A new royal start

Jessy103

Good luck with the recruiter x

QueenJess

A good win today. I had completely forgotten that the joint credit card we do all spend on collects points. Just cashed out £115 of supermarket vouchers!

I will hold off until the freezer is cleaned out, but this should really help towards restocking and Xmas entertaining.

themadvix

That’s a great result!!

QueenJess

Went to the office yesterday, which turned out to be a mistake.  Not been sleeping for weeks due to silly work stress and not feeling brilliant anyway due to time of the month.  Came back from work, got a migraine and went to bed for 14 hours.  Still feeling awful today and have a bad headache.  I did think about saying I didn't feel well and to work from home, but thought they wouldn't believe me considering I haven't been in the office much.

Now it is a bit urgent I do something as I can't continue like this.  Options are limited and although we'd cope for a while, I am a bit hesitant to just resign (although not off the table).  I had a bit of a brainwave this morning and realised I could take a day of holiday every week (on one of the days I am meant to be in the office) for 3 months (Dec - Feb) when we are quieter at work.  Doesn't solve the long term problem, but uses my holidays (holiday year runs to end of March), means I am still 100% paid and I only have to go into the office 1 day a week then.  Also means I have bought some time to find a job (very quiet at the moment and not seen any options around currently).  Requested it from my boss and just have to wait and see if he'll agree to it.  Fingers crossed.

The most stupid thing was that I went into the office yesterday to sit on Teams calls for 85% of the day (with people not in our office), so it really was a complete waste of time.

QueenJess

Well that’s my budget pretty much blown for November already! Suddenly realised I hadn’t booked after school club for next term and if they get booked up you are completely stuck. Sadly in order to actually book it, you have to pay in advance (terribly unfair for those that can’t afford this upfront) and so that’s £738 gone. In total that’s £2k on childcare fees this month 😬

Aim now will be to minimise the damage for the rest of the month and hopefully catch up and remember to add extra into the childcare pot every month so not caught out again. I’m back to tracking all our expenditure and not happy DH has randomly spent £50 on personal care stuff and random food that either I don’t believe he needs or doesn’t bother to do anything useful like use points, loyalty cards, discount cards etc that makes it much cheaper 🙄. I’m hoping he’ll get the message now he can see the joint credit card bill and the looming possibility I won’t have any income for a while…

Still using up the freezer stuff and disappointed when I looked yesterday that there seems more than I thought in there still. Lunch today is the favourite of leek, pea and cheese orzotto and dinner is a bolognaise but with meatballs instead of mince. Desserts for kids are yogurts and jelly. I’m hoping to make apple and blackberry crumble for our dessert to go with some lovely custard. Freezer will be lighter from some peas, meatballs and blackberries.

Edit: I did send the link of the instant pot I like to DH, he was relieved he didn’t have to think of something to buy me 😂. No I absolutely don’t need it, but I never buy anything for myself I don’t need and just want and rarely, if ever, do anything frivolous for myself. I should be able to have a lot of baking fun with it 😊

QueenJess

Had a bit of a relaxing time whilst DD was asleep for her nap window shopping online for some craft things for the kids to do over the xmas holidays (DS is more indifferent, but is now interested because DD loves this stuff).  I think I successfully found some things they can do together that won't break the bank and is within my kids budget pot for this month.  Hoping it'll make for some cheap days inside.

Also had a fun time looking at books for xmas. Every xmas and birthday I buy a small bundle of books for the kids as I want to encourage them to read and enjoy books as much as possible.  I do have a massive store of 2nd hand books from when I was a child and so I am just supplementing for extra books for their specific interests.  It's harder than it sounds since DD and DS are so different and I seem to spend vast amounts of time trying to find books I think DS will enjoy.  I have found a small list and so will be able to work out how much I actually need and will buy the odd thing from the list.  As always, I buy everything 2nd hand unless it isn't available so should be quite mse and not expensive.  I even found a book 2nd hand for a topic DS will be studying next term for school.  His teacher is already quite used to DS piping up with "my mum has a book for that"

Fireworks for Beavers was actually really, really good since it was cheap and we could walk to it.  Well worth going, although DD didn't like the noise very much.

Hoping my budget tracking this month will be enlightening and hopefully enable us to cut down over the next few months.  Feeling slightly anxious about it given the precariousness of my job right now and the mortgage going up massively early next year.  Keeping a very close watch on the food budget and trying to buy as little as possible given that I want to use up our stores before restocking at a more sensible level over time.

Still trying to use up the freezer (which is saving us some money right now) and so doing lazy fish, chips and peas for dinner to use up some more packets.  Dessert is jelly and ice cream for the kids, DH and I have hm apple and blackberry crumble and custard.  I froze the malted seed bread I made on Wednesday into slices, but I don't think it will last long.  I was worried it was under proved and over baked, but when I tasted it, it was the best bread I've ever tasted   Good reviews all round and DH is just eating slices as a snack.  Now just need to remember what I did and recreate it for next time!!

