Month: November 2006

It’s been an emotional rollercoaster today – I spent the morning getting quite teary-eyed from all the gorgeous comments and personal emails I’ve been receiving (love you all!) … then at work I had a stressful 6 hours, which ended up turning my entire mood into almost fits of giggles!

I’ve been involved with a big issue at work that I initially dealt with two nights ago – that was a huge involvement and ended up with me and another girl off the phones for a number of hours trying to fix something. I emailed a spreadsheet of all those bookings that were affected etc to our Head Office before I went home at 11pm … then they continued to work on the problem overnight. The next day the problem was still not resolved, so they asked the morning shift to continue the same way that I had the previous night, and to send new spreadsheets every 4 hours so they could continue to deal with them. I was called at home at 8.30am yesterday morning, after only getting to bed at 2am (not impressed), then again at 10.30am, just before I was getting ready to come into work (and I still can’t work out why the phoned me, ‘cos we didn’t discuss any of the procedures etc) … anyway, when I get to work I find out they’d found my original spreadsheet, and added all the new problem bookings to the list (rather than making a new spreadsheet which had been requested) … to add insult to injury they then put the entire list in alphabetical order … and saved the files … so when I came in I had to spend almost 4 hours comparing the old file in my email, to pull out all the new bookings – and because they hadn’t processed the ‘fixes’ properly, I had to go into each and every new booking and fix them up as well. Another office then topped it off yesterday by not ignoring these particular bookings on the queues, and queue-delaying them until today, which means we had to wait until this morning for them to pop up again, then start going back through the queues to find them all and starting again today.

Well, the final straw when I came in at lunchtime today for work to see if they’d managed to find them … I’d ended up having to stay an extra hour at work last night fixing the problems before emailing the entire corrected list to our Head Office – then left an email plus a printout of a spreadsheet, with lines wide enough for someone to write on them, asking for someone to write up any new bookings (the queue-delayed ones) onto the forms, then to fax them to head office for the final tally. What do they decide to do? They said among themselves, “that’s really silly, when we have this great spreadsheet already set up, let’s just do the same as yesterday, and add them all into the old spreadsheet, then sort them alphabetically again!” … My face when I came in today to be told that was a total picture!!!

So, today I spent another 4 1/2 hours cross-referencing through the same lists yet AGAIN (of over 300 bookings), and having to go into every single new booking yet AGAIN to fix them up … only to get a call from Head Office from an extremely apologetic manager saying not to worry, as the company we’re dealing with had finally managed to pull their own report from their own system, so they’d just use their own data …… aaaaaarghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry for the loooooong version … anyway, the upshot of all this, is that I’ve had a shitty few days at work just because of sheer incompetence of other staff members, and tonight’s call just sent me over the top – I couldn’t do anything else but crack up laughing and got the giggles. Two of my work colleagues have given me “Luv Ya Work” awards ‘cos of everything I’ve been doing for the last 3 days … here’s hoping the smile will be here to stay for a while longer 😉 If nothing else I got some great compliments from the manager in head office I’ve been dealing with for 3 days 🙂

I had a good talk to Mum on the phone before work too, and she agrees with me that I should basically forget Christmas (stitching-wise particularly) until after Christmas, and just treat myself to some selfish stitching “just for me” – so that’s the plan … I’ve listed three projects that I’d really love to stitch, even if it’s just making a start on them (I’m still missing a couple of threads/beads), and that’s what I’m going to focus on until after Christmas … then I’ll get back on track and get stitching ornaments again ready for ‘whenever’ and back to my rotation. As Mum says, that way it takes my mind’s focus off the negatives of what I can’t do for Christmas, and puts it back onto something more positive 😀 Thanks to everyone’s suggestions on that score – they’ve all been taken on board 😀

This weekend I’ll be doing a list of the entire contents of the freezers – which won’t take very long going by what I saw yesterday LOL – and a bit more menu planning to get me through the next three weeks at least. I’ve just cooked up the 1kg mince I had into spaghetti bolognese sauce, so that’ll last about 6 main meals – and I made beef stroganoff in the crockpot yesterday (I only had half the meat required but I still made the full recipe), so that’ll go into the freezer for another 3-4 meals (I just have to add a bit of sour cream after it’s been reheated). There are still 3 chicken breasts in filo pastry left … so that’s pretty much covered two weeks of meals … I’m just not sure what else is in the freezer.

Anyway, I just wanted to share a more positive post for a change – thanks again for all your lovely comments and support, and thanks for hanging in there while I’m going through my less than positive phase 😀 {{hugs}}

Now I’m off to start kitting up one of my projects … the four at the top of my list for starting are (in order of preference):

• Coffee Menu – Little House Needleworks (I have everything, just have to choose which fabric to use)
• Sapphire Star – canvaswork by Laura J Perin (I still have one thread on backorder from Dragonfly Dreams, but otherwise ready to go)
• Fire sampler – The Victoria Sampler (pretty sure I have everything)
• Angel of Love – L&L (have everything, I think, except I only have one packet of each of the beads, and from memory there are about 3 colours that need more than one packet … if I get time to start this one I’ll just stitch as far as I can until I run out … by the time I get to that stage I should be well and truly over my ‘poverty line days’ and should be able to pick the last few beads up from Spotlight or somewhere)

Seriously, thanks for all the support – it’s very unusual for me to get so down for this long … it’s just a case of riding the storm until the weather calms, which will hopefully be by Christmas … hopefully. I’m very lucky in that Mum’s taught me to be a packrat where food’s concerned, and I have a tall chest freezer for bulk meat etc, so at least I haven’t gone hungry so far, even if my menu has had to be substantially altered for a while.

