Too busy too blog!

I haven’t blogged for a while now, because life has been somewhat busy.

Principally, my time and mind has been occupied with a very unwell little puppy. Coco is a typical Labrador – always grubbing in the hedgerows and digging stuff up, then eating what she finds. Most often it is something totally unsuitable such as cat poo or her particular favourite, horse poo. But she’s not overly fussy and by and large will pick up and eat anything.

This time she clearly ingested something which disagreed in the most violent fashion with her insides. Normally a ravenous eater, she wouldn’t touch food nor, more worryingly, water, for two whole days. We came down one morning to find the carpet covered in vomit and bloody faeces, and throughout the day she was listless and sick even when she sipped water or had a few grains of rice. Desperately worried, we took her to the vet, who didn’t seem worried at all (presumably sees it all the time) and gave us some anti biotics and sent us on our way.

Things didn’t improve and the next day we took her back to the vets where she was kept in and put onto a drip, by this time fairly severely dehydrated. The nasty specimens we had scraped up from the rug have been sent off for analysis, and we don’t yet know what she ate although I’m sure we will soon. It could be anything, on walks we are always taking things out of her mouth that shouldn’t be in there and goodness knows what she digs up when she’s mooching round the garden. And there are definitely toadstools out there somewhere – no matter how many times you try to get rid of them they spring back up.

The vet, an infinitely patient man, checked her over for anything and everything including various canine ailments I rang up to suggest having looked them up on Google (which must be the bane of his life) and after 24 hours when she had stopped emitting foul fluids and seemed more herself and we had had enough time to steam clean the carpets, she came home. Apart from a raspy sore throat caused we think by the pipe put down her throat while she was sedated, she seems absolutely fine. It is an incredible relief, and I don’t think I have been so worried even when my children were ill.

The cost of all this of course, has been astronomic. X-rays, drugs, diagnostics and veterinary time are ridiculously expensive. Thank goodness we took out pet insurance, for which we pay a measly £12 a month and which we are just about to claim against for almost £600. It has made us think that perhaps we better investigate taking out insurance for the moggies, who fortunately have never been really ill or cost me much beyond their annual jabs.

On top of everything else it snowed the other day, and you will know if you read this blog last winter how much I hate the snow, hate being cold and hate being wet. It actually made people on the train speak to one another, mostly in horror, at whether they were going to get home and asking “this wasn’t forecast was it?” looking out of the window with worried eyes.

I’m supposed to be avoiding stress to bring the old blood pressure down. Recent events can’t have done it any good, and it had gone up to treatable levels when I last saw the doc before all this happened so I am now taking tablets every day (someone asked me what drug it was and not remembering exactly, I said "Ritalin" which made them snort with laughter. It isn't, of course). I have had to resort to buying one of those old people’s pill boxes with the days of the week on it so I remember whether I’ve taken them or not – of everything that is going on, that is the one thing which has made me feel oldest!

To finish it all off nicely, my own work has gone crazily busy and The Hubby has been job hunting like mad. On that front at least we have some good news in that he has some temporary work for a few months, which will keep the wolf (or at any rate the debt collectors) away for a little longer.

It seems like it was time someone gave us a break, it’s been a pretty tough year whichever way you look at it.

I don't have time to go to work!

I don’t have time to go to work. Regardless of whether I enjoy it when I get there (and usually I don’t), I simply don’t have time.

There is always too much to do and not enough time to do it in. I am not arrogant enough to assume I am the only one in this position, but it does seem to be a permanent state for me.

We have a 1950s house which constantly needs minor maintenance done to it for which we cannot afford to pay and so have to do it ourselves. We have a large garden which grows like Topsy with several mature trees and plants – lovely to look at but time consuming to look after. Between us we have five children between 17 and 24 who all still need help, guidance and advice on various issues – don’t listen to anyone that tells you parenting stops at 18 because they have clearly never had children of their own. We are both trying to eat healthily and exercise more, both of which take time and effort. On top of that I am trying to have a life by doing what I love – amdram – and helping run the Society, and The Hubby is trying to keep in touch with his friends from various past lives and socialise too. It’s all too much! We can end up not seeing each other from Sunday night through to Friday, and that’s not good.

In this past week I have only had one evening commitment but that’s unusual. Often I am out two or three nights and we have things planned at the weekend too. The other day I sat down with the diary and tried to find a date to see a very good friend just for a glass of wine and a natter and we had to go for something at the end of April. It’s madness!

Much of this is, of course, self inflicted. I don’t have to do shows, nor do I have to sit on the Society’s committee. We could move to a nice little two bedroom flat with no garden (the cats would hate it!), built recently, and in one stroke get rid of all the home upkeep chores.  We could tell our kids to get on with it and learn the hard way like we did!

