Teetering on the brink

EatingBeans

Sounds like it might be worth digging a little further into my council tax banding. What’s the harm in sending a letter or two. 

Work is just an odd situation. We work in a matrix and I am in an odd situation where my line manager has nothing to do with what I do all day. Since the reorganisation I work closely with my managers manager and director who is two more levels up. These more senior bods rely on me to pick up random delegated bits of work from them, acting as their Scrum Master one minute, general assistant the next. I do basically anything they don’t have time to do and act as their built in reminder system to keep them on track according to priorities. There is only one of me so if I am not there noone reminds them to do stuff, they go into firefighting mode and progress on agreed priorities goes out the window. I’m not saying they can’t cope without me, just that I make their lives easier. 

Sun_Addict

I’m in the same situation. Although I have a line manager she has no say in my work. That’s dictated by the directors I work for so they are in effect my work managers and she just authorises my leave. 

ellenvan

Well worth looking into the council tax banding, especially as 5% rises expected after spending review.

EatingBeans

Yes, council tax banding has definitely gone on my to-do list. 👍

The last couple of days have been a complete wash out as I have sadly crashed again. Back to struggling to even get out of bed again (so glad I didn’t try to go back to work!) but I’ve finally managed to sit in the garden for the last hour and the fresh air has been lovely.

Sadly I am not up to doing any gardening atm and I can only sit and look at the plants that are so desperate to be in the ground, but there is hope as dd2 has agreed to dig the planting holes for me when she has a chance over the next couple of days. 😁 She hates touching the soil but will happily attack it from the other end of a spade, so planting will be a joint effort. I will be super grateful to get them in the ground as it means more chance they will survive without me if need be. 

The pond might have to stay half built though. 🤦‍♀️ I managed to get the liner in a few weeks ago and trimmed off most of the excess but even though the hole had already been dug and I just had to get in and manhandle the liner, it was all way too much and I had to quit half way. So now I have a half finished pond which has filled with water but no edging, plants or filter! The wildlife don’t seem to mind and have started moving in regardless, which is kinda nice, but makes finishing it off even harder. No amount of pocket money is going to convince dd2 to climb into a pond filled with little critters 🤣, so it is another job I will have to do in baby steps. 

Most importantly, I haven’t spent any money over the past few days! 😁

EatingBeans

£10 received from NatWest Rewards today so £5’s total for the month currently at £24.75/£100 aka 4/20 £5’s. 🙂

MayDogsandCoffee

Are there any community gardening groups in your area?  Sometimes putting a shout out on FB will get a work team out, or even just some keen gardeners in the area - esp if you state due to ill health.  For the sick note, once that is in work can't really contact you much as it can now be seen as harassment, not sure who you work for but in Civil Service any illness due to disability is treat differently to minor one off illness.

EatingBeans

Ah bless you, that’s a really kind suggestion but I can’t get people to come sort my garden, it really isn’t a necessity, I’d just like it done. I’m going to see it as another opportunity for mother daughter bonding. Bit by bit it will get done. Or it won’t and it will still all be there next year! Haha. 

I am sure you are correct about work not wanting to bother me while I am off sick and I am lucky that I work for a university so they are generally very generous when it comes to things like sick leave. It still stresses me out though as the sector is going through a particularly bad time and they have recently asked for volunteers to reduce hours etc in a bid to save cash. It means they are looking for every penny they can save and I am currently being paid but creating no value. If I was off with the Trigeminal Neuralgia I would be less concerned as I know that is being treated as a disability but currently my sick notes just say I am off with fatigue because they haven’t given me a proper diagnosis. Until they do, I am just sick. 

EatingBeans

Still no spending today! 🎉
Meals are getting a bit creative but using up things in the freezer/cupboards is actually a good thing as I haven’t done that for a while. 

I am feeling better today and managed to get showered, dressed and actually leave the house! I took dd1 to her ortho appointment at the hospital (a 40minute drive), and she drove back. We are trying to get more practice in as she has her test coming up and she did good. We had one near miss on a roundabout, but to be fair to her she was driving through the city centre for the first time and it was really busy. Once we got more local to home we decided it called for a McDs and she drove through the drive thru herself. 😁 Best bit for me was she treated me to some food in lieu of petrol money! 👍 We then spent half an hour driving around in circles in a local car park so she could practice parking between the lines and we ran through all the show me/tell me questions. Trying to check the level of brake fluid on a 107 is not easy I tell you! Being a tiny car means they have buried it so far back it’s in the dark, practically under the windscreen, and trying to read the level is impossible. Thankfully I think she just has to be able to identify the reservoir and say it has to be between the min and max. The car is booked in for it’s MOT and service next week so they should all be at the correct levels should the instructor start pulling out a torch mid test! 

