Decisions, decisions…….

Something I well and truly suck at making!  Whether it’s something life changing or just what to have for tea – I really don’t do making decisions (as evidenced by the fact my tea last night was crackers and goats cheese whilst I thought about what I wanted and then didn’t get round to it)

Anyway, more importantly – I have a decision to make….. a work related decision…. and this is going to be mainly rambling as I try to make a decision….

Now that one of our team has left the position of deputy team leader has is vacant and yesterday I was hauled into a meeting with my team leader and asked if I would apply for it….. I think I might have nodded vaguely….

The thing is, I am not sure whether I want the role or not …. okay sure, it’s a step up the ladder, and one I will probably need to take at some point in the future if I want to advance in the firm…..  but our team leader isn’t big on delegating and when I stepped up and covered for 9 months whilst the colleague that has left was on maternity leave I basically did nothing in addition to what I usually do work wise.  Now, I said this yesterday and was told that this would change if I did take the post – we are expecting 3 new starters in the team, none of whom have much experience and would need a high level of supervision some of which would fall to me. 

Now my team leader and I have very different management styles – she is a meddler and micromanager whereas I tend to let people get on with what they are doing on the understanding they will come to me if they need help.  Is it possible for us to work together with the rest of the team if our approaches are so different? 

Then there is also my own work…. I have my own targets to meet – will there be any allowance if part of my time is now going to be spent supervising rather than cracking on with my own work?  Or will I just be expected to take on more.  I have a rule that work stops at home time and stays at the office – this is because if it doesn’t I find it starts taking over the whole of my waking life – and it’s no fun when you can’t have any time off without worrying what’s on your desk, or when you start your day by making lists of what needs to be done at work, or waking in the middle of the nigh because you’re sure you’ve forgotten to do something or missed a deadline.  I have got myself in such a stressed out state by work in the past that I know I have to separate firmly my home and work life  - will I be able to still do this if I take on the post?

The other issue is…. there is no financial reward to being deputy team leader.  Yeah, seriously, you get to take on extra responsibility for no extra pay….

So yeah, the con’s are far outweighing the pro’s at the moment…. But then we come to the big two….. there is no one else within the team to take on the role and in the larger department as a whole the only person that is likely to apply is someone neither my team leader or I really get on with…. and …. for our different work styles, my team leader and I are friends and we are able to have a relaxed working environment because of that – I don’t want to let her down or upset her by not taking on the role, but I don’t want the friendship to change if I do…

Okay, I officially have absolutely no idea what I want to do about this……. maybe I can find someone to decide for me – that’s my favourite way of making decisions!

Autumnal musings.........

Autumn in the Peak District

Well in the last week autumn has well and truly arrived, with temperatures struggling to reach double figures and the first signs of overnight frost.

The leaves are glorious colours, and falling quite fast, unfortunately this does tend to make it a bit slippery underfoot.

We've also had more rain in the last week than we have had for a couple of months.  My days have been along the lines of - take the dogs out and get wet, come home and dry off, shower and get wet again, get dry and dressed, go out to the car and get wet, drive to work, walk from the car park to work and get wetter..... then sit in the office in wet clothes all morning whilst the freezing because the air con/heating system is confused.....  I have given serious consideration to either hibernating or becoming a duck......... rumour has it that I will be a very pretty duck.........

At home I haven't given in and put the fire on in the lounge, or plugged in the electric heater upstairs - much to the annoyance of the cats, who are spending more time under the duvet .... that said, any sign of sunlight and they are basking in it whilst they can.  At least the dogs have nice thick coats and don't mind the cold.

This weekend is the most definite sign that autumn is here....... the clocks go back......

Unfortunately, i don't get to enjoy the extra hour in bed........ because the dogs really don't understand the whole concept of changing the time......... it normally takes about a week for them to adjust to the time change.  It will start with a battle at the old time of 10 pm when they will want to go into their night crates but gradually I can persuade them to a bit later each night - which of course means they'll also get up a bit later......