For Alison – I don’t have a monthly budget, in that I automatically pay bills as soon as they come in, and know what’s normally due to come out … so whatever is left at the end of the month is technically ‘free’, and things are not usually this bad. Unfortunately, though, I had $1000 sitting in the bank and blew it on our Hong Kong trip, so I don’t have a ‘back up’ for emergencies any more. Even that would have been fine as there should be sufficient to pay the bills, but having my car keep breaking down and costing about $300 overall, plus a very unexpected $500+ tax bill all of a sudden due (not to mention the $120+ parking fine – and extra money spent on a dinner party), and “I’m screwed” to put it very bluntly. Normally paying bills are fine – some pays I have a small bit left over, other pays I have some extra spending money … but all this lot came totally out of left field, and I was unprepared for it.

It also means I’m gonna be frugal for a while longer even when things do even out a bit again, so I can get some emergency money behind me again, then next time I won’t be so desperate 😦 So when I can get back to decent grocery shopping, I’ll still be eating cheaply for a while longer.

For Maria S., KarenV & Nicki – I have to admit I probably will continue to make my ornies for those special people, but I may now wait until after Christmas and continue stitching them again … and I might take on the suggestion of a “cheer me up” new project. I’ve been seriously itching to pick up LHN’s Coffee House Menu, so perhaps that’s what I should do – and take my mind off ornaments and my rotation for the time being. My ornies will eventually be posted, just not in time for Christmas this year. Maria, your comment about not eating while stitching gave me a smile this morning 🙂

Nela – Thanks so much for your beautiful words, they are so much appreciated 🙂

I’ve even been looking at other areas to cut back this year – I’ve thought for a few years now that I don’t know why I bother sending Christmas cards etc to most of my UK rellies, as I never hear anything from them in return – I’d rather spend the postage on people who actually give a damn about staying in contact … that’ll be a decent saving in itself over time. So this year is the last year I send to ‘everyone’ (in fact I might make two lists of rellies, and may not send to everyone this year either), and no longer will they get the colour family newsletter on photo paper that I take care to publish and send every year – those with email will be getting it as a .pdf file this year, and any of my UK rellies that don’t send me a card this year will be removed from the future mailing lists … Mum’s doing the same thing too. With the cost of the cards, photo paper, colour ink cartridges, and postage it costs $100-$200 each year to send them out, which is just ludicrous, and I’d rather spend the money on those that I want to.

I even said to Mum perhaps I should go back to dial-up, as well, to cut the costs – but that will be an absolute last resort, as my computer access is my life-blood at the moment 😉 It’s a shame I can’t do it without a home phone, as I barely use that at all, and that’d be a $40 saving every month – I could survive on just my mobile hmmm.

What hasn’t helped is the news saying the lack of rental properties in Melbourne is likely to see up to a 40% increase in rental fees next year, which really cheers me up no end … and I would be well and truly beggared then! It’s been depressing me thinking I may also have to consider moving into shared accommodation if this happens … for those of you who know some of my past experiences here with flatting with Fraze’s mates, you know how much that scares and depresses the pants off of me. Add to that the news reports mentioning a possible takeover bid for our company, and that doesn’t fill me with positivity about job security either … admittedly that’s very very new, and it may not have any initial impacts even if it did go ahead, but in our industry nothing is ever safe and speculations have already commenced … perhaps you could have waited until after Christmas to drop that little bombshell on us all, management team 😦

Anyway, even with this loooong post tonight, it’s still likely that I won’t be posting quite so often for a short while – I’m very aware that my blog isn’t full of the joys of spring at the moment, and I don’t want to come on here and moan about everything every day … I hate being so down in the dumps in my posts, and I’d rather put those thoughts to one side for now. Aside from that, I’ve had stress headaches every single day for the last couple of weeks, and sitting at the computer screen all day, then again at night, doesn’t really help matters much.

Thanks again for your words of support … I promise to be perkier before Christmas, honest! 🙂

Just a quick post to apologise that I won’t be able to send any Christmas ornies in time for Christmas this year – I had high hopes of getting 6-10 to some very special online people, but I just can’t afford to do it post-wise. After paying my bills this month there still isn’t enough left over for the tax-man, and next payday is a smaller one with no weekend allowances with the month’s rent taking almost all of it … which means 12 Dec pay will be used for paying the tax-man now. It also means I still can’t have a good shopping day food-wise until then, and I’m starting to get to the bottom of my frozen foods etc and need to keep every cent I can at the moment to put some semblance of food on the table. This truly breaks my heart, and it’s put me in a bit of a stitching slump too – my whole month was planned around stitching these ornies, and it’s put a real damper on the month knowing now that I just can’t do it.

Sorry if I haven’t been online too much – just don’t have too much to say at the moment … to be honest it’s taking me all my energy just to get up and go to work – I’m trying to catch up on a bit of blog reading every now and then, but I won’t be posting much unless there’s any stitching or photography to share for a while.