Saturday Morning 2nd October

Letter from NHS Booking service saying they've been asked to contact me to make an appointment for Ultrasound: Thorax & Pleural Cavity. It seems that "as soon as you receive this letter" ring the booking clerk, except the booking clerk's only open Mon - Fri 9-12 & 2-4pm  (Why can't I have a 2hr lunch?) and if the line's engaged, keep trying, and if you don't get through before 10 days of receiving the letter - Oh, so today's the second of October, so before the 12th...but they sent it on 30th Sept, and 1st Class post should arrive next day, so maybe they think I'll have got it on 1st, so before 11th... or is it 10 working days? (making it 2 weeks?)

Oh, what the heck, I'm intending to call on Monday straight after the morning school run, and right before calling the staff emergency line to see if we're open again...

And. I must remember to do under my arms before the scan... don't want another stressor like I had when I saw the GP... for some reason, I thought the doc would just look at the lump, so chose a jumper that was appropriate with a wide neck... didn't occur to me that a full breast exam would be needed, or I'd have... umm... prepared better!  (Ask if you want more specific detail!)

So, woke up at 11am - Tesco arrived at 11:57am (A whole 3 minutes early!) - Hubby's in the kitchen now rearranging the tin cupboard. It seems that we're having a tea-time babysitter to cover the time between me setting off to college and Hubby arriving home from Overtime... 4:30pm to 6:45pm.  So, hoping that she'll feed the kids, especially if I say she's welcome to do something for herself too, I've bought LOADS of easy foods that just need tipping in to a jug and shoving in a microwave at most. (Heinz Spag Bol, Heinz Ravioli, Heinz Sommat & Meatballs, Not Poodles) - these are also the sorts of foods that DS1 can manage to do himself when college send him home unexpectedly... anyway - there's the intention, for lovely babysitter to feed obnoxious sons otherwise they have to wait until hubby returns and can sort something out.

Anyway - off to measure DS2's mattress - He has an Argos shortie high sleeper which is a non-standard size, and the mattress in it is rubbish - we've had to wrap it in an old thick blanket so he doesn't feel the springs poking him from inside it when he lies down!!! And we've (and by that I mean "I've") found a bed manufacturer in Burnley area who I can ask if they would make a non-standard size mattress for him - hope its not expensive!

And then to do all the other stuff that I can hear my phone singing to itself about - I left it in bed when I woke up... fatal flaw in the Organisation Plan- if the phone's out of earshot, everything gets missed!

Friday 1st October

A week's gone by and I've heard nothing. Should I have heard something yet? How soon should an ultrasound be?

Today was a good day though... a fire in an electricity sub station somewhere took out all the power to my office so we didn't have to go in!

People were sent home 1st thing in the morning with instructions to call our department's national emergency line at 10am. At 10am the voicemail said call at noon. At noon it said call at 2pm and at 2pm it said the office was closed for the day, and for tomorrow, but people working Sunday should check the messages on Saturday... and then we hung up.

A while later, someone suggested that if we'd listened to the rest of the message, we've even been asked to call before leaving home on Monday morning! Whoo hoo - fingers crossed there'll be some major electricity problem meaning the office can't be reconnected for a week perhaps...

DS1's taxi was absolutely fine on Thursday afternoon and Friday. Maybe I should have made a formal complaint at the very 1st instance of anything going wrong? But I don't like to do that. If I have a problem with someone, I prefer to give them personally a chance to put it right before going above their head. And I gave them several "chances" and explained to them calmly why what they'd done had caused problems, but it didn't help.

It's been a manic week - I've included a very blurry picture of my Outlook calendar. Each of those coloured blocks represent an appointment, or meeting, or something out of the normal routine that needed doing... and see how there's now load over at the right hand side? That because I've been putting a lot of stuff off til weekend when I was hoping I'd feel a bit less stressed & weary... hmm... doubtful.

Sorry it's blurry, but I didn't want every Tom, Dick & Harriet to know exactly what and where, and who with... kids' privacy and all that.

Those orange blocks across every day.. that's a reminder for me to take my meds... right at the bottom is the 10pm reminder for DS1 to take a shower.. and for me or hubby to put the milk bottles out.. and check DS1's communication book (Where college tell me what DS1's been doing, and what he needs for class, and when there are changes to his schedule)

That's Monday in the 1st column, so if you count across, you'll see that a reminder went off today for me to decide which Christmas cards I want to send this year... yes, already!!! We've got reminders to send payments off for various bills as its the beginning of the month, and there was even one to remind me to take DS2 for a haircut straight after school today since it was about 10 weeks ago since he last had one.

Each of the colours signify something, like who the reminder concerns, and what its about, how urgent it is etc.

Sad huh? But without it, I'd be even more of a complete mess! Without it I would forget my blood pressure meds, my antibiotics, and my B-complex (which is supposed to give energy) and various other stuff. Without it I seriously think I would forget what day it was during the school holidays!

And it's all there on my laptop... and appointments that are during the work day get emailed in to my Outlook at work, so I can be reminded there too. And then I connect my phone to the laptop and sync all of them in to my mobile (cell) phone... a 2006 Windows Mobile version... like a brick now, but until I'm in a position to be able to afford a phone that does and equivalent thing, I can't change it!

I used to have a reminder to go to bed. It didn't work. I just snoozed it (Or BF'd it, to use a work term) for half an hour, or another half hour, and then another... and it'd be 5am again, as normal.

So, what's on Tomorrow? A new door-key to be cut, and a metal chain to attach it to... for inside DS1's gym bag so grandma can collect him from the gym.... get rubber soles put on my new boots because I'm sliding all over the place in them, and its not even icy yet!...Reminder to install iTunes on DS2's computer... to file away some paperwork... that Tesco is going to deliver groceries between noon and 2pm...and more! So I'd better get to bed!