This weekend my mum has visitors and is heading off with them to the farmers market, I am meeting them for lunch at the station cafe out in the peak district so will get to drive out across the moors and will be able to look at some spectacular countryside.  At this time of year, the last of the heather is holding on giving the ground a purplish touch in places, the grass is yellow green and the trees still holding their leaves will look amazing.  If it's been raining the gritstone outcrops will look really dramatic too.  The peak district is one of my favourite places to go to feel grounded, when I see the natural beauty of the landscape then it suddenly becomes easy to shake off hassles of work and home life and remember that somethings just aren't that important in the grand scheme of things.

Involuntary knitting and miscellaneous stuff..........

My knitting mojo ran away a while ago - I think mainly it happened in degrees... first there was the Kindle, which pulled me in in the spare time I used to spend knitting... secondly there was the fact that I really wasn't flapped by watching anything on television, which was when I did most of my knitting - well apart from when my knitting and I had a night our afternoon being social....... and then there was the arrival of the laptop and interwebs back downstairs in my house......... so many distractions to keep me from my yarn (the realisation that I'd got to the stage where I owned far more sock yarn than people I could ever knit socks for might also have had something to do with it)

So, for the last 18 months or so I've been knitting the same two pairs of socks......... well I knitted a gargoyle too - and another one just needs his wings finishing.... but still, hardly productive...... and that would have been it until I found my mojo again............ only my aunt did the worst thing possible........ she sent my mum a pattern for a child's beanie hat - with the words - "if she could just do a couple for the Christmas charity collection we'd be very grateful... oh and I'll collect them when I come to stay at the end of October" .... yeah, so mum hands me the pattern and that's it..... I am doomed to knit beanie hats....... I did two over the weekend (it occupied my hands whilst my mind rolled around in the gutter) - but six hours of knitting over two days when you've not done any for a while took it's toll on my shoulders..... so I had last night off and returned to the third beanie tonight.  I hate being volunteered to knit things but this was something I couldn't get out of.

I suppose in a way it's kept my mind off other things going on in my life - the sorting out of dad's estate is turning out to be a little fraught (that may be something of an understatement) and I am having moments where I am failing at the whole coping thing.  Work has also been a bit of a nightmare as a friend and colleague was due to leave today but ended up walking out half way through last week after about a fortnight of some severe workplace arguments which left the atmosphere in the team really tense and difficult to work in.  

Aside from that, I've finished my challenge books for October so am happily reading things lurking on the kindle and trying not to buy any more till next month at least!  That said, next month there will be less read as there are intentions to NaNo still - there is even a vague plot

and a main character.......... here she is.........

Yep - going for the YA f/f cat shifter story.......

My mind......

Okay, my excuse was that I needed to unwind, relax and have a little fun

So I wondered round the interwebs for the weekend

in between reading (mainly smut)

and unsurprisingly my mind rolled away into the gutter.

I've caught up with it now, and well, if it is to get to work in any fit state by tomorrow.....

this sign kind of says it all!

NaNo... take 3....

So, having failed at the last two attempts, what on earth am I thinking about trying to take part in NaNoWriMo again this year.

Well, a couple of reasons really.  Firstly, I am not in the same position I was the last time I tried - because yes, in the end, trying to do NaNo when my finals were in the middle of November was really a non starter last year.  Whilst I can't guarantee what happened the first year I tried - where I was allocated two historic child abuse matters to work on as part of my day job and couldn't fictionalise anything to do with abuse whilst I was dealing with that - won't happen again, I can minimise the chances by not writing anything remotely involving abuse.

The other big reason for trying again is down to the fact that my dad always believed in me and supported me when it came to writing.  He read a lot of my scribblings in their very early stages and would do things like send me landscape photos for inspiration .... taking photos was one of his many hobbies and one we shared. Even when he was on oxygen and unable to walk very far we would drive out into Derbyshire to find inspiring views, unusual trees, deer in the mist - my GR avatar and background to my Twitter profile is a photo he took of one of our favourite places.