Tbh, I am dreading the MOT. A month ago I would have said it will sail through but now I am fairly certain it will fail. 😕 Since coming back from camping it sounds like the exhaust might be blowing but the noise seems to be coming from near the front of the car and yet I am not smelling fumes which is odd, and I am hoping it is not something more serious. It wouldn’t surprise me if it also needed a tyre or two and the brakes might also need new pads (or they have just got a bit dirty). All in all, I am not looking forward to the bill. Fingers crossed I am just being paranoid. 🤞 Entirely possible as I am more conscious of potential faults ahead of passing it to dd1. It’s always been a good car up until now but I think I might have pushed it a little too hard taking us camping as it now doesn’t seem too well. 😬 

weenancyinAmerica

EatingBeans - I once sat in the middle of the roundabout in Gloucester and memorized where the off-ramps went. People actually stopped and asked me for directions after they had gone around it a few times. I seemed to look like I belonged wherever I went, as people stopped me for directions all of the time. My first trip I lost track after 35 people asked me directions. In all of my trips over there, I was able to help people find what they were looking for even though the accent confused them at first. Still don't know about the time someone asked me how to find the Laura Ashley store in London as I was several blocks from it at the time, but I had just left there a few minutes earlier. I don't dress anything like a customer of theirs, but I was returning dresses for someone who had bought them over there and found out she had to return them there too.  

My father taught me to parallel park between cars by taking me to the airport and going on a side street to  practice between barrels there. It wouldn't have been so bad but the pilots would come out to watch and help with instructions. He also would take my younger brother and sister with us. The entire neighborhood knew I was going out to practice as the two of them would be crying and yelling "We don't want to die" when he tried to get them in the car. It took me a couple of years to learn to drive thanks to them - and I still can't parallel park that well. I wish your daughter good luck on her test - I have seen the instructions!

We don't have the MOT over here. My car would have flunked a long time ago. 

EatingBeans

Well, MOT done and PASSED first time yesterday! 🤣 Personally I am not believing it should have passed, I think they were just busy and thought it looks fairly good so we’ll pass it and move on. I say this because he handed the key back saying the two front tyres are bald on both sides and need replacing immediately but the guy down the road is cheaper so go there. They also put an advisory that handbrake is sticking but he said that will be sorted with the service so not to worry. The new slightly throaty noise from the exhaust he said was probably from just a bit of movement of the mufflers inside the back box (again nothing to worry about), and I didn’t even question why he passed the car despite the oil level being below the minimum mark or the fact that the front windscreen wiper doesn’t clear the screen! 🤦‍♀️ It’s officially legal either way but now it has passed I will get the tyres and windscreen wiper changed anyway for the sake of safety. The oil and sticking brake will get sorted as part of the service so I’m not too worried about that. I am sure as hell not topping up the oil just for it to drive 200yards for an oil change so it is back to sitting outside the house until Service day on Thursday.

The rest of the day dd2 and I spent in the garden playing tag team on getting plants in the ground ahead of the heatwave. It about nearly killed us both. Bless her little soul she did all of the digging (some of the holes had to be over 2ft deep! 😬) and I just had to turn things out of pots and plant them in the holes. She then gave everything a good soak and it looks like the garden is coming together. Even the ‘bathroom’ palms are finally in the ground! 🎉 I had promised her £5 for her effort (I thought she’d manage one hole and quit tbf) but in the end she told me to keep the cash as she’d actually enjoyed it so much! 😱 Personally I think her actual effort was worth closer to £50 but rather than argue over cash I bought us all a takeaway instead. Obviously that cost more than the £5 I’d budgeted for but well worth it to save so many plants and I know if the tyres had been replaced as part of the MOT (rather than the cheaper place down the road) then it would have cost me the extra £20 anyway. 

All in all, a good day was had. 😁

I still have several trees and about 30 more plants still sitting in pots, but that’s a job for another day. Most can’t go in the ground yet anyway because I still need to clear their patch of ground of gravel and rubble, but most are either drought tolerant species or are in pots with water reserve features built in, so fingers crossed they all make it through the 30+oc heat expected in the next few days. I obviously knew I had quite a few plants in pots, but honestly, I’d not really counted them before and to still have so many after such a lot of planting yesterday made me realise just how large the collection had become. One advantage of them sitting for so long (years in some cases), is that many of the plants had grown on so much in the pots that planting them in the ground has produced an instant mature looking garden! The transformation is awesome and now all I need is to replace my random tacky plastic garden chair with a two seater bench/seats and dd2 and I will be able to sit in peace and watch the pond together. 😁

oh, and I almost forgot! In all her digging dd2 also managed to find the missing solar panel for the pond pump! Turns out one of the dogs had decided to bury it! 🤦‍♀️ She felt pretty bad because she cracked the face of it with the spade as she was digging, but tbf, who expects a solar panel to be buried underground?! Thankfully it still works but even if it didn’t I would still have been relieved to find it as now I can stop looking for it. I was beginning to think I’d lost the plot because I was sure I knew where I had put it - it didn’t occur to me that a dog would see it as something worth pinching and burying! Naughty pupster.