girlofprey

My parents are back tonight. In the middle of the night, and I'm still not sure how that's going to work. My mum said the plane lands at around 1am, and I'm not sure which airport they flew from, but with getting baggage it should still be at least 3am when they get home. But it generally takes me a huge amount of time to get to sleep, a couple of hours most nights, and if I know they're coming back it won't help me relax, so I might still be awake at that point. If I'm awake, do I go greet them? If I'm asleep, will they wake me up? Are they going to be up in the morning when I get up. It seems ridiculous after getting in at 3am after a holiday, but being like "lol no big deal" while they're dying is sort of my parents' thing. If they're awake, do I need to listen to holiday stories when I should be getting a shower? If they're asleep, will their bags be in my way? I just don't know, and I feel like I'm not going to be able to relax until next weekend.

The one good thing about this weekend is that I studiously arranged to not have to go into town at all, despite running low on food. It turned out everything I needed I could get in Leeds before work, or from an M&S deli on my way from work to Leeds train station, and even the cat food I needed could be purchased from a local B&M. It was a real result. I also planned to get some money out for takeaway this weekend and forgot, but then found a tenner in my purse for the pizza man, and realised I could pay with a card for my pub Sunday carvery today. Doing nothing for the win.

One thing I was planning to do by getting money out though was check my bank balance. I spoke to my manager, and I was right - he didn't have a fucking clue either. I think my manager might have only joined the company a few months or year before I did, and before that he was at a place that just paid sick pay, just paid your full wage whilever you were off (up to a certain period of time, of course). Then when he joined our company, he got told there was no sick pay, thought "hmm, that's weird", but was never off sick himself so never looked into it. Which in some ways is a relief, because we had an incident last year where I needed to take time off, and I asked if he wanted me to get a sick note, and he said no that's just one way we could do it, we could do it another way, and he had me take a bunch of that time off as holiday, meaning I had no holiday left for the rest of the year. And it would have been extremely unpleasant if I'd found out he'd just been cheating me out of my holiday instead of paying me sick pay. But as it stands, I genuinely believe he didn't know. I feel like maybe he should have known, while being a manager, and discussing his employees' sick leave and their options for doing so with them. I also feel like this could have all been cleared up when I originally requested that form, "for when your employers don't pay sick pay", if they'd just told me they do instead of sending me the form. I'm guessing they didn't even look at the form at first. So here we are.

So the long and short of it is, I am getting paid sick pay, but I don't know how much, and my CEO said something about "after the first week", which I don't exactly understand. I know roughly how much I should have been paid for the time I worked this month - although I'm not quite sure how my deductions like pension will come out of it, whether it's a lump sum or a percentage of pay. So I'm still not entirely sure what I'm getting/have gotten, since I got paid on Friday. If I'd checked my bank balance on Friday I would have some idea, but I didn't. I was also supposed to get on online payslip which would itemise it, but from checking my work email - which I haven't for a few months - I seem to have stopped getting those online slips in June. It tells me to log into a site, but I don't seem to have ever set up an account for it. So. Confusion. I am apparently getting paid something, but I don't know how much, I'll only know what I have the next time I check my bank balance.

It's been an okay week overall, I think. Fingers crossed, but I never got any calls from the woman looking after our dog to say he'd run away (which he frequently does), or my sister turning up on my doorstep having an emotional breakdown, or anyone banging on the door about anything that wasn't even really anything to do with me. It was pretty quiet, and I got to spend time with the cat. She took a long time to brave coming into the living room to hang out and get cosy, and now she finally has started and the dog's coming back tomorrow. That's a bit of a shame. But other than that it's been pretty nice. I watched Year of the Rabbit, which I enjoyed, and I'm watching What We Do in the Shadows, which I'm enjoying. I thought a few years ago, when I was watching the Mighty Boosh, that maybe I should just watch everything Matt Berry was ever in, and it's really working out for me at the moment.

Also I love Fallout 4, and I love Harringrove from Stranger Things. I found the anti's for the ship, but I guess it was my own fault for going on Tumblr. I just find it very strange to only read fic in a fandom, and not read or see any fannish discussions. And Tumblr's where the fannish discussions are at the moment. Anyway, that wasn't very nice, but mostly the fandom's quite lovely. I mostly think the only healthy relationship on the show is Carol/Tommy H, but that's just my opinion I guess. At least there's fic. There's no Year of the Rabbit fic, despite some very nice canon.

I applied for a job!

Also, I opened my work email to do it, and found an email from the CEO at my current workplace, going into greater detail on the Sick Pay form. Apparently she thinks the form is only for people who don't qualify for sick pay from their company, and they're going to figure out if I do on my next payroll. So...things happening? I don't exactly understand still, but things happening.

Well, I feel like I'm in an oven, and I'm sat in my shaded room with all the windows wide open. I stick my hand out the window, and it is again, like sticking my hand into an oven. The weather needs to take pity on us.

"I asked the Lord to make it warm", and so on.

Also, I got my extension for my sick note, which it always sounded like was a pretty straightforward thing to do. But the doctors' receptionist didn't ask me how long I wanted it extended for, and they've extended it until the middle of August. When my mum questioned this, the woman said it was just a guideline and I could choose to go back to work whenever - but when I first got my sicknote and asked if I could go back in during it if work really needed me (it was during a week I knew they were already having staffing issues), I was told it was illegal to go in to work while a sick note was active. So ???? I don't know. I'm going to go in to work anyway I think, next week.

Also, I asked my manager to look over the Sick Pay form they sent me again, because I couldn't do anything with it till my employer filled it in to say why they don't pay sick pay. He said he would. The form makes it pretty obvious, I feel, that they should be paying me the basic rate of sick pay. So we'll just see what happens with that.

