When the children attack

The weather today has not helped my mood, from sun to rain then hail and back again is really not acceptable for a weekend!

 I woke up this morning with a headache, then realised I am due a certain visitor any day now, then my children drew breath near me, my husband cooked sausage and didn't wash the pan out. 

Any other day I could handle these things but today was not a day that involved patience, my children have been sarcastic and extremely noisy and my husband has played on his XBox 360 all day. I know that screaming and threatening to make them sort through their toys and bag them up to be sold at a carboot sale then threatening them with being sold on ebay if they didn't stop making noise was a little harsh but they really were THAT bad. They pulled down their curtains and pulled all of their sheets and blankets off their beds and they have bunkbeds! It's hard enough for anyone to remake a top bunk but I'm 5ft 3ins! 

There is a real reason for my unmotherly mothering today. I've got no job and I'm panicking....a lot. I wont moan about the why's because well, this is the internet and as much as I use this as a personal diary type thing I know that my luck is such that my boss would stumble upon it and sue me. So let's just say I asked too many questions, refused to do things that I felt were immoral and couldn't afford to buy a car. I wrote a letter of grievance to try and sort things out but they thought it was a letter of resignation so then we went backwards and forwards talking to ACAS, Jobcentre Plus, and CAB until eventually we agreed that it was in everybody's best interest to dissolve the contract. I can't go back to my previous employer because the reason I left (they could only offer me 15 hours a week and that was only to keep me, they didn't actually have enough work for me to do because I work too fast) still stands although they've said that if work picks up I can have my job back so fingers crossed. In the meantime I have to sign on which grieves me, we can't really afford to eat so we're sorting out the house so we can find things to actually sell on Ebay and at a carboot sale (as well as they children & their toys) and his royal highness king pig of pigland has decreed that I have to sort out and sell my books on amazon, I feel that that is just bloody cruel! I love books deeply and, if I could, would spend all day, every day reading and would love to be a writer but I'm not very good. I can write a good sex scene and open up the story but then my mind goes blank and it gets filed away with all of the other bits of writing I've done. 

So I am careerless. 

I went to college to look at possibilities but I can't claim benefits and retrain unless I go on income support but we earn too much to qualify for income support so that's out. I have two daughters, one of whom isn't even at school yet so I can't go to uni (nearest is 22 miles away) or get a full time job because I have to be close to the children (and I live in one of the worst hit recession holes in the country) My husband works continual nights so he can only be relied upon to not really be here in body during the nights and mind during the day. 

I keep going round and round in circles trying to work out what I can do but I'm coming up empty every time. 

Tomorrow we will be taking our daughters to the park (Free) then going to my inlaws for Sunday lunch (Free) then coming home and getting the girls to do a mini fashion show (Free) so we can work out what clothes still fit and what can be sold. 

I watched newsnight this week and it just really upset me. We're not going to loose our house (At least not at the moment) and I have no reason to feel personally slighted by this whole MP's and their expenses debacle. I actually think that some of them are paid poorly for the work they do. I know an area sales manager who couldn't sell an icecream on a hot day, and would freely admit it, who earns £62,000 a year. Lovely guy but doesn't deserve that if we are allocating wage based on intent to do good.....I'm just waffling now but the point I was going to make was that the whole thing is just so careless considering everyone has supposedly been working their very expensive socks off trying to manage and solve this country's financial balls up, but forgot to manage their own finances. People have been asking how we can regain our trust in, what is currently a minority of, our MP's? I think the answer is, we don't, we trust these people to run our country, if you had a spouse who frittered away money when you needed it to pay the mortgage and spent your money on frivolous unnecessary things, when you were already in a situation where your children were already missing out and, as a family, you were struggling it would take years to regain that level of trust and quite honestly could you trust them not to do it again? I couldn't. The best option? Probably country wide relate classes and a few lessons in money management. 

Anyway Eurovision is on and although Graham's no Terry Wogan, he's actually quite amusing!      

    

Twitter

I have a new job.

As I sat in Dave's kitchen discussing the finer points of said job I admit I had my smug face on.

You see, it sounded like the type of job that most people would dream of doing! Actually I take that back, it sounded like the type of job that most people who need to work set hours during the day in order to do the mother/wife/superhero/chum thing and also quite like to type would love to do and as that description suits, I was happy.

Now I'm two weeks into the new job and I will admit I'm somewhat stumped. Previously I answered a phone (or three) booked jobs, sorted advertising, wrote technical reports and drank coffee while waffling to my bosses wife. Now I answer one phone which rings so infrequently that I keep checking it to see if it's working, I write technical reports occasionally when anyone remembers to give me the data and I scribble......a lot. I also drink lots of coffee with my bosses but anyone would agree that that's a must in an office environment, do you know they even asked about it in the interview "How many words per minute? Oh and do you make good coffee?" (At home I make terrible coffee and tea just to get out of making it)

Now the part of this new job that confuses me is social networking. My understanding of this strange beast was that you sign up, you agree to be friends with people who made your life hell at school and people who you just cannot remember, no matter how great your memory is. You search for people that you possibly slept with just to see how badly they have aged and you IM your friends to arrange going out then to discuss who was the drunkest, who raided Rachael'sAnne Summers bag to the fullest effect and how someone got their double EE's into that cheerleaders outfit. I know it all sounds very boring but I'm a mother, outside of mothering my pleasures are few.

In this new job I have been given the task of setting up, updating and growing followers on these social sites. So far I've done Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Youtube and Twitter because those are the only ones I know. It was all very easy to set up but it is pretty much impossible to get people to follow you, which is quite disheartening on a personal level as I am a demon in real life social situations and can charm most people either with cleavage, sweetness, humour or (rarely) intelligence but I just cannot think of a way in. Seriously what do I say........"Ummm Hi want to follow me because I think the company I work for is great even though it bares no relevance to anything you have written on here" No, I think not. I cannot find anyone who does the same thing as we do. Have you ever heard of a web design agency that also offers marketing and advertising services with a video recording and editing department, music and band representation as well as employing two electricians? No? Well I'm not surprised quite frankly, you see it's looks confusing when it's written down like that but in reality it's extremely simple and runs very smoothly but I just cannot market it on these sites because it's such a mishmash of stuff.

So now I'm stuck, every day I log into these sites and write little updates on what we're doing and see what other people are doing but in honesty I mostly just read Stephen Fry's Twitters because they make me laugh and respond to random posts but I really do need to work out what the etiquette on these things, I respond to anyone who gets in touch and would feel terrible if I didn't but then I respond to people all the time and rarely get responses.
........Then there are the famousy types who are just people and are allowed to contact their friends and spy on EX's too but I just find the following thing plain weird because, well I don't know anyone famous apart from a footballer but that was before he was who he is and is just best forgotten then there was a band member who turned out to be gay, a girl I went to college with was on doctors for a while but no one I could pick up the phone to, so maybe it's just me but I don't very often bother people I don't know. regardless of what they do for a living. I might have to on occasion for work but I've never got an autograph or joined a fan club or contacted them purposely because they are famous, I enjoy reading some posts but that's mainly because I'm nosey and it's something different as I don't go to the Bafta's or fly to New York or go book signing in Australia all that often it's nice to read about other people's experiences of life.

So after much meandering down different paths of thought and writing this for ages, I'm no further along and still have no idea how to get people to follow the company I work for on social networking sites, I may to consider becoming famous although I've yet to work out what I have a talent for other than typing really quickly.

I suppose I ought to do a bit of work now..........Stephen Fry here I come!