Changes

I have recovered just about enough of my normal sunny disposition to feel up to posting on here today. I know how dull it is to read all about someone else's grumpiness, but I have been quite low this week, one way and another.

I think it's primarily work-related. I know, I know, it isn't real life. I know it should stop being in my head once I get home. I know that my job does not entail saving lives or making the world a better place, particularly. I know all that. But I have worked bloody hard to be where I am now, and it is painful to think that actually I am not very good at what I do.

So I made a decision this week, that rather than just spend the next 20 years* being sad and feeling like a rank underachiever, I will look for another job in a different kind of business area.

Accordingly, this weekend I have found a job advert I will be replying to. The job is in London, as most of them seem to be these days, but I will be looking to negotiate at least a 2-days-a-week working at home deal. I can't see it being that hard, what with the interweb and phones and all that high tech stuff.

It takes about 2 and a half hours to get from my house to the centre of London. I could do that 3 days a week. If the money was right. Which, on this advert, it is.

So, we shall see. If nothing else, it makes me feel like I am doing something about the situation, and not just grumbling.

Other news: Mr WithaY completed his 30 mile walk across Salisbury Plain in his scuba gear. It took him about 10 hours, and he was completely exhausted afterwards, as you might expect.

His feet were a bit of a mess. There was a bit of sterilised needle deployment to deal with blisters once we got his boots off, but it wasn't too bad. Apparently the worst thing today is the pain in his knees and calves** so he is limping around like he's a hundred years old. Which he isn't. Yet.

We're having a quiet day at home today. He has his head buried in his OU studies***, I've been ironing and clearing up the house a bit. When I'm not wasting my life on the internet, of course.

Apparently our neighbours with the chickens are going to downsize them to bantams. Too much poo, apparently.

What a great idea. If it catches on, what's to stop people doing it with other things? Too much poo from the children? Get a fishtank instead.



*Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

**on his legs, not in the dairy farm down the road

***Nano technology today. Maybe my life will be like Star Trek someday soon, after all.

Walk on by

So. Work has been a bit shite this week. To make a great week even better, I had a nosebleed this afternoon. Which was nice.

At least it didn't rain today, which made the trip down to see Mr WithaY's dad in hospital this evening slightly nicer than it might have been. He's been told he'll be in for at least another 5 weeks, which was a disappointment, but he was in better spirits than you might expect.

There was a poor old chap in the bed opposite who was trying to explain to the nurse that he had to take 2 tablets a day, one in the morning, one at night, and that the doctor had told him to do that himself with the tablets he'd brought from home. The nurse was not only not listening to him, she was talking over the top of him before he even finished his sentences, getting louder each time, telling him what to do.

I couldn't decide if it was funny, upsetting or just annoying.

Anyway. We had a nice chat with pa-in-law WithaY, then scooted back home, calling in at the huge Tesco in Shaftesbury on the way to buy something for dinner.

£125. Bloody big dinner.

I'm in the office again tomorrow, then am spending most of Saturday manning (personing?) the phones as the emergency response unit to support Mr WithaY's frankly mental plan.

The Plan:

He is doing a sponsored walk of about 30 miles around Salisbury Plain. In his scuba gear.

Not, and I am still very disappointed by this, however, in his flippers. No, he is wearing proper boots. And a wetsuit. And a BCD. And he is talking about taking one of his tanks*. I am trying to persuade him that he will have more than enough to carry without a bloody huge metal cylinder.

We shall see.

So. He's doing this bloody long walk to raise money to help pay for his shark-tagging expedition to Mexico in October. I'll tell you about that when I am less tired, and can see straight.

*The sort you fill with air, not the fun sort you drive around Salisbury Plain in.

Cars...again

Aaah, just when you thought all my whinging and grumbling about cars was long gone, here's some fresh new complaining for you to enjoy.

Mr WithaY's Landrover is apparently making "weird, loud, bearing-type noises". He's just come back after rollocking all over Salisbury Plain in it, so it is possible he just has an angry badger* wedged in the rear axle.

Other news: I can now play both riffs** from Bryan Adams' "Run To You". Am I a rock goddess or what?



*Or maybe some unexploded ordnance, it's hard to tell in this light.

**The slow one at the start of the song, and then the little twinkly one in the middle. Go and listen to it again if you're confused.