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There, but for the grace of God......
So, Northwick Park Hospital's Maternity Services have been found wanting and I for one will not be condemning anyone, except the Trust Board and the Government, for the deaths that have bought the problems to the public eye. Ad nauseum I have blogged about the state of affairs within the unit I work for and maternity services in general, the genuine fear that midwives have that, due to lack of staffing, it will be on their shift that an 'adverse outcome' will occur. Hopefully some good will come out of this terrible catalogue of failures and the Trusts and Government will realise that cutbacks cause unnecessary deaths.
It's happened, overnight, I have officially become a 'grumpy old lady'. One minute I'm just rather outspoken, perhaps slightly eccentric, and then the next I'm cringing with embarrassment at something I've just said. Perhaps it was the excitement, I'm just trying to think of excuses really because I can't believe my behaviour. I was excited, we were looking at cars for me but if anything I should have been on my best behaviour, sitting, as I was, on some strangers drive in their car. It just came out though, 'It looks as if someone has thrown up in here.' Hubby was stunned, as was the vendor, but having started I wasn't about to stop, off I went, ' Looks like incontinence stains on the seat, how on earth did that scuff mark get on the roof lining?' In my defense, if someone wants you to pay 4 grand + for a car I would expect that they would clean it up a bit, not leave what I took to be projectile vomit all up the inside (apparently it was where a can of coke had erupted) or leave a telltale tube of superglue in the door storage, thus encouraging me to discover what bit of plastic fascia they had cracked and had repaired. I may have insulted his car, but he insulted me by not bothering to put any effort in to selling his car. Didn't buy it, not because of this but it didn't drive well. However did buy another one, it looked loved.
Shattered
Really tired. Jack and his Mummy are staying whilst his Daddy is in hospital having a bowel resection, op yesterday, all went well, tubes everywhere, high on a morphine drip. Nanny is finding this 24 hour living with Jack, plus having Amy, absolutely exhausting, my body is finding this return to 'parenting' completely draining. In other words, 'I'm feeling my age'. There are good aspects, sharing the workload, one of us washing-up, the other one hanging out the laundry, but the constant demands of 2 toddlers is knackering!
Picked up my new car today. A 3-year-old Skodia Fabia 1.4, 16V (specs for Flighty!), deep, metallic blue, body-coloured bumpers, AC etc. Truely frustrating though, it isn't taxed and I couldn't tax it today. First I tried at the PO, but they wouldn't accept a fax, with covering letter, cover note, so then I came home and tried on-line, that was impossible as well. Grrrrr. Now I've got to trust in the postal service to deliver the cover note PDQ. I'm having to content myself with sitting on the sofa reading the owners manual.
Discipline
Touchy subject. No smacking, not even tapping allowed. No use of negative adjectives, therefore bad, naughty, can't be used in relation to my Grandchildren. I am allowed to use the 'naughty stair', my tactic with this is that I go and sit on said stair which allows me to overcome the instinct to totally lose my rag. Yesterday evening a food flicking episode started, Jack was cautioned, his response was to wave an admonishing finger whilst shouting 'Stop it'. After several minutes of this Nanny cracked, his bib was removed, he was tucked under my arm, and as I told him what a naughty boy he was we bustled out of the kitchen and into the hall. I had no idea what I was going to do with him. Where to put him? Bedroom, no, don't want him to be upset about going to bed at Nanny's. Sitting room? No. Too many interesting, and breakable objects. Just as I was about to run out of hallway to stomp down Jack solved my dilemma, 'Jack. Good boy, Nanny.' I held him against me, he kissed me, gave me a cuddle and all was calm. Thank heavens. Dinner continued with no more 'unfortunate' behaviour. Have to start devising different strategies to deal with situations where I wish to modify behaviour.
I don't think I score very well on the PC scale.
Utter, utter frustration
Thats what I feel. My 'new' car is sitting there, on my drive. I have insurance, it has a new MOT but I can't drive it because it isn't taxed. I've tried, boy have I tried. Post office, won't accept a faxed copy of my insurance policy. On-line, message tells me the service is unavailable to me. I've tried phoning DVLA, what a waste of time, constantly 'all lines are busy', and accoprding to them the reason all lines are busy is because of ' recent budget changes'. What recent budget changes? March, call that recent? When the cover note didn't arrive today in the post I phoned up my insurance company, NORWICH UNION and spoke to some idiot in customer services, just to check that they have sent it out. I explained my predicament, that the Post Office don't accept fax copies, and twice he suggested that they send me a fax copy of it. I held my tongue, remained calm, and asked him if there were any way I could receive the cover note sooner than the 5-6 working days he was telling me it would be, I NEED MY CAR FOR WORK, no, there isn't but......he could fax me a copy of it! That's when my reticence went, it just hurtled out of the window and he got it, both barrels. I know it's not his fault, and I'm not blaming him for me not being able to use my car, but it is really annoying when someone, in customer services, has not listened to what you have said, three times.
I don't cope well with situations like this, when BB has you by the short and curlies. Trying to perform a simple action, tax a car, having to jump through hoops, and still not getting anywhere. Plus, I had really wanted to be able to try out my new little motor before I had to use it for work and, perhaps, being called out in the middle of the night and driving to unfamiliar destinations.
So, what do I do about working? Do I break the law and drive an unlicensed vehicle, or do I 'pull a sicky', stress would be a not untruthful description, and just hope the customer service guy over-estimated the time it would take for the cover note to arrive and I'm mobile by the weekend.