Other What's ruining your life right now?

Absolute mare of a weekend.

My mother’s due to complete - and therefore move - on Wednesday. It’s a chain, so it’s one of those things where everything has to happen on the day.

In the space of three days, two removals firms cancelled. I drove straight up there from work on Friday after the first one cancelled, and I’ve been there the last two days helping get stuff packed.

The house was paid off when my dad died, but a couple of years later she got a letter about a debt of his that none of us knew about. It had mounted up to somewhere around £35k, so she had to remortgage in order to afford it. And therein lies the whole reason she’s had to sell up and move - the payments were becoming unaffordable on her bare-minimum wage.

She’s a widower and really doesn’t have money to spare. But something has to be sorted this week, so there will be plenty of frantic ringing round this morning. I can pay for stuff if needs be, but I have to be in work the next two days, so there’s not a lot else I can do to help until Wednesday.

I wish to christ that she’d just let me pay the mortgage in the first place, it was about £350 per month, I can spare that… But before I knew what was going on she’d already put the house on the market and committed to several grand in Estate Agent fees… Now here we are, over a year after it went on the market and several collapsed chains later, and everything’s falling apart at the last minute…

Of course, this is on top of my other half’s ongoing recovery, which isn’t exactly going very well…

 

Jeez, that stressed me out!!
Good luck and remember to breathe

 

Hang in there @Byron C .

 

Yeah wishing you some luck dude. I spent 3 months packing for my move and even that was stressful enough.

 

After the ongoing issues with the car, now just failed it's MOT and been quoted £500+ to solve (both front suspension arms need replacing I believe) and no other local garages seem to be either answering their phones or have any availability in the next week.

 

Removals booked. Not the packing service she wanted, but it’s at least done.

Aaaaaaaaand breathe…

We had a fall-back in place: hiring a van, getting a family friend to drive, and moving stuff ourselves. (EDIT: I can’t drive the van, I haven’t had a license long enough - every local hire company I found wants you to have held a license for 2 years.) But there’s only a 7-hour window to do the move, and there’s an absolute shedload of massive and heavy furniture to move. It would have been a nightmare doing it ourselves…

She’s got this massive wall unit/cabinet thing that’s about 5 feet wide and 6 feet high. It’s in two separate pieces, top and bottom, but it’s solid wood and weighs an absolute ton - there’s not a hint of chipboard/particle board or MDF in sight. I’ve moved that thing once or twice in the past, each piece is a 3-man job and it’s an absolute ******* to manoeuvre. And then there’s the dining table, which is also solid wood and something like 6-7 feet long when it’s fully extended; again, at least a 2-man job to move it… And that’s just two pieces of furniture…

The one positive thing out of these last 4 days is that I feel extremely relaxed about the prospect of me and my other half moving again! We’re not planning to do that any time soon, but I reckon I could pack the majority of our stuff in 2-3 days at most.

Cheers all. There’ll be a beer or two this weekend when it’s all done, that’s for sure!

 

Good on you getting that sorted @Byron C , sounds like a right nightmare. Shame you're weekend isn't starting on Tuesday.

I've moved in a van before, a couple of times, maybe more. It seems like an ok idea but it is a tiring pain in the bum. Glad that's off the cards for you.

 

In 2 weeks I start my 'new' job, same company, but new site, new boss, one step up the ladder and as part of a professional development program. Except I seem to be heading for my first big row with my new boss (and new area boss, new head office boss) already. The (medical) training I'll be starting has very strict demands on my time. For 30 hours a week I must be shadowing my trainer (my boss), for 7.5 hours a week I'm on site doing case work, during which time I am absolutely not allowed to be public facing for data protection reasons. It's basically paid coursework but with real people's medical records.

Well first Area Boss boss had decided that 30hrs + 7.5hrs actually means 30 hours total. That got stomped on by the Training Providers, but now they're trying to define 37.5 as 34 hours (5 days minus a 30 minute break each day) when the course brief is pretty clear that 37.5 is 5 8 hour days minus lunch. I already have a plan for this, it involves asking the course co-ordinator for clarification and watching the fireworks from a safe distance. My training hours are going to be tracked and ending up potentially 150 hours behind after 3 years isn't in my plan. Plus it's giving me the impression that I'm being cheaped out on. I signed a contract that said I was commiting to work full time, stop trying to weasle out of paying me full time.

At the same time New Boss seems to think I'm there as a general technician to fill in the gaps in his rota, not his new trainee with extremely specific requirements for hours and time. He's already scheduled me all wrong but at the time I let it slide on the grounds of 'fight this battle later,' Yet last week I've been getting plaintive 'but muh rota,' messages directed to me and Area Boss as Training Provider clarifies when and where I'm supposed to be. He also seems to think I'll be doing case work from the reception desk, which has gotten a polite but firm no from me and another 'but muh rota,' from him. He doesn't seem to grasp that whilst I have to be on site (can't take patient records home after all) I'm not available. I've gotten used to having a boss who's professional standards first, company second, I'm getting concerned New Boss is a corporate dimwit, company needs uber alles and all that. For him I'm mentally preparing the 'do you understand what my job role and what your job role (that you volunteered for) actually are?' speech as we speak. But I'd prefer to get through my first weeks without a blazing row with my new boss.

I'm moving house and moving a couple of hours away from my Dad for this. I'm commited to a 5 year contract (yay retention period), went through rounds of interviews and signed up to a degree course for this. But I'm getting the feeling that I'm the only person taking this at all seriously. It's all feeling very last minute, on the cheap and it's giving me distinctly cold feet. But it's also the only way I will ever get another shot at higher education and career advancement.

