helen-louise's journal

Today I received a letter (re-)awarding me Disability Living Allowance until September 2018, or until they decide it's time to make me apply for Personal Independence Payment instead. It is at Higher Rate for Mobility and Middle Rate for Care, which is the Right Decision.

Apparently it was worth spending six days filling in the form.

I'm extra pleased since I only received the "we have got your form and are processing it" letter on Saturday, so I had been anticipating many weeks of waiting. As it is, this is all sorted out for a couple of years and I don't need to worry about it.

The next thing I need to worry about is that I've been called for Jury Service. Which is everyone's civic duty, and ordinarily I would be entirely in favour of going to sit in a court as a visibly Disabled Person. However, various parts of my health, most notably the arthritis in my spine and associated neurological pain, have been so terrible lately that I don't honestly think I am capable of sitting still for hours on end. Also, my chronic fatigue means that I am not always able to take in information presented orally and I rely on adaptations like a voice recorder and laptop for taking notes at uni, neither of which I believe would be allowed by the court. So I have to write and tell them that. URGH MORE BUREAUCRACY.

So, I have absolutely no money whatsoever. Less than no money, even, which I'm sure my bank will be poking me about soon. I have two old students who wanted to come back for more lessons. The first one is resitting A-levels, so that should be easy. I've been teaching A-levels for years now. The second is a first year university student.

OH GODS I HAVE FORGOTTEN EVERYTHING I WAS TAUGHT IN MY DEGREE! Except the bits of it that I still use. She's only done one term at uni, but it's a nightmare!

Mystery bear is no longer a mystery. It's a clear case of identity theft, or fraud.

Some asswipe has ordered £278.30 worth of crap using my name and address details, and £277.28 worth of crap using Richard's. To get around the company's requirement that the first shipment must go to the same name and address that you've registered with, they sent us the ugly soft toys. And then the rest of the stuff has gone to them. The stuff ordered in Richard's name is especially hilarious, including 2 Chelsea shirts and 1 Man United shirt - allegedly ordered by one of the most anti-football men I've ever met!

You'd have thought that in a world full of identity theft and online fraud that the company would wait for payment for the first shipment before allowing a person to order any more stuff! Apparently not. Also, I didn't actually realise that it was possible to buy items online using credit set up with the seller, rather than using a credit card issued by a bank. That seems rather anachronistic, considering.

Grrr.

Apparently the address where all these £59 Fred Perry, Ben Sherman and Hilfiger shirts have gone is an address that the company "is currently investigating". If this turns out to be part of a mass fraud, I hope the bastards get what they deserve, which must at least include confiscation of the stolen nasty clothes and an exchange for fashionable prison wear :P

Today I got to spend a large amount of fake money on the trip to Iceland. There are four people travelling: myself, and my three partners; and considering how late we're booking it wasn't actually that expensive. Nonetheless, in conjunction with some other things that have come up lately, it's got me thinking about my priorities in life.

When I was poor (when I was a student, during the horrible 13 months when I sat around at home too ill to function, and while working at a crappy telephone market research job) I was very material possession-oriented. All the money I had left over after paying my bills would go on Things - mostly, CDs and video games. I saw spending £25 on a game that contained 40 hours-worth of amusement as an investment - because I couldn't afford to do everything I wanted to, and I needed things to do that were relatively cheap. Getting entertainment for a mere 62.5p per hour was an excellent thing.

As I've been working harder and for more money, I seem to have got to a point where I've almost gone into reverse. Now, I only seem to regularly spend money on things that I need to stay alive: food, meds, cleaning materials for self & house, toilet paper, etc. I spend very little of my disposable income on entertainment or material possessions, because I already have too many Things cluttering up my house, and I don't have enough time to play/read/listen to everything I already own. I'm rich in money but poor in time, rather than the other way round. Instead, my money gets funnelled into a savings account (that will eventually become a pension, once spoons exist to get that organised) and left there. The only things that I spend large amounts of money on are education and travel. Going to museums, visiting friends around the world, seeing new places. Experiences and memories in my head, rather than physical objects. And, y'know, I'm totally okay with that.

People keep asking me what I want for my birthday, and the truth is "Nothing, really". I have a wishlist which I need to update with books, CDs and DVDs, and I'm happy to receive any of those items. But for the most part, I'd rather get to see my friends and do something interesting with them than receive yet more $stuff. The only things I really want are the trip as far north as possible on the Solstice (which I've been waiting 11 years for) and a large, glossy photograph taken at a professional photographer's of all my local chosen family, to be framed and mounted on the blank piece of wall in the study (which I've been wanting since my 30th birthday).

