Teetering on the brink

Newstartforme

Hope you are feeling a bit better today EB , you have very much gave me a craving for lasagne xx

EatingBeans

Thanks @Newstartforme Marginally better today but not by much. 😕

I did manage to pick dd2 up from college and on the way back I posted the thing I sold on ebay yesterday and finally took dd2 food shopping! 🎉 Bless her, she bought two boxes of cereal to stock up - I think she knows me getting better is never a linear process and she’s making sure she doesn’t run out again. Her freezer draw is now suitably rammed and she is noticeably more relaxed now. 🙂

I finally got in to see the doctor today and the end result is more pills - along with an agreement that I can just keep upping them over the next couple of months if I feel I need to - plus she signed me off for four weeks. 😬 She suggested it is better to know I have all that time to recover so I can stop stressing and focus on feeling better, than just do two weeks and I be constantly anxious about it which will mean I am off for longer. It makes sense, but lord knows what work will think about it. The way I see it, they are almost certainly going to start me on the formal absence monitoring route now anyway, so I may as well just accept that and take the time I need to actually get better. Honestly, the doctor was lovely. I will definitely go back to her again. 

A job for tomorrow is to formally withdraw my application for the secondment. Whilst technically they would have to be very careful about declining me the interview because Trigeminal Neuralgia (aka my disability) is listed on the sick note as part of my reason for absence, but the reality is I don’t want those on the panel to view me as ‘difficult’ in any way as I may want to apply again in future. My thinking is that by me acknowledging that now is just not a good time, they may be more accepting of me at a future point when it is a good time. 🤞 Even if I did interview I don’t think I will get the job anyway - I get the impression they have someone in mind again, so backing out graciously seems like a good plan. 

Other than that, a few surveys and a lot of sleeping, the only other thing I really did today was teach Big Dog to put his front paws on a brick. 😂 Sounds a bit odd I know, but I want to teach him to do a few things that are more easily taught using a perch (like pivoting his big butt one way or the other!), and this was the first step. It took him a while to realise what I wanted him to do but that’s not surprising as he’s never used any kind of perch before, and standing with his front feet on a house brick in the middle of the living room, isn’t something that is immediately obvious. Still, nothing that some cocktail sausages wouldn’t fix. By the time we were finished he was launching himself at the brick! 🤣 Clever Big Dog! 😁

Weigh-in today was 202.0lbs, yesterday was 201.9lbs (average last week was 202.5lbs), so up a tiny bit on yesterday but still looks to be going in the right direction overall. ✅

£5’s figures growing just a bit today…

And despite me saying I would never actually list one item a day because I thought it would annoy me, it turns out I hate the automatic red warning that I added to pop up saying ‘overdue for listing’ even more, so I listed one new item today! 🤣 Yet again I feel this little addition to my spreadsheet is helping to change my own behaviour. 👍

EatingBeans

Job application withdrawn. 😕 I also sent a message to the Head of the BA team and she said that she expects more opportunities to come up in her team in the next few months and that I should consider putting in an application again when they do. I take that as a positive. 

Not much else happening today. Just so very tired from the new tablets. 😴

Newstartforme

Glad you got some time to properly recover and also 4 weeks is a good amount of time for the tablets to work as well . Your girls sound so lovely and so supportive of you . Everything crossed that the meds work quickly xx

EatingBeans

Thanks. 🙂

They say to make sure you do something that makes you happy everyday. For me that is dog training, and today Big Dog learnt that just throwing himself at the brick in the middle of the living room is no longer sufficient to get a treat. Today he had to put both paws on the brick and be sitting up at the very least (preferably standing), not lying splat on top hugging it with a big grin because he knows it means yummy things are coming! 😋 I don’t give him any instruction for what he is supposed to do with the brick as I am just shaping the behaviour at this stage, but that just means he has to use his brain and trial and error to work what I want. It is so funny watching him try out new things… do I lie on it, reverse onto it, maybe my chin will work… (I previously taught him to put his chin on something when he wants to ask for something - much better than being pawed for attention!). Eventually he understood it meant something to do with his front paws, but then he just sat there tapping it with one front paw, looking at me like “mum, you can see I am tapping the block, now give me ham!” 🤣 We’ll get there, a little bit everyday will help him learn and will amuse me no end at the same time. I should really let Little Dog have a go too, but maybe I will have a few more sessions with the super easy to train Big Dog before I have a go with the “slightly more challenging” character that is Little Dog. 😬 I do love them both SO much, but they are so very different. 🥰