On the plus side, beat my record for a 5k run by 15 seconds, yay!

 

pc decided to crowdstrike itself

hopefully it's just a 1-off and not a sign of impending hardware death...

...again

 

Woke up feeling very dizzy. Tried to go through the motions but it was clear after setting off in the car I wasn't going to be able to bull my way through the day, so turned around and went back to bed. Anything other than just lying down makes it worse. The usual cup of coffee I have every morning unfortunately means I keep going in and out of sleep.

Now that I 'm awake properly, I'm going to see if I can do some reading at least.

Edit: just went for a wee - dizziness is still rather extreme.

 

I get bouts of dizziness thanks to a vestibular disorder. YMMV but make sure you drink more water than you think you need, also trying some neck exercises may help. I couldn't find the one I usually do, but this video seemed to cover most things:



I hope it clears up soon, if not- 111! Dizziness is awful.

 

Moving day yesterday, and it was an absolute nightmare. Lots of swearing, lots of sweating (although mostly me), lots of tears, lots of emotion, lots of stress.

Supposed to pick up the keys to the new property at 1100; removals got there at 9 to start loading up and then do the first run. Didn't get in to the new property until about 1515. TL;DR: total cockup by the seller's estate agents. Guys in the removals van had been sat outside the new house for two hours, after an hour lunch break, waiting to do just the first run. In the end they basically had to drill out and destroy the front door lock to get in (which was indeed replaced).

Old house was a nightmare to clear out, so much stuff... New house is packed full - they were able to put up beds but that's about it as far as being able to move in there. The last load of 'stuff' had to be taken to a storage lockup because it physically could not get in the door.

The buyers were due to take possession at 1600, but luckily they weren't moving in on the same day. They did come round, and promptly realised we weren't just taking the piss when they saw how much was left and my mother burst into tears talking about it. They said to just sort out what we need to and then give them a call in the morning.

None of us left until about 8pm and my mother's back over there this morning to do a final tidy-up of anything that's left.

My back's aching like crazy and my knees are killing me; the latter is not helped by (and possibly caused by) the fact that my legs don't fit under the car steering wheel so I have to twist my legs at awkward angles to get at the pedals properly.

Oh, and I slept about 2-3 hours last night. Other half was being restless af again; she got up not long after midnight, came back to bed an hour or two later. About 0330 I woke up because her legs were restless af again. Tried to go sleep on the sofa - not happening. Tried to go back to bed for a while - nope. Got up just after 5am when it started getting light. I'm supposed to be back over with my mother today, I suspect I won't be there all day this time.

 

Thanks!

It took a while, but by 4pm I was able to actually walk around again. Spent up to midday reading in bed as fortunately it went away if I just laid down.

 

Last of my current round of dental appointments this morning. This was a series of 3 sessions:

1) checkup - this spotted a few issues that needed filling and then one candidate for a possible root canal due to reoccurring infections.
2) 3 fillings - turned out that one took a lot longer and bled a LOT so only ended up being 2 fillings
3) today - last filling that was meant to have been done before on lower left and then the possible root canal ended up being an extraction on upper right.

Now that the anaesthesia has all worn off is where the ruining bit begins, that tooth did not want to come out as one of the roots (it had 3) was a funky shape and mechanically locked it into the socket. Got it eventually and the dentist will be feeling that in the morning as well as it took a LOT of work for him to get it out. Now my mouth is soooo bruised and swollen because of how much effort went into getting the tooth out. Thankfully it has all stopped bleeding now, but knowing how I am with bruising, I shall have another few days of this left to go.

Eating and drinking is "fun"...

At least I got to keep the shiny gold crown that was on the tooth, not too much in the way of actual gold in it I know, but I do have plans...

 

This is the gift that keeps on giving.

Long story short, the buyer & their solicitors have made accusations that my mother was refusing to hand over keys, when the reality is that the buyer was refusing to take possession.

Nope. Livid. Not putting up with that. Absolutely will not stand for that.

Situation has been cleared up with my mother’s solicitors, and TBH it sounds like they aren’t in the mood for any horseshit either. They’ve already had to serve multiple notices to the buyer’s solicitors because of delays.

Told my mother to give her solicitors delegated authority and have them speak to me instead. If needed, we already have evidence of the buyer’s intransigence and ever-increasing demands in the form of WhatsApp messages. We also have evidence of the buyer trying to gain further discounts on the purchase price through WhatsApp messages, which they were repeatedly instructed not to do.

If the buyer wants to pick a fight then they’re no longer picking a fight with a vulnerable widower in her early 60s with chronic health conditions and little money to spare. They’re picking a fight with me, and I have the time, the energy, the emotional capacity, the inclination, and the resources for it. I will - legally speaking - absolutely ****ing nail them to the wall if they want to try and push this.

 

Cronched my finger while hauling this beast up my stairs yesterday morning.



It’s an old solid wood hifi cabinet. The shelves are more or less 19”, so it’ll serve as an ideal server rack (albeit a “short” rack, not “full length”). The top flaps open to allow you to open a turntable lid, and I forgot that crucial point while hauling it up the stairs. It slips a little, I scrabble about and grab the lid to stop it falling, lid lifts up, I topple forward a little and put weight on the lid, finger go cronch.

My finger is a lovely shade of bruise this morning, and it looks like I’ve got chipped nail polish on.





Makes typing really bloody awkward…

 

Aww.

 

Many swears escaped that day.

 

Deary me, that smarts...