I think being an integer power of 2 years old is worthy of celebration, so I'm planning to have a party sometime over the summer. Not sure when or where, and of course the summer is already packed with other people's plans, making things difficult. Though I'm sure geek social fallacy #4 is bound to apply, I'd still like to invite everyone that I know and like to come along. And I'd be happier with people's presence at the party than with anything else.

Apparently, what I need to do to make myself less ill is arrange to go & see the doctor. Actually, it was a nurse that I saw. But she peered in my ears and throat and listened to my lungs. And apparently I have the classic symptoms of the current upper respiratory tract infection that's going around in this area, complete with the whole "not buggering off after 6 or 7 days like a normal cold would". I think my virus got scared into submission by how ill everyone else in the surgery was. It's nothing to do with the Covonia cough syrup I started taking yesterday, oh no... ;)

Covonia, btw, is THE most vile and disgusting cough mixture ever in the history of the universe. One of my ex-boyfriends used to like the taste of it because it made his eyes water & made him feel spacey. Anything that strong must be doing you some good. I've been taking it for years and years as it's about the only cough mixture that's suitable for asthmatics to use, and it has actual active ingredients. But it really is nasty.

The reasons I've been so bothered about being ill are 1) because a lot of my kids have exams next week and 2) because being self-employed, I only get paid on days when I am able to go to work. All of this week, I would have been teaching for 5-6 hours a day, and I've missed all those days of work. So I estimate that this illness has cost me ( ... )

Haven't been around much online because I'm playing vast quantities of Ōkami. It will probably surprise you not at all that it's pretty much my perfect game. You are a (female) wolf who is the reincarnation of the sun goddess, and you restore trees, feed animals, fight monsters, and do calligraphy with your tail. And the whole thing is based heavily on Japanese mythology. Honestly, the only way it could be more of an h-l game would be if there was a rhythm action component where she played a musical instrument with her tail.

Also, Alexa is staying, and we're being vaguely social together in a low-energy sort of way. Pretty much everyone I know is severely short of energy at the moment.

Somehow, February ended while I wasn't looking, meaning it's time for me to do all my invoices. In fact, today being 5th March, they're already overdue. Argh.

Further to my posts about my tax return last week, I spent two evenings getting together everything that I could. Worked out how much I earned last tax year and how much I'd paid in commission and other "allowable" expenses. But then I couldn't finish the tax return because the contents of our bedroom are still piled up in the spare room from the DIY floor project, and the boxes of paperwork I needed to get to were on the other side of some large, heavy furniture items that I couldn't move on my own.

So we moved them last night, and I finished the tax return this evening. It took me about 2 hours to find precisely 4 pieces of paper: the end-of-tax-year financial statements for my National Savings account, my Natwest current account, my Natwest savings account and my BT share dividend. The total amount of interest I've received from those four accounts combined is less than £50. 2 hours of looking for £50 worth of information - gah! All my financial paperwork should, theoretically, be safely in a single filing box; but in practice, this last year's been awful for me with health stuff so I'm very disorganised. Getting that sorted is on my list of Things To Do when the upstairs floor is completely finished.

( Read more... )

I am, btw, very impressed that the tax return has the words "civil partner" all over the place: every time the word "spouse" is mentioned, it says "or civil partner" and every time "marriage" is mentioned it says "or civil partnership". Shame we couldn't go all the way and have a single entity for both opposite-sex and same-sex couples, but at least they are regarded as basically the same thing in law.

Excuse me, I am just about to have a minor nervous breakdown.

Argh! Tax return! Numbers! Argh!
Big numbers! Money! Inland Revenue!

OK, calm now.

I'm in a crap mood. It seems that the "spare" USB keyboard (that was originally intended to be the input device of the MythTV box which Richard started to build then gave up on) has finally broken. Now, it's not exactly surprising that it's broken, as I'm very clumsy and drop it on the floor several times per day - one of the reasons I have an external keyboard, as it's cheaper to buy a new keyboard than a new laptop - but it's bloody annoying timing - as it's way too hot to hold the laptop on my lap, and I'm too broke to buy another keyboard right now. So I guess I'll just have to not talk online much for a few days :/

Also went shopping for clothes today, and that always puts me in a bad mood due to all the looking at yourself in the mirror & resulting wrestling with body hatred that goes on. ( Blah - 'weight' 'loss' triggers maybe. ) I think even if you enjoy shopping for clothes, it sucks when you have no money and are putting it all on the credit card. Bah.

I hope that I will have money tomorrow. If not, I'll have a lovely three days at home on my own, without Richard, who's off somewhere "near Bournemouth" for the weekend, with £20 to my name. Oh yes, and I'm "supposed" to be getting some house work done. Meh!

Anyone want to do something on Saturday?