The Ultimate Incentive Part 11 (or 10B) It's The Final Countdown

tinkerbel

I feel weird when I leave my cc at home.. I think it's like a safety blanket where even if I get lost or I don't know what scenario.. Maybe my bike breaks and I need to get an expensive taxi or something.. I would have it with me, but it is worth a try! Also I spend lots online on it! NSD today apart from Oyster card so that's a plus!
And the railcard arrived already!

Birdie I like the bits you found! I'd never be able to pull those hair clips off (my hairs too boring!) any luck in super drug? What are your office rules like? Could you do a coloured ombr! dip dye thing? Then if you get bored/wreck your hair you can just cut it off? And no roots! Going to get my mum to do my hair this week I hope to save hairdresser moolah!

Cinny how were the fries?!? You deserve some treats for sure!!

tinkerbel

I forgot to say (sorry) Dinah (or anyone!) I've been clearing out some clothes etc this week.. Any good Ebay/fb selling site tips?

Birdie85

I bought a semi-permanent colour last night just in case I hate it Can't remember which colour I went for in the end (had about 4 boxes in my hands!) but it's a reddish colour, hope DH doesn't mind being married to a ginge! :rotfl: Going to do it tomorrow night so I have the weekend to fix it in case of disaster! Can you see I'm feeling confident?! Our work rules aren't too strict, there's a girl here with bright red hair, a guy with one half white and one half black hair and my manager has plum hair (which is why I went red rather than purple, didn't want to turn into a mini-her!), I think as long as it's on the 'natural-ish' scale it's OK.

Oh bum... manager has just walked in with red hair! Oh well, I've bought it now!

Hope you enjoyed the fries last night Cinny!

Tink - can you get an app on your phone that books/pays for taxis so the security is there but your card isn't? It's a blessing and a curse that sites save CC info to make online shopping quicker and easier, so tempting to just add stuff to basket!

Cinny91

I think red hair will really suit you, Birdie!! Mine is a dark red atm and I love it so much (which is a good thing, a little wary to colour my hair until I'm in my 2nd trimester) And you'll be fine. Just take your time and I will warn you red hair dye gets EVERYWHERE. I was cleaning splatters of shower water from above my bathroom door?!

My fries were beautiful and everything I ever wanted :happyhear

Sorry I did reply yesterday! Had a bit of an accident in my car, just had poor Winston taken away (thankfully he's fixable, and we have the excess money to spare) and have a little firecracker of a fiat 500 until he's better! Did have a trip to a&e though, make sure everything was okay. Just suffering through muscle spasms at the moment that they couldn't give me anything for because of the hybrid.

Also. Booked tickets to the HP studio tour for August! Any tips for what to take/expect on the day, Birdie?! So excited and I've already been eyeing up a Hufflepuff body suit

Birdie85

I had spare time last night so I got brave and did my hair! It's a dark brownish redish colour, think next time I'll go redder as it's nice but I wanted it a bit brighter! I also got the scissors out (I really need to get OH to lock them in a box and hide the key from me!) and cut a fringe in! :eek: It looked like the shower scene from Psycho when I was washing it out!

Hope you're OK after your accident! :eek: What happened? Make sure you take it easy, how about a bath or hot water bottle for the spasms? xxx

Very super exciting stuff about the HP Tour! No tips, just enjoy yourself! Leave plenty of time to get there and try to make sure you don't get on a train that stops at every.single.station. on the way to Watford Junction. It takes an age! Not that I'd advocate lying or anything, but if you tell them it's your birthday when they ask if anyone is celebrating right at the start, you get to open the doors to the great hall!

Cinny91

Was just a really bad timing thing, I think! I was coming out of a junction, and as I set off someone came reversing out of their drive. Genuinely think they just saw the road was clear like I did, and didn't see me on my merry way. I have an owl full of wheat I'm going to use on my shoulder later. Just trying to keep it moving so it doesn't seize?

Like the sound of your hair!! I can't wait until mine is naturally long enough for a fringe. You'll have the bug now

Might sneak myself a birthday in in that case Although we are driving down, can't have anyone to take care of Ryder so I think I'm driving in the morning and Rich will drive in the evening. I even paid extra to get the tickets posted to me in hopes they arrive in a magical fashion (if they don't, don't tell me. let me live this dream) Heard they have butterbeer icecream for summer!!