Newstartforme

Aw the tales of your dog make me laugh , it's the fact he wants to do the fast version of the trick to get the treat , so funny . Hope new meds helping somewhat x

EatingBeans

Yep, Big Dog is so very clever. He really wants to learn which really helps. Really don’t know what I would do without him tbh, he gives lovely cuddles too which is very sweet. His sister is actually also super clever but comes with so much energy it can be difficult to get her to focus. She is like a coiled spring and we call her the magical mountain goat because she always likes to be at the highest point (climbing on your shoulders/the back of the sofa are her favourites), and she jumps everywhere (including into next door given half a chance) - she’s even put a hole in the plasterboard in the living room wall from leaping at her bed during zoomies, and she has smashed so much crockery I am amazed we have any left! All terrible for her joints, my bank balance and neighbourly relations🤦‍♀️, but at some point she will calm down I am sure. 🤞

On to today…
There has been a slight pause on the chasing of £5’s as I had some news that meant I have had to spend quite a bit of time reshuffling my budget and plan for spending this month (I’ve only got so much energy at the moment and that took priority). So what news? Well MBNA have revoked my 0% Balance Transfer offers 😭. This would be bad news at any point but they very unfortunately did it out of the blue right in the middle of one of my credit card shuffles, and to make matters worse, the spending that I had planned to match the Balance Transfer was already in motion and could not be stopped. So, with no new plan the end result would be my balance on MBNA would reduce by more than I planned (alright for cheeky MBNA!), but the balance on my NatWest card which I actually NEED to reduce, would actually go up! Much head scratching and account balancing later, I now have a new plan which should put me roughly back to where I had planned, albeit without any further interest savings that I would have gotten with the 0% offer. 

Going forward, this will at least make it all more straightforward (I am trying to look at the silver lining). I will have to keep overpaying NatWest as I really DO need to keep them sweet, and if that means I have to counter balance that by charging some essential spending to MBNA then that is what I will have to do. The overpayment figure for NatWest is decreasing each month so hopefully I should be able to cover that soon without charging anything back onto a credit card, but so long as the overall balance is going in the right direction I am going to just try not to lose sleep over it and focus back on getting well and bringing in the £5’s. 

EatingBeans

Ok so I felt quite bad that I had been playing with Big Dog but not doing the same with Little Dog, so today I decided to play an easier game that I could do with both of them (separately of course, I am not crazy!). It’s called the Vito Game and it’s one I picked up from Susan Garrett (if you have dogs and haven’t come across her I totally recommend looking her up on YouTube 😁). 

Basically you sit on the floor with a bowl either side of you and something infront of you (I used a bin). The idea is the dog gets a treat dropped in each bowl in turn but only if they go around the object in front of you, sneaking between the object and you is cheating and scores no treats. As the dog gets to understand the task you make it more difficult by pushing the object in front of you further away so that it is ever more tempting to sneak through on the inside. Again it’s a game where you just say nothing and let the dog work it out. Little Dog, bless her heart, gave me a few cocked-head/puzzled looks, but once she got it she was wizzing back and forward and looked so proud of herself bless her! 😍 I am so glad because I chose this game to help her build confidence in making her own decisions rather that rely on Big Dog and it seemed to be having the desired effect so we’ll have to play it again. Big Dog just took the ‘bull in a china shop’ approach. 🤦‍♀️ He kept trying to sniff around for something he was seemingly missing, as if his own kibble dinner being handed to him slowly and having him work for it just wasn’t enough for him. So maybe he needs to play again but for a different reason - to learn that some games are just nice one-on-one time with mum and not everything has to involve ham and sausages! 🤣

EatingBeans

I did a good thing on the takeaway front today. Due to a bit of miscommunication dd2 ended up walking an hour and a half home. She had already had a bad day for various reasons so was not a happy bunny by the time she got home and was absolutely starving. I so desperately wanted to just buy her a takeaway to cheer her up (I’d had a reheated roast dinner so I was already full), but I thought about my £50 and the fact that it is only the 10th October, along with the fact that I know she has food as we’ve just been shopping, and I just took a breath and said nothing. As expected, she filled the awkward silence by starting to talk, but instead of asking for a takeaway she asked me if I would make her her chicken burgers from the freezer. I mean, obviously I protested a little because I couldn’t let on that I was secretly very pleased with this option, but I did make them as it let me fulfil my maternal desire to make her feel better, but at the same time, zero pence spent from my budget! 🎉 Win, win. 😁

ellenvan

Yeah, good result! The budget gets to last a bit longer.
Sounds like you had fun times with the dogs.