Little Ironies and Other Fun

I'm interviewing for a temporary PA today, to 'fill in' while my own marvellous-but-Canadian PA is away for three weeks. (The best people always have drawbacks. That's presumably related to why they're the best.) I have two people coming over, at 2 and 3, and I'm worrying about the state of the house and that I'm too tired to wash my hair. Oh dear. Let's hope one of these people is good. The Girl went off to places foreign yesterday, and I have things to do. Including the enormous project of my Direct Payments returns, on which I have a few days' reprieve because my printer broke down but I'll be in trouble if it isn't done *really soon*, and planning exactly when and how I want to use this cover PA. It then occurs to me that all of this PA/DP stuff may not be worth the trouble it takes to manage it. But ah well.

So I had this dream last night in which I was researching my autobiography, and was cleverly magicked away to my childhood in order to take notes. The Girl was there. It was all very vivid, although it bore no relation to any memories, and I got Wales and Ireland confused, and it all appeared to be set largely in the 1940s. On waking, it made me ponder some interesting ways of structuring autobiographical material, which was quite fun for about a minute and a half.

I am feeling quite crappy. It is cold. No matter how much I blast out the central heating, it doesn't seem to make a difference. I shall now go and put my slippers in the microwave, which will help.

My Slippies may be the best present I've ever had. The amazing TechGirl got them for me last year, when I was in bed a lot (and regularly very cold). Two minutes in the microwave and it's like summer has arrived in your feet. And they're lavender-scented.

In other really-not-exciting-at-all news, I need to contact the Disability Employment Advisor (aka complete idiot at the jobcentre who wanted me to become a dinner lady), but a) it's Christmas and b) I don't really want to talk to an idiot. I need advice about incapacity benefit, though, and whether it would be possible to 'turn' my job into Permitted Work (by only doing about 7 hours a week), in a view of the fact that I was on incap. before - do not yet know if this is possible. I tried to e-mail the jobcentre, and had the e-mail redirected to some sort of central advisory moron who told me that I needed to talk to my local DEA. Well, yes, that was what I told them... Or I might just go back to work come January. I'm exhausted, but I'm bored again. That's never good. I could try to argue 'them' down to 16 hours a week. 'They' will want me to come in later (like that's ever any good to me), because it's better for the college and they won't notice. I will state that I'm leaving earlier. This will cause resentment. I will win, because I'm in that kind of mood right now. I may also be refusing to go to inaccessible buildings and do too much fatigue-causing activity. Let them try forcing me. And now I shall stop this extremely dull work-and-benefits talk, as there are more amusing things to discuss. Such as how I'm going to manage three train journeys in three days next week, and how long it's going to take me to write up a schedule for the cover PA, and whether parts of me are actually going to fall off in response to this cold. Yes indeed.