two frugal years to freedom: a fritterer's tale

lobbyludd

ho hum - twiddles fingers.

keep going to bed at reasonable hour (10 ish tonight, asleep by 11), then waking up in wee small hours and not being able to get back to sleep, then crashing at about 4-5ish, dragging myself out of bed when alarm goes off and spending day exhausted.

I've obviously got myself into a v unhelpful cycle, I'm even thinking (shudder) of trying to exercise before bed to try and properly exhaust me for a full night's sleep. Or would that wake me up? just thinking about it mind, don't want to rush into anything.

good stuff:

• cashed out a £5 amazon voucher at sw*gb*cks,
• phone number transferred to new provider today, so will try and get phone unlocked tomorrow.
• tea from stores,
• little green tomatoes sprouting everywhere, think I may have 2 whole peppers growing (did have 3 but broke one as I was poking it to see if the flower had been fertilised- doh )
• friend popped in to see me at work, we will arrange a get together next week and she has some clothes for me
• flea drops arrived from amazon (paid for with free vouchers) and have treated his nibs (who is very much sulking now)
• found webbing to mend free broken hammock that was given to me months ago, and have ordered a ground anchor using more free amazon vouchers.

less good -

• just popped into the kitchen to boil kettle and 2 HUGE slugs in there - mucho shuddering, hate, hate, hate them. they are dead now - which I think is only fair really, even hardcore buddists would agree with me on slugs.
  
• summer is now officially over as I have purchased and found all the gubbins to mend the hammock for the garden - sorry.

mum2one

hope you get the sleep pattern sorted, its a bug bearer when that happens, - thinking maybe try
warm bath - to relax you
hot milky drink
turn off tv, etc an hr before bed so your relaxed
put a notepad by your bed, so if you wake and something troubling you write it down, may work,

xx

parsniphead

lobbyludd wrote: »

so our pay offer is in - actually it doesn't even appear to be an offer as the drs refused to negotiate and the uplift for cost of living is:

0%

again.

those on the national minimum wage will have it uplifted to the living wage which is obviously a good thing, and the rest of us get a one-off bribe of £160 (less tax, NI and pension contributions - which add up to 40% for most, so 96 quid, not to be consolidated into base pay - don't get too excited). My council tax went up £120 this year let alone any other inflation.

oh - except for the Drs, they get 1% obviously, and the GPs - which is fair enough, because they are hardly scraping by on £120K (sorry, they got an uplift last year as well, so £121.2K).

and i think that's where it really sticks in my throat: how is that OK?

my pay has increased 1% in 5 years, compound cpi is about 13% over that time, plus I've had a 3% rise in pension costs. so I'd have needed 15% to regain my position of 5 years ago - hey its a time of austerity though and the country's having a hard time, so I would have taken 1.5% and been happy - but no - nothing.

and no, I don't get a yearly increment.

How much did those MPs get again????

Just been catching up on your diary lobbyludd.

I'm feeling your pain about pay rises. I haven't had one in the past 6 years and it's really starting to get on my nerves. I understand that funding is tight but it's difficult for employees too.

I hope you manage to sleep well tonight. It's frustrating when the sleep pattern gets messed up.

lobbyludd

thanks M21 a nice bath sounds just the ticket although i'll pass on the hot milky drinks: bleugh.

got given flowers from boss today whose daughter was married at the weekend: I have split them into 3 jars added some garden flowers and they look really pretty on the kitchen table.

DD ate 2 blackberries from the garden straight from the bush - ahhhh, I LOVE that we can do that

I have been planning my method of attack on mending the hammock in between swagbucks and nectar adpoints (yawn) and stage one is complete - it would now hold and function as a hammock, but it's still predominantly orange, and not in a way I can live with, so stage 2 is further reinforcement with fabric from mount stashmore. That will be tomorrow's task.

tea from stores, haven't had my phone unlocked yet, can I hang on until monday and get it done with cash.....?

tune in to find out.

lobbyludd

thanks parsniphead,
much better sleep last night, woke a couple of times but straight back to the land of nod.

still without mobile, quite liberating, shall wait until monday (payday) to have it unlocked, using cash.

spendy day, started well.....had reduced finest lentil soup (89p, will do 2 lunches), but went to aldee after work and bought loads of frankly snacky carp, needed bread/milk/coffee (got) and also got lemon mackerel and the odd vegetable, but the rest was basic carby rubbish, however, 2 massive bags for £15 so damage limitation and the kids will be pleased.