Any plans for the weekend?!

Birdie85

Aww man, Butterbeer ice cream will be so awesome! Of course the tickets arrive by owl post!

Not sure what I'm up to over the weekend; meeting a friend tonight for early tea with Zach's little girlfriend (they're totally in love, it's adorable!) and tomorrow is a mystery! OH wants to go swimming on Sunday and that's as far as our plans go! Really need to get better at making plans for our free time!

Dinah93

First of all a massive congrats to Cinny! Amazing news. And I’m defiantely taking too long away from the diary if whole new humans are being formed without my knowing. When’s the first scan? I hope you’re feeling okay still, my morning sickness was always after lunch with Grace but with Ben I was never actually sick. Tbh for me personally it was the first trimester tiredness that really floored me, I used to sleep in the shower cubicle at work, or nap in my car at lunchtime! I take it wedding plans are in flux as weren’t you planning to get married around what’ll now be your due date? Can’t believe you forgot it was a possibility, you must be the laid back woman in history! Everyone else is crossing off the days on the calendar each month when hoping for a mini-me.

You can dress them in whatever you want, boy or girl. There is a big movement towards gender neutral parenting, although in my experience that tends to be girls dressed as boys rather than boys dressed as girls. I’ve always let Grace pick her own since she was big enough to voice an opinion, every single morning I ask her if it’s a skirt day, a dress day, a trousers day or a shorts day and without fail she says ‘a dress day mama! It’s always a dress day!’ – she’s such a girlie girl! She even tells me how she wants her hair doing now, I’ve had to start looking it all up on youtube, taming ringlets into plaits isn’t easy.

Tell me where all the cute boy clothes are hiding ladies – I find shopping for Ben really hard! Everything seems designed to make him look like a tiny pot head or a tiny accountant! I quite like frugi because it’s bright colours, I’ve already seen enough blue and grey to last a lifetime.

8th-11th October November could work for me for another meet up. Although not the 8th or 9th itself, but 10-11th works. I think, I really need to pry out of my yoga teacher trainer when the dates are, all I know is it’s 10 Sundays over the next year. And I’m due to do the 8-12 year old teacher training module with yogabugs once we get a date from head office too. Depending on how far it is I may or may not be able to come, being super tight on money atm. Anyway I’m up for a meet but if I can I’ll be leaving at least one child at home, 3 hours on a train with either of them sounds like a nightmare. Grace is easier than Ben as at least we can read books and things, she was very good on the flights last month. If I have to bring both kids on my own I have a strict 1 hour driving radius, I can't cope with them both on a train.

I’m glad you’ve had a bit of a good time on the personal front Kavics, you deserve to be happy. Leo was an incredible tragedy and it’s clear how much you love him.

Nice to hear from you ROTE, hope you’ve had some positive news since you last posted.

Here, still no resolution on NIMs wages. He was last paid on the 14th April. It has at least forced us to really focus on our spending! NIMs dad has helped a little, we’ve emptied that regular saver we thankfully had in case of emergencies, we’ve run up the overdrafts. We are at least lucky that my boss pays me within 24 hours of me submitting my invoice, it’s just a shame I’m not paid a lot.

Something I spoke to Wendz about but that I haven’t made public knowledge was that I was having a problem with accepting more work as I didn’t have a clean DBS. Therefore a lot of schools wouldn’t allow me in. However I’ve had the news this week that my complaint to the police commission was successful, and they’re removing the caution on there. The caution was for loosing my cool and punching my best friend when I was 19 and I discovered she’d slept with my boyfriend of 3 years. I can’t justify what I did, but it was a gut reaction, and the level of caution I was given was shown to be far in excess of what was justified. So I now have a clean DBS, and from September I can take more work. I’ve already gotten 5 hours booked in teaching on a Monday, and I’ve offered a second day a week as well if it can be filled.

I've also applied for a job with Quidco, as a deal hunter. And I'm thrilled that I'm through to the second stage of the process. I submitted that tonight so fingers crossed I make it to round 3. It's 10 hours a week, work from home, so would suit me well and fit in with the other things I have going on.