Trying to not think about work tomorrow as it'll stress me out and stop me sleeping.  The no. 1 task for tomorrow is to try and get my boss to agree for my 3 day week Dec, Jan and Feb to use up my holiday which will take the pressure off.  No. 2 will be to send my CV to another recruiter I found online yesterday.

TallGirl

I do feel for you re having to go into the office when you’re on teams anyway. I’ve been there not funny. 

Will they even notice if you do not go in? Just thinking taking an extra day just to avoid it seems extreme but if it’s the best solution I really hope it works out. 

Hope you get a good nights sleep. 

QueenJess

TallGirl said:

I do feel for you re having to go into the office when you’re on teams anyway. I’ve been there not funny. 

Will they even notice if you do not go in? Just thinking taking an extra day just to avoid it seems extreme but if it’s the best solution I really hope it works out. 

Hope you get a good nights sleep. 

Well our department is really small and I sit next to the boss, so it'll be really obvious if I don't go in.  I'm hoping to get my 3 days a week approved and then just find as many excuses as possible not to go in this month.  I already have 3 appointments on those days, so that's 3 days out already.

I have various plans and this is plan A.  Plan B would be to take 3 months off, Plan C is to stop bothering going in and see what happens and Plan D is just to quit.  Hoping not to get that far down the list, but feel slightly better with a plan.

QueenJess

I pleased DH yesterday by reminding him that he has the same individual credit card as the joint one and he never remembers to use his points. They’ve really branched out with the places you can get vouchers now as it used to be 3 places only and now there’s hundreds! He never knows anywhere to use them as he doesn’t really buy anything, but I reminded him the instant pot is expensive and he could get a voucher against it. He’s now very pleased that he’s halved the cost of my present. I’ll induct him into MSE ways eventually!

QueenJess

Well it's been just over a week since I posted because it's been completely manic here and I'm completely exhausted.  I'm looking forward to falling into a heap to watch Bake Off later and then straight to bed!  November always seems to be ridiculously busy whilst I try to get everything done by the end of the year for a break.

Last week I saw a job online that looked great and applied late Tuesday without thinking much more about it.  Weds I get a call from the recruiter and got myself an interview that I had this morning.  I prepped pretty much all weekend to try and give myself the best chance. I think it all went ok; just need to wait and see. I don't think I could have done much more, so if they don't want me, it's ok, just not meant to be.

At the same time, work went a bit mental and I have a big problem that only I can resolve at work, so I will have to work tomorrow and will take TOIL later on.  I also had a whole day conference yesterday that was brilliant, but exhausting and had a filling at the dentist earlier.  All those things plus the usual million things I have to remember (odd sock day at school, non-uniform day, taking a musical instrument to Beavers, DD's parents evening etc etc etc) and DH's parents and brother coming round this weekend is why I'm completely knackered now!  Oh - and I had a doctor's appointment last week and the doctor was not particularly nice to the extent that I made a complaint (and I never complain about anything!) and so am waiting to hear back on that too.  It never ends...

Still on operation use up the freezer and it is definitely getting closer, although still a bit too much in there.  I really hope we can do it by the end of next week so I can get it defrosted.  I'm behind in tracking all my expenses for this month, but I've spent around £290 on all groceries including personal toiletries and nappies for DD (we did used to use the reusable ones, but she grew out of them and then point blank refuses to use a bigger size which is very sad for me).  I do tend to buy lots of organic food (and very expensive local cheese from the farm shop) so I know I will have a more expensive bill than the average, but this suggests I'd hit £600 for the month and that's £100 more than I would really like.  Plus you'd hope it would be slightly cheaper since I am reducing the freezer down..  Looks like I may have some work to do there.  I've already instigated fortnightly shopping as it stops me overstocking too much as I know I'll be back in a couple of weeks.  Milk, fruit and veg are all delivered.

Dinner tonight is leftover chicken from our roast at the weekend with frajita seasoning, the last of the wraps from the freezer and any veg left at the bottom of the fridge.  DH is making it as I am shattered.  Dessert will be the last of the chocolate brownies and hm vanilla ice cream to get that out of the freezer.  I think I need to make some more compote for breakfast to use up some more of the frozen fruit and I've got a roll of pastry out the freezer to make some little cheese, leek and spinach pastries for lunch tomorrow to use that up.

Oh - I must also check on my car insurance due next week.  I rang up to change details and negotiate a discount and they said they would send me the new information, which they haven't.  Will see if it's appeared online and if not I'll need to ring them again.