As of last night I had a shortlist of five potential stories I've been playing with for a while.... and this afternoon I think I've decided what I am going to write.

I have another couple of weeks to plot and find some more inspiration for my characters .... I already have an opening scene in my  mind which is always a good thing.

Who know, maybe this year I can do it.

They'd be skeletons in the closet in any other family.....

Wednesday nights, after my (currently) weekly talk about myself session with my counsellor I head off to my mum's for dinner.... which is always fun.

Tonight we have been reminiscing ..... mainly bought about by the fact that Dad's partner had mentioned that there were a couple of locked files on his computer that she can't get into and my mum had suggested, quite tactfully, that perhaps it would be better if she just deleted them rather than trying to get into the files.

We pondered and speculated on what they might be and came up with two conclusions - one was probably porn and the other was possibly conversations he was having with other women, or as mum added quite casually other men.....

Now, here's the thing, I knew that in the past my mum had had flings with other women - she happily told my sister and I when we were quite young about how she was curious so went to a gay club in London in the 60's and went home with women to see what it was like.  Tonight she was telling me of a couple of short relationships she'd had with women before she met and married dad.

She's decided that these days she'd have said she was bi, we did talk about what being bi curious was, but she said it was obviously more than curiosity given that it wasn't a one off to satisfy a curiosity.  She did suggest that perhaps she might mention that she'd decided she was bi to the ladies at the gym just to see their reaction....

Apparently she wasn't the only one who was curious.... although dad left mum for another woman, after they split up for a while dad was on his own and it wasn't something he was good at (he was a serial monogamist and normally had the next partner lined up before he left the previous one, or they left him).... so, with mum's support and blessing, he did his own experimenting with men he met at the university he was studying at at the time.

I can't say I am overly surprised by this given my parents easy acceptance not only of me being gay but of their other gay friends and the number of people, particularly in mum's case, who have chosen to come out to them rather than their own parents or the way we were brought up for it to not be an issue.

However, we think his partner (I should say widow - but again with the whole, no sorry, can't do it) would be pretty horrified - she is terribly straight laced about this sort of thing.  I have to say, to satisfy my own curiosity if she doesn't delete the files on the computer I wouldn't mind having a crack at working out the password just to see what he was hiding .... mum was quite interested when I mentioned that it wouldn't be the first porn I'd seen on the computer if that was what it was - I just hope she's not going to try looking at porn on her computer....

Bits and pieces...........

Ah look... updating by numbers again.......

1. Hugo went back to the vets this evening - for the third time in less than a fortnight - and thankfully got the all clear (just before he bankrupted me!).  His eye is now back to normal and the sinusitis is all cleared..... he has a new fan though.  The young vet we saw on Thursday last week was terribly excited to meet his first ugly naked cat that he asked loads of questions, then tonight he spent a greater part of the appointment just cuddling him and Hugo treated him to his parrot impersonation by balancing on his shoulder whilst nibbling the vets ear and hair

2.  Hope, Gretchen and Kammi are all at "that part" of their season....... there are very rude things going on around my ankles ... thank goodness no one can see into the house!  Ivan bless him, has been very good this time and not molested Hope every time she stood still... mind you that might be because Gretchen has been quite dominant with everyone and he's a bit scared!

3. I have a cold.... thanks to my work colleagues who have carefully shared their germs with me.  I've been muzzy headed and sniffling for the past few days.  I am carefully dosed up on cold cures and drinking hot lemon and honey to try and get rid of it.

4. In other work related news - I finally got my days off over Christmas agreed - I have to go in and work New Year's Eve, but I finish on 18th and don't go back till 31st December which is rather fine.  I also have Friday/Monday off every other week during November ..... and I'm still carrying five days to next year!

5. Summer has officially ended here....... it's been getting darker in the mornings and evenings for a while, the leaves are turning and drifting off the trees.......... and we have frost and possibly snow forecast for the end of the week...... yeah, time to break out the woolly jumpers!

6.  I am still spending a lot of time hiding in my kindle, away from real life.  It's kind of safe there so I am staying for a while.