the pasta, strain a can of beans, save the beans for something else ( I use them in chilli as we both hate kidney beans), and serve the two mixed up together on gluten free toast - it's an amazing kids altenative to those little tins of cartoon character pasta that he can't have any more, and it costs next to nothing :j

I'm happy to help with gluten free questions if you have any, I've not been doing this long, but I come from a background of food intolerances/vegan diets/etc etc etc and I've pretty much picked it all up super fast and as budgety as I think I can get it.
P.S. Being diagnosed coeliac is a good thing, your nephew sounds like he was terribly ill, a GF diet is such a simple way to feel so much better and get healthy again. Both me and my daughter view her diagnosis as a positive thing, the difference in her health from the diet is extraordinary

Edit: P.P.S It's always worthwhile being stubborn and arguing about prescription food. Almost everytime I have to have contact with an actual person (outside of a repeat prescription) at the GP surgery with a request for an item, I get told "you can't get that any more, it was taken off the prescribable foods list". I'm so used to this by now, I think I actually sound bored when I respond... "no it hasn't, x y and z has been taken off, but not this. I read the coeliac society bulletins, and this is allowed. So I'd like 4 of them please" I always get what I wanted, but they always try it on, it's pathetic really, the last attempt was for pizza bases, I just said "no. they're still on. I orderded 2", she argued, I repeated "no, they're still on", she argued, I repeated "no. they're still on" she huffed and wrote me out a prescription.
Oh and don't go to Boots, they're awful. Find a little independant chemist who actually knows their way around the foods wholesalers!

Thank you so much Chopin that is a great help, I shall tell her about the Phil Vickery books too as she is not an accomplished cook yet, but is willing to try so she is half way there already.

Poor little mite was so ill, none of us had a clue, he had upset tummy all the time and lost so much weight you could see his ribs poking through, so bad in fact that it was being considered whether she was neglecting him !!!

We helped her get a diagnosis and since about May time he has put his weight back on and is positively thriving, he knows he has different foods to his brother and if he asks and gets told no he can't have it, he wanders off muttering Ben have a poorly tummy and is happy now.

ChopinonaBudget

Rainbow_Bridge wrote: »

You are a busy lady! It's great that you have so many income streams coming to fruition x.

Thank you! I'm not sure how much money I can make from eBay and for how long; there's only a finite amount of stuff I have in the house I can sell! But I'm certainly making the best of the situation while I can. After all, all that stupid overspending should have SOME advantages!!

ChopinonaBudget

Heffi1 wrote: »

Thank you so much Chopin that is a great help, I shall tell her about the Phil Vickery books too as she is not an accomplished cook yet, but is willing to try so she is half way there already.

Poor little mite was so ill, none of us had a clue, he had upset tummy all the time and lost so much weight you could see his ribs poking through, so bad in fact that it was being considered whether she was neglecting him !!!

We helped her get a diagnosis and since about May time he has put his weight back on and is positively thriving, he knows he has different foods to his brother and if he asks and gets told no he can't have it, he wanders off muttering Ben have a poorly tummy and is happy now.

No problem, happy to help

We found gluten free chicken breast crispy coating in Home Bargains for 49p this afternoon, you'd be amazed at where you can pick up cheap GF stuff if you keep an eye out!

I'm so glad your little nephew is looking and feeling so much better now, undiagnosed coeliac disease wreaks havoc on sufferers and their families; my daughter didn't lose weight but she was vomiting, had constant gastric problems, a mouth full of ulcers, alopecia, dermatitic problems that would have her in tears, cracked heels, exhaustion, insomnia, hypoplastic enamel on her teeth, bleeding gums, slow healing wounds, lactose intolerance, egg intolerance, and I'm sure there's things I missed off! She missed pretty much a year of school, and still has a very sensitive stomach which we're told will improve the longer she stays on the diet.
To be honest, it's about time the NHS started testing for coeliac disease in children and adults at the first signs of weight loss/failure to thrive/depression/ulcers, but we're still a long way away from that, and that's a story for another forum I suspect!

Give your nephew my best wishes, and let your sister know (I assume it's your sister) that it DOES get easier, and before she knows it, she'll be cooking GF without even thinking about it.
In the meantime, has his brother been tested? CD has a strong genetic link and he has a 10% chance of being coeliac too, even if he is not symptomatic.

Heffi1

ChopinonaBudget wrote: »

Give your nephew my best wishes, and let your sister know (I assume it's your sister) that it DOES get easier, and before she knows it, she'll be cooking GF without even thinking about it.
In the meantime, has his brother been tested? CD has a strong genetic link and he has a 10% chance of being coeliac too, even if he is not symptomatic.

It is my niece actually so my great nephew, I have thought about his brother and so far there are no signs, but she often gives them the same food i.e. GF rather than cook two different sorts. I shall keep my eyes open as the smallest one is only 2 at the moment and Ben did not start to have any symptoms that we noticed until about that age, a pity it took all this time to diagnose, I sometimes think the Dr thought she was making it up.

ChopinonaBudget

Heffi1 wrote: »

It is my niece actually so my great nephew, I have thought about his brother and so far there are no signs, but she often gives them the same food i.e. GF rather than cook two different sorts. I shall keep my eyes open as the smallest one is only 2 at the moment and Ben did not start to have any symptoms that we noticed until about that age, a pity it took all this time to diagnose, I sometimes think the Dr thought she was making it up.

Ah ok, sorry about that!

Just do be careful if she does decide to get his brother tested, as he would test false negative if he's eating that much quantity of GF meals.

I know what you mean about the Dr, my daughter's dietician specificallly told me not to get her tested for CD as she had none of the symptoms (:eek:) and wrote a letter to our GP pretty much not only saying the same thing, but also, I suspect, saying I was an overprotective healthfood faddist who was cutting food groups out of my daughter's diet unnecessarily. After the visit to the dietician, when we requested lactose-free meds, the GP said "well, some things have lactose in, that's just life". :mad:

ChopinonaBudget

28 (count 'em!) 28 items listed on fleaBay!!!!

I've been at it for nearly two days now, on and off, writing out boxset blurb, and uploading photos and stuff. I have 6 bids, and almost everything is being watched.

I'm going to be rich!! :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: