Tuesday 31 May 2016

Motivation Required

Im convinced ive reached my mid life crisis , ok so im past mid life . This Bank Holiday has been spectacularly boring , been nowhere, done nothing . Mr Bah Humbug has been family bonding , something im not very welcome at . Daughter and munchkin trundled off on holiday . Leaving me and sarcastic son sat here . We loaded up the car and under protest he came and did a car boot sale with me , just so i could afford fuel his week..lol we didnt make much but it was mainly rubbish , outgrown clothes etc , so it was money made from stuff that would normally go in the charity bag . Im once again working loads of hours this week , so will be coming home to snore in the chair and view the washing yurt with pride .
Mr Bah Humbug did a stunner last week, i'd been at work and got home at 3 pm only to have a little voice shouting help as i got in the door . He'd somehow managed to fall off the toilet and get wedged head down between the door and the loo , it didnt do his dignity much good when I had to get son to help move him so we could get in the door to rescue him . We are forbidden to even mention this episode and just get the death stare ,and he wont tell us how long he'd been here , so I thought I would post it on here to annoy him . The worst of it was the cat had been up licking his bald patch as a gesture of sympathy , the ginger ninja is good that way .
Ive got to skive off work to go and sort Young Baldrick out today , he has a meeting with the safeguarding team and he has to have an appropriate adult , all the rest of the family refused to go even the interfering relatives , i think im the last name on the list at the moment , so will go and just see what the hell hes been up to this time.
Still awaiting wages with interest , such is life. Talked to the nice benefits lady the other day , she says im the only person on the books who is genuinely worse off for bothering to work . Still nothing they can suggest to remedy the situation . My mother meanwhile suggested her remedy for the situation , I should either murder my other half or just abandon him and get on with having a life , bless she sounds like a commenter on my blog  , maybe it is my mother ? either that or ive developed a split personality due to stress and im posting comments on my own blog .

Thursday 26 May 2016

Look on the Brightside

Im rather stumped by the attitude that we should be banging on the Foodbank door , I guess its just me but after a 23 year marriage to a bi-polar alcholic who couldnt stop spreading himself around , my current life is pretty easy .
Poverty is relative , things have been worse , theyre paying the housing benefit , we have a very small monthly benefit payment , daughter is in work and son is quite good at arguing with the benefits office so gets his pittance every fortnight .
 Getting paid for My job is a nightmare , but I still quite like it , on a good day , it gets me out, which is the main thing . It means i can keep a vehicle as its a tax deduction in most ways , it gives me a break from poo and endless washing .
You cant pick youre relatives , yes my mother is a nightmare , shes also a wealthy nightmare , but believe me when i say there is nothing that would make me like her attitudes and sheer bigotry against the human race . I will not agree with her just so i am in her will and the rest of the family need to get over that .
Young Baldrick is driving us mad at the moment , but it will eventually sort itself out .
Today Mr Bah Humbug sold some weird bit of vehicle on ebay so we went to Moy Park the local chicken factory  and I have £7.50 worth of chicken in the freezer , you can get an awful lot of chicken for your money ..i have tons of plans for it, June is now  chicken month ...lol
We still have the internet , ive just been looking up Navajo Fried Indian Bread, sounds like a good idea to me , tomorrows tea with chicken something ..lol .
Mr Bah Humbug had one of his group meetings with the Shaw Trust today and he said they were shocked when he said we rarely shop in a supermarket . He pointed out why would he when we can get 24 tins of beans for £2.40 , buy 800g packs of Bacon for 85p and buy army ration packs of meat 2kg for £2.75  its a case of careful shopping around. When things are this tight there are things that arent on the menu we dont buy pop squash or soda , we dont buy biscuits or cakes , no crisps  , no cereal other than bleedin porridge . I can scratch cook really well from practically anything , i know how to forage for greens and the garden will kick in shortly , thats what adds the variety to our diet , that and the endless little bags in the freezer . We have run out of cheese ..AARRGGHHH used the last of the xmas Brie on the top of a lasagne yesterday , so tomorrow i will be foraging for cheap decent cheese in the dark realms of Grimsby .
Yes were broke but we eat well, it can be a bit boring and yes i lost a stone when we gained an extra family member but i could lose 10 stone and still be called fat by my mother. I havent had a penny in my purse for 6 weeks , the bank rings 10 times a day , but things could be much worse .


Tuesday 24 May 2016

Still Here

No i havent been murdered in my sleep yet , ive just been cooking on a zilch budget , dealing with the fools and idiots that employ me and gardening myself into a coma .
How come something so relatively simple as the government living wage can cause me so many problems ?  I havent been paid because theres a huge squabble over how we will be paid in the future , they refuse to increase the wage they pay us , saying that because it is commission based it doesnt affect us ...mmmmm sorry but it does, saying that there is a possibility we could earn £12 an hour isnt good enough , that means we could work 40 hours and only earn £12 .
 Refusing to pay for work that has got back to you after the completion date, that was returned recorded delivery and signed for 2 weeks before the completion date, but you dont have the office staff to process it because you have made them all redundant isnt good enough .
I just wish I could find another job that fits around my carer duties !!
Young Baldrick ...wherever he is , we dont know.
 He had a major domestic with his dad and his dad wants no more to do with the situation , the police became involved over problems at his scheme and he was told he must leave for 3 days he refused to come here and it went on from there , they were moving him to another unit the last we heard .
Cooking on a budget of zilch is going quite well, ive managed to string a pack of mince out for 4 meals and it wasnt a big packet ..lol   Sadly its now tourist season here, so theres nothing in the local food shops that we can possibly afford, its all gone organic and farm fresh for the middle class masses that holiday here , theres no end of day bargains hardly and all the staple stuff like bread and milk has jumped 20p per item . One more week till we have any guaranteed income at all . Keep going down the garden and staring at the spuds and beans , netted the strawberries yesterday, cant wait im sick of rhubarb . Will the sweetcorn ever grow is the question and will the squash pop up . Fruit trees are looking promising so we will have tons come the season, its just the long boring wait for food variety.

Tuesday 17 May 2016

Young Baldrick

 This is a very hard post to write , you may notice ive not been around a great deal . but its not just been a whole lot of gardening and watching the Invictus games , sometimes its something read in the press that can trigger a whole host of things .
Theres been an awful lot of press about the killing of an elderly gentleman in a road rage attack by this individual .   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3592923/Mentally-ill-motorist-GUILTY-manslaughter-pensioner.html
We have young Baldrick problems yet again , last week he met his dad and me for us to give him his post , he was very twitchy and strange and got in his dads face because he had no food , he is now in receipt of benefits but he has no money he says because he bought a phone off someone at his project , his dad told him tough and he didnt like it much . I gather hes been strange with the other relatives who were supporting him and they have also withdrawn from him . He stank of weed and his behavior is quite threatening . The scheme he is residing in has informed us that he wont allow them to contact family if their are problems and because hes an adult theres nothing anyone can do .
His dad told him that if he had no food he could come and stay for the weekend , which he agreed was a good idea .
So come the weekend his dad went to pick him up and he wouldnt get up to let him in , his dad could see him through the window in bed . which set him off an endless weekend rant ...lol
His brother then informed us hes been all over facebook partying and doing drugs all weekend and posting rants against all and sundry , hes obviously becoming increasingly unstable and delusional yet again .
We have long said that we believe he is dangerous  and nobody will listen to us , the idea behind him being referred to the psychologist was to get a diagnosis of some sort , to get him the lifelong help he will need . This plan has been scuppered by other relatives and now he has decided there is nothing wrong with him and he doesnt need help .
So I dont think I can get a more public place than this to state I believe my stepson is a serious risk to society and needs help , I dont want to find myself having something terrible happen to someone and being blamed for his actions but thats is what we have to look forward to as we cant find anyone to listen to us.
Because he is an adult , hes free to do as he likes , meanwhile Im barely sleeping and looking over my shoulder all the time . He has previously threatened to petrol bomb us and kill my daughter , nobody was interested then either .

Monday 9 May 2016

Limbo Land

This weeks stunning events !! sorry theres just been a very boring week folks the world doesnt have much exciting to offer , just budget shopping , a glorious sunny car boot sale that my daughter dragged me to yesterday where i bought 6 tomato plants for a whole £1 and a bit of fishing that i mainly snored through much to Mr Bah Humbugs disgust ...
So lets take a look at the wider world and raid the Daily Mail for a few thoughts . The big story, Dave is trying to scare us to death about leaving the EU.
 My thoughts . we will probably try to leave shortly , we vote leave we may be heading for interesting times im sure , nobody seems to be asking the big question will they let us leave?
Cant understand why Dave has such a panic on , him and the rest of his vile colleagues will be able to do anything they want without the EU butting in , or is he just afraid we might notice that he knows nothing, has no valid policies and certainly does not speak for the majority of the British people.
Plus theres the fact that UKIP will be no more , theyre a one trick pony , we vote leave, the trick is gone.
Maybe its all smoke and mirrors and he knows hes so universally loathed that he figures we will vote leave if he wants us to stay , meanwhile Boris and IDS are busy sharpening there long knives in traditional Tory fashion .
Somewhat gutted by The Baftas nothing much to fall off my sofa laughing at. the frocks were pretty boring really , theyve let me down this year .
The one glaringly awful article was about the new Downs Syndrome blood tests , that could result in the extinction of Downs children due to the pressure of certain NHS staff on parents who get a positive result , it seems some have been pointing out what a burden to society and the NHS Downs Syndrome children and adults are , personally I would sooner money was spent on them than daft trollope's who cant decide what size boobs they want .

Thursday 5 May 2016

The Parallel Universe

Fun packed day yesterday with young Baldrick , his key worker rang to see if i could take him to the bank with yet more paperwork and have a little chat with him about matters , so we picked him for the day .
We trotted down to the Co-op Bank in Lincoln , with letters from the Job Center and HMRC , it was turning into one of those endless conversations with different parties that we seem to be having these days . But I'd like to thank the lovely Darren who has finally after 2 months sorted this bleedin mess out.
Young Baldrick has finally got his own bank account !! after much reading and thought they decided he was being excluded from having a bank account because of the limits of his disability , so there social exclusion policies meant it was unreasonable to expect him to have a passport or driving licence, because hes partially sighted and unable to remember which day of the week it is .  They didnt ask if he had a gun licence this time !!
 Then we had to drop Mr Bah Humbug off at The Shaw Trust for his daily meeting , hes got lots of homework, thats set him off yet again as he struggles to write and it has to be handwritten . Even they say they cant understand how hes expected to work, plus his condition is continually degenerating . But the good old DWP have spoken and he cant be reassessed because he hasnt got a new condition , this is a glaring flaw in the new system for ESA benefits and will affect many of those with a progressive illness .  They will doubtless be wheeling folks into the Job Center in hospital beds and dragging drips in a few years at which point because of conspicuous publicity something will be done.
We fetched Young Baldrick home for tea and cake and i managed to get a long chat with him , he has been referred on for independent living , probably in a shared house , he meets the criteria for being able to live alone as he is quite domesticated in a teenage boy way .
Other relatives have been raising concerns about him being bullied by other residents at his project  , taking advantage of him and stealing his food etc . But he doesnt see this as being a problem because hes been so badly treated in the past far worse than he is now . In fact he really likes it there and has decided he wants to stay in the small town hes based in  . As we continually have to remind them ,hes an adult he has to be allowed to make his own decisions where possible .
Hes driving his keyworkers round the bend i think , but it does take a lot of practice to be able to handle him , its how you phrase things when your asking him questions or trying to get him to do something . You have to praise the good and mostly ignore the bad unless its putting him or others in danger. Sometimes hes easier to handle than his dad ..lol
Its supposed to be some form of payday tomorrow , I' m currently compiling the economy shopping list , I will be so glad once the garden starts to kick in for the summer , the only fruit we have is rhubarb and theres a limit to how much i dare put into everyones diet

Tuesday 3 May 2016

Positively Not Positive

I watched a programme about those trying to gain a place at the Invictus games last night , for those abroad these are games for disabled veterans they are being held in the USA this year . They talked to the partner of one man who had lost a couple of limbs to an IED and had a black hard time coming to terms with it . She said it affected everyone in the family , there were no days out as a family etc etc .
He also talked about the mental health side of what had happened to him , how he couldnt see any point in his existence etc etc.
There are no comparisons but a lot of parallels in what Mr Bah Humbug and we as a family are having to go through .  He goes to some deep dark places in his head at times , the tablets help a little but not a lot , when hes hurting hes bleedin evil to be around , he says the pain never ever goes away and they have told him it will get much much worse .
They did tell him he could self request counselling but he refuses, because he says why would some middle class do gooder understand that this is life over , no amount of positivity will make his situation any better.
 He did have a wellbeing co-ordinator who was at best useless , she suggested he make use of a free gym pass but he cant go to the gym his unstable vertebrae put pad to that , he has a set of exercises he has to do each day. He cant walk very far at all  , it is just yards then he spasms and hes stuck there for however long it takes to unspasm . He can climb stairs but struggles to get down them because he cant feel his feet at all , any slight slope upward in a pavement and he struggles with his balance . He cant have crutches or sticks because his arms are held on with plates and pins and his lack of feeling in his arms and hands gets ever worse . His last operation did a little it stopped his arm spasming, but it now feels like hes got boxing gloves on all the time .
But what has occasioned this negative rant ?
The other day we had the  Jehovah's Witnesses round two gentlemen of a certain age , who for years have visited me in this rural end of nowhere every few weeks , im not about to join them but theyre a pleasure to have an intelligent conversation with .We were discussing Prince and his recent death and how Jehovah's Witnesses dont eat black pudding  Mr Bah Humbug staggered out to see who i was talking to as i was gardening, as they left he said , "do you realise theyre the first people other than us ive spoken to in nearly two weeks" how sad and awful is that.