But we won’t do any of these things. When work is so demanding and as unsatisfying as it is for both of us now, you have to have something that keeps you going and for us it’s our relationship and the things we have and like to do. So what we have to do is find a way of managing it and keeping it all in proportion.

That is not as easy to do as it is to say. Sadly, work does have to come first – it pays the bills for two houses and provides just about enough to fund a reasonable lifestyle (although that is getting tougher). If one of us were made redundant, we’d have to rethink but for now we have decided to struggle through with a plan which has light at the end of the tunnel in terms of finances and time. We reckon in five years time, we will be in a much better place – five years!

We have taken a day off this week, and in the not too distant future we have a week away which can’t come quickly enough. Until then we’ll struggle along trying to fit it all in, and when we get there we’ll wonder where the time has gone. No change there, then!

Why do people interfere?

Why do people interfere in things which are none of their business? And why, when they do so, do they not establish the facts before butting in?

I am dealing with a particularly difficult issue at work at the moment with a member of staff and a lot of work has gone on behind the scenes to get to a position where we now both feel comfortable and have a solution we can live with even if we don’t really like it. Someone else has now taken it upon themselves, based upon gossip, rumour and half truths, to butt in and question what is going on and to be frank, it is really p*****g me off! And I have to deal with such people courteously and politely because I have to live and work with them in the future, whereas what I’d really like to do is tell them to go away and never come back (in a caring way, obviously).

It is always a mistake, of course, to get embroiled in a detailed ping pong of e-mails about anything, let alone anything sensitive. I am now going to have to spend precious time and effort, which would be better spent on other things, dealing with this subsidiary issue and settling it down so that I can simply get on with my day job.

I don’t know how people have time to stick their noses into things which are no concern of theirs. Do they think they are being supportive? Do they think they are helping? Do they have a personal agenda to pursue? I don’t know, and I don’t really care. All I do know is it’s a bloody nuisance and just makes things more difficult.

Personally, I don’t have time. I have a busy job, a busy home life and a complicated family with whom I have to deal because I’m stuck with them, a hobby which I choose to do but which takes up a considerable amount of my leisure time, and ambitions which I wish to chase for the future (believe it or not, I don’t want to be a local government officer for the rest of my life). I just don’t have time to involve myself in other people’s problems. For good friends I would of course give a shoulder to cry on or an ear to listen, but as for active involvement – no way unless it’s a matter of life and death and certainly not for a work colleague.

Things would be a lot simpler if we all minded our own business. There used to be an old nursery rhyme about it, and for the moment the exact words are eluding me, but its implication was that if you stick your nose into things that concern you don’t expect anything good to come of it. How true- and how I wish more people would take note of it.

So today, I am off to a meeting during time I don’t have to spare, with someone I should not have to be dealing with, on an issue which is nothing to do with them to try and calm things down so that we can all get some work done. It’s such a waste of time and my life! I don’t want to do it, and I will no doubt be grumpy throughout which will give them something else to complain about. So I must make an effort and smile, and act as though their piddling concerns are the most important thing in my life right now.

Hey ho, here we go! Wish me luck!!

Back to work

Christmas is well and truly over. Glittery decs put away, cards in the recycling, house tidied and ironing done. It's back to the grindstone tomorrow.

I love Christmas, with all its sparkle and cheesiness. Which makes the new year return to work seem even greyer and less attractive. I'm conscious I'm always whinging about work and that in reality there are lots of other people with much worse jobs than me (or even no jobs) but I honestly feel I didn't sign up for this much hassle on a daily basis.

My parents would not have recognised the modern workplace. The pressures to perform, tight finances and the knowledge that you are only one step away from the dole queue. In their day, the public sector really was the tea drinking pen pushing environment of comedy (at least in some departments) and the private sector was where hard work was rewarded with high salaries. In some ways, some of that is still true but I do think the boundaries between the two sides have blurred.

Nor would they have suffered from the motives that push us on - mortgages, rampant consumerism (not all of you reading this will suffer from all of these, and nor do I, but many do) and keeping up with the Jones's (whoever they are), plus the availability of credit cards and loans causes many of us to fall into an enormous financial black hole without even noticing. Whilst they were poorer, they were certainly less stressed and happier.

However we are where we are. A domestic council of war in the new year about money (already had two years of no pay rise, and only 1% due this year despite inflation running at 5% ish for the last three years means we're VERY skint), plus resolutions (already propounded on this blog) will keep me busy. I am resolved to go forward in a spirit of optimism no matter what is thrown at me. I wonder how long it'll last?