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

Birdie85

Cinny91 wrote: »

It's a date! This April there was a "battle of the seasons" tour that was in Manchester - Michelle Visage hosted and it had Jinkx, Bianca, Adore, Detox, Ivy, Bendala, Courtney and a bunch of others that battled it out. Hoping they do the same next year, will let you know if they do and you want to come!

That sounds awesome! I finished S6 last night.

Your maternity plans sound good, will be brilliant if you can be a work from home Mum, especially with that amount of flexibility. Are you taking some time off initially? I know it's a small family business, but they can reclaim much of the maternity pay and I think it'll be best if you have at least a couple of months at the start without having to think about squeezing work in amongst the sleepless nights and dirty nappies! I know I was good for nothing for months due to recovering from pregnancy/birth, tiredness, hormones all over the place, baby brain etc!

Urgh, I'm really miffed with work this week and it's still 71 days until my holiday so there's no silver lining in my cloud!!!

Cinny91

I'm just waiting for Season 7 to appear somewhere now life is so boring without flawlessly contoured faces!

I'll be taking 3-4 weeks off after the birth to get us (hopefully) into a bit of a routine before I start picking up the slack. I think I'm so un-worried atm because OH also works from home, so I can play pass-the-baby for 5 minutes while I do a smidge of work. Because, in all honesty, I could do the bare-bones of my workload in about 15-30 minutes if I didn't faff around But for the first few months I'm going to pass the accounts stuff back to our accountants. Mindless repetitive jobs that take no time are one thing.. important jobs setting up payments to the government are another! There's no way I'll have the time/energy/brain power to sort that out :rotfl:

Not really a silver lining but at least you can day dream about the holiday! Have you got Zach any more adorable things?

Birdie85

I must admit that I actually downloaded and watched S7 before discovering the rest on Netflix!

Sounds like a v.good plan for life, loads of time with Fox for both of you! I have tried working from home a few times when Z's been ill or we've not had childcare and it's just not good; he is happy playing alone until the laptop comes out then he neeeeeeeds to be with me!

We haven't got Zach anything worthy of showing off recently. Holding on for holiday now where we'll buy him allofthethings. Oooh and we've got tickets to Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party so we're trying to come up with an easy, cheap but awesome family costume! :cool:

Birdie85

By the way, it took me until about halfway through S4 of RPDR to get the joke around Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve and Talent! :rotfl:

wendz86

That sounds good about maternity and working Cinny. Sounds like it will work out well for you. Definitely don't put much pressure on yourself though.

My director at work text me yesterday and said they are all missing me. Really want to go back but with all the childcare/travel costs i'm not sure whether it will be worth it so going to have to do all the sums. Won't be till March/April anyway.

Dinah93

I got the Quidco job!!!!! Going to be working 10 hours a week, from home, initially a 3 month contract but hopefully if it goes well will be extended. Apparently there were a lot of applicants but I stood head and shoulders above the rest, which made me all gooey and glowy inside.

In Italy but a nightmare day. Mum had her handbag snatched in Rome, with her wallet, train tickets back here (3 hours away), car keys, my credit card, the camera etc in. She seems fairly accepting but my phone hasn’t worked in Italy, just says not registered on network, and NIMs screen cracked in the sun when he left it on a table, can’t use his sim in my phone as different networks, so now he’s driving over an hour to try to get his screen repaired so we can call and cancel my credit card. Luckily dad had his phone and about e100 in his pocket, so they have enough money to get back to the station, and we’re going to call a friend in England, ask them to go get mums spare car key and overnight it to us here. Not a great end to the holiday. It’s been nice otherwise, bit tarnished by having over 300 (no exaggeration, I counted) midge bites (and that’s just me), and it rained a fair bit the first week. It’s also a lot harder to have a relaxing family holiday when NIMs depression is flaring, been a few challenging days.

The good news he got before we came away though is NIM has been offered a place on a nursing degree starting in January. So that gives us a few months to get the finances sorted. Will involve belt tightening, but at least he gets a bursary and he’s going to still work weekends in a care home too. He has one interview lined up for when we get back, hopefully a second one will be confirmed. We were panicking a bit about my job when he goes back to uni but it looks like he can get a childcare grant to cover 85% of our costs, so I can keep on with my teaching as only earning £30-£60 a day it isn’t worth putting children in nursery.

Speaking of perfect prep machines, Cinny I can sell you a second hand one if you want? I could do with it a few more weeks but I was going to stick it on the MSE babies fb group but if you’re looking for one ours is in mint condition. If the time comes and you do need any expressing advice I’d be happy to help, I racked up 9 months of expressing between my two. If you combi breast feed and express it’s a lot better, but exclusively expressing is a pain as you need to be near a pump at least every 3 hours (which means near a socket really, manual pumps are fine for a one off but not a few times a day) so you can’t really go out for the day, whereas if they can latch you can express at home and plonk them on when out and about. And as soon as you know what gender it is I’ll send you a massive box of clothes (especially if it’s a boy, I gave a away a lot of Grace’s but I have loads of Bens still) so don’t worry about the year one cost for basics

I clearly have much messier kids Wendz! I do let Ben snack in the lounge which is 80% of the mess! Grace hates the hoover too so I have to do it when shes at nursery, or get NIM to take her in the garden to the swing for a few minutes or something! I do have a cordless Dyson though…. it’s brilliant to be cordless but shocking at picking up anything of any size, God forbid you drop the rice crispie box! Dirt doesn’t harm anyone… but small bits of plastic, tin foil etc are all ideal fodder for Ben to eat. This morning he ate a small rock and a dead fly off the patio…

Awww Fox’s scan pic makes me so broody! At least 3 years to wait now what with NIMs uni return.

I missed the plastic earing back news, what info is this that I need in my life?!

Hope you can work out childcare to get back to work Wendz. Won’t you get tax credits towards childcare now as a single parent?

Give the hospital a call Cinny, we were told to allow 45 mins for the scan but I’ve had scans that have been 30 minutes late starting as if an emergency comes in they bump the routine stuff back.

What pool is that Birdie? Need to find Grace a fun one as every time we go to Stockton Splash the blinking slide is closed for repairs.

ETA: In the 40 minutes or so it’s taken me to catch up and write this another bug has bitten my chuffing foot 4 more times. ARGH.

wendz86

Great news about the quidco job!

Sorry to hear the holiday hasn't been as great as it could have been. That is awful about your poor mums bag.

I have looked into working tax credits , getting some working and child credits now due to low salary this year. However I think it's either me not working enough hours (although I do 28) or my salary being too 'high' I won't be entitled next year or only a small amount. I am saving up childcare vouchers while on maternity leave but that won't cover that much.

Dinah93

I think you only have to do 16 hours to qualify, WTC cut off is about 16k, CTC with two children when paying childcare is about £55k! Entitlement table is here if it helps at all.

wendz86

Thanks just looked again and might be entitled but know they are changing things next year.

Birdie85

Brilliant news about the Quidco job! Hope it goes well. When will you start?

Shame your holiday has ended on a sour note and ouch to the bites!

Good news about NIM's course but I'd be wary about counting on him doing weekend work on top of his course. I know several people who've attempted nursing degrees (and dropped out because the workload was too much...) and a common complaint was barely having time to sleep and eat once they'd done all the necessary reading, essay-writing and the 12-hour shifts on a ward, I'd imagine that it may become too much for him to spend what little free time he has to go to work when he's on placement.

The fun pool we go to is Northallerton