resisted buying lovely french lavender at bargain price of 2.89. May go back and see if there are any left on payday.

nothing more to report, further stages of the hammock revamp will occur whilst the monsters are running their grandparents ragged.

lobbyludd

soo last day of school for the monsters and last day of primary for ds and lots of mixed emotions.

came home to a tax credits letter asking for tons of evidence (everyone using my childminder has got one) so that's a bit of a pain (and they want an enormous amount of evidence) but it shouldn't be a financial problem.

harvested potatoes from the one bag last night - trying to add a photo, dd has categorised the into sizes:



went to the reclamation yard this afternoon (took a half day) and after rummaging around in the bins in sweltering heat very near the docks (gorgeous smell :lipsrseal:lipsrseal:lipsrseal) I have found what I hope is the last remaining reclaimed tiles to fix my victorian floor in the hall - he wanted £6 for them, I only had 5.75 so we settled on that (I had an ebay quote for £70 for the tiles I wanted).

I also asked him about his enormous collection of cast iron fireplaces, but they all cost more than the ones I am looking at on flea bay so it's good to get an idea of relative prices of the things I want to finish renovating my house.

Boss spoke to me today about an opportunity to have a temporary promotion in the coming year. We have a large programme of work coming our way, I manage our work programme and have been worrying that if we take this on (and we have no choice) we can't deliver anything else because it's so big (and has no resource). But we spoke about it yesterday, I talked through a lot of the things I thought we needed to do to raise it's profile and get it done and she's come back after a meeting with the great and the good, with tons of possible extra resource and asked me to consider how we'd allocate this, to include delivery of our current work and suggested I should consider including a temporary uplift for me as I'd be overseeing a much bigger, more diverse and higher profile programme.

I am in two minds. It is lovely to have recognition of my ability and a chance to stretch my wings but I am so tired and was looking to cut my days down in a year's time, which I couldn't if this happened. But if it happens I'll have to do the work and secure the money anyway so it'd be daft to turn down the uplift as I'll be debt-free sooner so we'll see how it pans out.

mum2one

lobbyldd - DDs school finished yesterday, i thought she would have had a few tears, even though she went there last May, but she was ok, bar 2 of the class there all off to the same secondary school

Hence todays job - was source uniforms and all the extras, between Sports direct, Asda and tesco - all left to get is the PE shirt which needs to be a specialist supplier.

Then the school trips start - the 1st yr trip is France... and DD wants to go... magic money fairy where did I leave you!
Re the job that sounds amazing, and at least as you say it would be a temporary upift, sounds like they need the contract, and i'm guessing reducing hours would be a no-no, maybe you do a deal as to yes i will do x,y,z - but need to reduce hrs after that.

lobbyludd

If you find the magic money fairy, can you send her over once she's worked her magic for you??

That's a really good idea M2O re negotiating the drop down after, will have a think. It is a really good thing that the work is coming our way as we under a review at the moment (this is the 3rd one in 5 years) which may end up with restructuring and redundancies (due to have concluded by now but seems they're holding off until september) so if we have been given this it signals that they think we as people are worth keeping, even if we end up restructured.

hope so anyway.

I'm not getting any new school wear until august - it's all only from that one shop - tesco don't do our school unfortunately and I don't have any money budgetted for it until last week in august, might be able to get a tie before then! So I'm going to concentrate on washing and stripping out the stuff he can't wear at secondary I think some of his trousers are ok and perhaps one shirt (he has mostly polos and they can only wear polos after easter with the school crest on) this does all bug me - it's the local comp, why does the uniform have to be expensive?

Mum will be here late afternoon and taking kids tomorrow (hopefully early enough for me to start doing the floor) so tea tonight is going to be HM pizzas, home grown new pots in butter and HG mint and a salad (not home grown - my toms are still teeny weeny). If they stay til lunch tomorrow I've enough spag bol sauce in the freezer to cope.

lobbyludd

been awake for hours, load of washing on, dd spent last night sobbing and begging me not to send her away without me going too, as she'll be too homesick. I hope she was just tired, it was heartbreaking, and I have no back-up plan if she doesn't want to go.

lobbyludd

they're away to grandparent's house. was touch and go for a while but although not ecstatic to be going they have gone without tears. off for a siesta and then to get cracking on overdue jobs.