Wednesday 13 April 2011

Don't stop believing

Own up now, who's singing along now? and who's cursing their auntie for putting that tune in their head all day?

Ahem,

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.

Once upon a time, there was an auntie, who blogged about being fat, how her children could outsmart her and her great longing for The White Company life. Only a few posts ago, she blogged about random acts of kindness and how they made her cheery. It's quite a job being cheery with the 3 work shy beautiful children and Hot Boy that auntie has, auntie has to work at it. It's why she blogs, because only the lovely readers actually keep her sane.

And lo and behold, as a reward for reading blogs and leaving comments she was visited by the Fairy Blogfather. Via Kellogsville, who also reads blogs and leaves comments. A great big thank you to you, Kellogsville, my dear.

And he bestowethed (shut up, that is a word, and if it wasn't before, it is now, made up all by my very own self) upon her the gift of Amazon. Not the river, it'd be a bugger to wrap.

This made her even more cheerful. More cheerful that when she looked at the 10 day forecast for her upcoming holiday and seen a big row of shiny suns. And that made auntie extremely cheery.

And to share this good fortune around, the Fairy Blogfather, who in his day job works for a company called appliancesonline and in his alter ego floats the bloggesphere dispensing £20 Amazon vouchers would like you to go look at his cookers (not a euphanism) and also leave a comment. Go on now, click HERE and go look at the cookers, I'll wait here till you get back. Okay, comment away and maybe the Fairy Blogfather will choose you next.

What a cool job, reading blogs and giving out vouchers, I know what I want to be when I grow up.

And shame on all of you who didn't believe in fairies, till now.

Monday 11 April 2011

In which I reflect on why I'm tired

On Friday, I did a full days work, drove 200 miles and got stressed about parking taking the children to see Peter Kay. On Saturday morning I was back to being a bad mummy for not driving BBD the mile to cheerleading in the blazing sunshine, so I got up and walked with her, rather than sit in the sunshine with my book, I know, that is matenal devotion personified, isn't it? So we walk and this was the focus of the conversation.

BBD - I'm so looking forward to Hot Boy coming on holiday with us, it'll be so much better with someone else there, you're so boring on holiday, all you want to do is relax and read your book.

ag - when you're a Mummy you'll realise it's because it's tiring being a single parent with 3 kids and a Hot Boy, a job, a house that no one else cleans, laundry, ironing, shopping, heating up (I don't even bother now to pretend to t'internets I cook) and driving service, a cash machine, a sorter out of problems and a referee for all your disagreements

BBD - God Mummy, it's not like we don't appreciate you.

I won't bother telling you about my raised eyebrow at this, you can put that bit in yourself.

Saturday evening - my only Saturday evening without the 2 younger children this month, my night off, if you please, I arrange to meet best friend in the pub for wine and food and probably a moan about my weans. Just as I'm about to leave, EBD floats in and enquires where I'm off to, on being told the pub starts to pout.

EBD - Mummy I can't be on my own now, I've got too used to being in Halls where everyone is around all the time, Hot Boy got a free ticket to see The Vaccines and I've got no one to play with.

Oh you so know I took EBD to the pub, where she got free food and wine and she got to moan about how crap it is to be a student.

Nope, I've no idea why I'm tired either.

Thursday 7 April 2011

In the style of Bridgit Jones

Next weekend we are off on holiday. Nothing like it for motivating you to lose the winter weight, is there? Oh, except people who you're not related to coming with you, that helps too. I have no fear inflicting my flab in a bikini on my children, this year we will have the delights of Hot Boy joining us. I am less keen on letting Hot Boy see my wobbly bits. Never mind, I'm sure the compensation of enough blog fodder to keep me going all year will help.

Anyhoo, I started early, I thought if I gave myself 15 weeks (from after Xmas to Easter hols) I could lose a few stone quite easily. So I cut down, I got out and ran a bit, I gave up chocolate for a few weeeks, absolutely nothing. Not a pound. Bugger.

So because I now have to lose 3 stone by next Friday, this week I upped the ante, oh your auntie was upped, so she was.

On Monday, I went to Zumba for the first time with my friend Eileen, it's a bit like aerobics but with Latiny type music, I walked the 3/4 of a mile there and back and wiggled my wobbly bits for an hour inbetween. Total steps walked (yep, the pedometer's back) 16,000 that's 8 bloody miles. 1 glass of Rose with dinner and 4 chocolates out of EBD's birthday box. How can she be my child and have chocolates left nearly a whole month after her birthday? This probably explains why I need to lose 3 stone and she doesn't need to lose 3 pounds.

On Tuesday, I walked to my kissing squishing baby work and back, total 4 miles plus normal walking around, total of 12,000 steps, no wine and no chocolates, went to bed early to resist temptation. Grumpily.

On Wednesday, I walked around lots while I was training, and when there was a lunch break, I went out and walked then too. Actually bloody ran the 3/4 mile to Zumba, wiggled and wobbled more energetically than on Monday, ran the 3/4 mile back and then went for an hours walk with my friend Christina. No wine and no chocolate, total steps 20,000.

This morning, got up and felt every single one of the 13 muscles in each leg, I can't beleieve there are only 13, I couldn't remember from my nurse training so I googled it, I feel like I have 504 muscles in my legs at least. I stepped on the scales after having a wee and before coffee, no point in adding extra weight, fully expecting to have lost something.

Not a bloody pound. I hate dieting.

Friday 1 April 2011

How to make a good impression at work

I work for a big UK wide charity. All the field staff are based at home (which is cheaper than having lots of wee offices everywhere for us to sit in) I like this, it means if I'm not out training people, I am in the dining room in my jammies. And we all know how I like my jammies.

The downside to this is

a - I have to have a ferocious amount of technology that me, myself and I alone have to operate and maintain, laptops, projectors, infra red pointers, speakers, shredders, scanners, printers. Jesus you should see my phone, it's like a switchboard, I can transfer any call to anyone in the organisation, well regular humans can, I just tell people it'd be quicker to redial, I seem to cut people off a fair bit.

b - We do a lot of things I have never done before such as conference calls, Internet meetings, signing out group documents etc and all kinds of spreadsheets that I am forever breaking. Don't even get me started on mail bloody merge.

c - there is no one around to show you what to do, if you're lucky you can ring someone and they'll try and explain it down the phone. This may work with regular humans, not so much with aunties. I spend a bit of time every week in a tizzy.

Every month I complete my expenses, I have a page for mileage (fine), things I've bought for work (fine) and then the receipts page (not so fine) I have to put the wee arrow in a certain box, put the numbered receipts to correspond with the line they appear on and while I've got another tab open reading the instructions for the scanning of expenses, click insert picture from scanner. You only get 1 go and if your scanned picture doesn't show the total, it's no use.

Me no likey.

My lovely boss has left and we are awaiting her replacement. This month I had to send my expenses to my ex lovely boss's boss. She's 1 down from the Chief. I had a real problem with the scanner yesterday (there's bog all wrong with the scanner, it's just me)so in my covering email I apologised and said I had had problems scanning the receipts in but I still had the original receipts and I could post them to her.

I received a very charming reply saying how sorry she was about my scanner but I hadn't actually attached the expenses document at all.

There's an internal vacancy for head of IT, guess she won't think I'm up to that then.