The big issue I have here is we don’t know what NIM will be working as, if I have to pay for both children to be in childcare while I teach I’ll be losing around £20 a day for each day I work. However if I don’t work until a year from my training date in February I have to repay the training costs. Plus I like my job!

My dad also got a new job starting September, so I’m going to be completely taking over the internet side of his business. I hope I can grow it and make it more profitable this way, as I’ve felt quite hamstrung so far as he has set ideas of where he wants it to go.

NIM is still signed off and he’s not in a great place with his mental health. He needs to get out of that job as he has no issue working just not in an environment where he’s being bullied. He was offered a job he was very excited about, but they don’t actually have the hours at present as he interviewed for a different job but they’re creating this post for him instead. So now he’s applying for other things again. He’s also on the waiting list for a place on a nursing degree. We’ve worked out with the nhs bursary and him still working weekends and holidays we should be able to afford it.

So in a nutshell, that's us. I'll try to do a less reactive post tomorrow, but I just wanted to get caught up on everyone else's news first.

Cinny91

Thank you Dinah!! I haven't had any sickness in a while, and as I'm now around 8+2 now, I read I might be lucky enough to not get it at all? And honestly, I found it so hard tracking ovulation and my cycles would range anywhere from 4 - 5 weeks that I just assumed I was broken

As for the wedding, we're unsure! We don't think we can work the holiday days for going in October after all - while we'd be okay with me taking a week of work unpaid we can't do that with OH's work. And I'll be too far gone to fly in December to do it over Christmas. We're thinking we might wait for a few years if we decide a Vegas wedding is really what we want. If not, my parents have lasted 30 years on a quick registry office wedding so I'm sure it'll do us too

I do love that more people are climbing aboard in breaking the gender binary! I think OH's family have a big shock coming there way, I normally keep my "liberal" thoughts to myself but I'm already getting protective over the little blighter. They're very blue for boys/pink for girls, but my parents raised me very differently. I think you've just got to let people find themselves.

Cute boys clothes are eeeeeeverywhere!! I'd highly reccommend going on the boots website and just typing in "dungarees". My Sister got over excited and got us this. This set is also adorable and possibly modeled by a Prince George?

Totally unrelated in a sense, but we're going to be getting this print for the nursery. Well, after the first scan. Not sure when the date is for it yet, Dinah!

As ever, sounds like things are in a bit of a kerfuffle for you at home! I hope NIM is feeling better soon, mental health issues are the worse and you never know how long it'll take to get better/what the lasting implications are. Hope he can get the training you want, and you're able to make ends meet while it happens. Has he looked at jobs in other sectors?

And good luck with the Quidco job! I think that's something you'd be great at. Just wondering, if NIM is signed off work why you need to think about childcare costs? Or did you mean it in a future sense of when you're both back working?

Birdie85

Without quite knowing just what 'tiny pot head' clothes are, I can't really make suggestions but we just pick out the bright stuff in M&Co and Sainsbury's for Zach's day-to-day wear. Frugi stuff is lovely, as is Jojo's, Ted Baker Baby, Bluezoo (Debenhams) and Boden, but the budget isn't stretching that far now! He wears a lot of blue but it's super bright turquoisey blues because he looks good in it; we have a lot of hand-me-downs from my nephew who seems to only wear shades of sludge but I tend to just send him to nursery in that stuff as there's plenty time to dress in boring colours when he's older, we're enjoying the bright stuff while it lasts! We're not really into the whole blue for boys and pink for girls thing either, even though we knew we were having a boy, the nursery is very gender neutral in a fun rainbow coloured way as we hated the idea of everything being blue. My friend has a little girl and everything has to be pink, even the balls for her ball pool had to be pink. !!!!!!. Zach's favourite ball is a pink and purple Frozen ball, he doesn't care that it's not typically 'boy' colours, why the hell should he?!

How bloomin' frustrating about NIM still not getting paid! Why the heck haven't they paid him?! Have they given a reason for the delay?

Good news that you can start working in schools now It's a shame that a mistake from your teens was hanging over you for so long. good luck with the Quidco job too

That is a cool-a$$ print Cinny!