So. I'm off work sick, obviously. And at the bottom of one side of my sick note, it said something about getting a benefits form if my company doesn't pay Statutory Sick Pay. I was always told my company did not pay sick pay, and I thought those were just the rules and didn't think much of it. But I asked my employer to send this form, and they have, and basically it's a form to ask my employer why they legally won't give me sick pay, because I am legally entitled to some form of it, even a basic rate. Looking through all the reasons they might not give it to me, I don't think any single one applies - and I have googled online and all the information says much the same thing, that I am legally entitled to some basic sick pay if I'm off for more than four days, and that all the rules for the type of job that qualify you for sick pay are things that I fulfill. So. Now I think that maybe my company are doing something slightly illegal by not offering me sick pay, or something slightly shady by not offering it for the odd couple of days off, and just not mentioning sick pay to anyone who's off for longer than that.

I just called the Citizen's Advice Bureau, and they said much the same thing and that they couldn't see any reason I wouldn't be entitled to sick pay, and they gave some other numbers to call if I wanted to make absolutely sure. But. It seems like, despite the hope I had when the sick note mentioned something about a benefits form, I'm just not going to get paid for the time I'm having off, despite being legally entitled to it - or I'm going to have to contact my company to have either an awkward conversation, an argument, or a legal battle to try to get sick pay that I'm entitled to. I suspect I don't qualify for it anymore now because you have to write to your employer within 7 days about your illness to qualify - and I haven't, because no-one suggested it would benefit me to do so. But still. It seems a little fucked up, and will affect any sick pay/time off I might have in the future.

I don't need this right now.

The sky seems to have remembered it's July and gone sunny.

HMRC wrote to me yesterday. Apparently the letter I got saying I owed them £750 was only from one part of the tax year, probably from when I was no longer eligible to receive the benefit at all. For the time before that, I owe them £250 of mony they overpaid me. So they want about £1000 from me in total. Which is...frustrating, considering I didn't really do anything wrong. If they had a date in mind when I was no longer eligible to receive a payment, I think I gave them that information, they could have easily kept track of it themselves and done a review when it ran out. And of the time before that, they just miscalculated I guess, or something, but it wasn't me. But it was just money they gave me, which I didn't spend, so I can pretty easily get it back out and give it to them. My parents are saying I should complain or say I don't have the money, and tell them to take it back out of my tax code or something - but I'd just end up paying the same amount to them anyway, just slower. I'd rather take it out in a lump sum and give it back and have done with it. I'm thinking about complaining about the way it was all handled though.

I've been going through my old CDs some more again. It's a little more irritating given that a lot of songs I thought I had saved to my computer haven't been saved, or have updated till I can't play them anymore, but it's still odd to go through a CD, realise you really like a lot of songs on it, but still feel no need to keep the CD. One of those songs is this one, which I think is one of my favourite ghost stories ever. I did not keep the CD.

Christmas whale.

It doesn't feel very Christmas-y though. I don't know if it's the mild weather or the fact I'm working, so that takes up most of my time, but it's true. Or maybe it's that people are still reeling in shock from all the politics stuff, so no-one's really in the spirit. Watching Sky News all day really doesn't make me feel too Christmas-y. But anyway, it's true. I can sing Christmas carols to my heart's abandon, even though I don't feel like it, and yesterday I tried to think of even one and could only come up with 'Greensleeves'. Anyway. I'm going to have to do some Christmas shopping soon too, although I don't know when. I have an idea for something to get my mother, and I have the money for it this year too - but it does mean I'll probably need to get my dad something of a similar value, and I don't know what that is. Plus the kids. It's my YN's birthday in less than two weeks. Although I do have a present from last year that I never used hidden away in a drawer. Maybe that will have to do.

After all my worrying about how much time I have these days (despite my claims to the contrary), they're asking me to work extra hours next week, because the morning receptionist is on holiday. I awkwardly explained to my boss that I have OCD and find changes to my routine hard, so I couldn't say I was raring to do it, but I would. He was very nice about it, and said maybe I wouldn't find it as bad as I thought it would be, so we could take about covering in future after that. The thing is it's not the work, it's the amount of time outside of work I'm going to have. They want me to go in for 11 - and really, I think he was hoping for 10 - which means I won't have to get up any earlier, but I won't have time to have a shower on a morning like I usually do, and I won't be able to stay up a little late, because if I sleep in it will really fuck me. So I'll have less time of an evening. But maybe it's only my expectation of what I'm going to get done in a day that really upsets me, and if I let go of that it will be okay, or better at least. And it is only for a week. But the morning receptionist is pregnant, and so she's going to be off for months shortly, and I really don't think I can do that, no matter how well next week goes. I came to this job very much as a part-time job. But like I say, they've been very nice and flexible so far, so we'll see.

Things I have been doing: playing Final Fantasy XV. It's a game that's taken 10 years to come out, so it felt very special to pick it up on day one. And the game had a little leaflet in the front, which was a print-out of a thank you note signed by everyone on the team that made it. Which was lovely. I wanted to get my own opinion of it, rather than just having to listen to all the reviews and whether it was a 'real' Final Fantasy game or not. And I really like it. It's very atmospheric, and everything sort of feels like it goes together, which is hard thing to explain but really makes a game feel special for me. When the story and the characters and the mechanics all seem to work together, and nothing's jarring or feels too 'video-gamey', like it's just a set of mechanics. I really like the combat too, which is cool, because a few of the demos felt very janky. I haven't really touched the story yet, but I'm really enjoying it so far. And really, having everything work together is a real achievement for a game that was in development for so long. Well done to them.

Also, I have been reading the original Superman comic strips. They are amazing. Superman does not give a fuck. The first strip involves him going to see a governor in the middle of the night, who has a SOLID STEEL bedroom door. And the butler's like "haha, just try to get through that", and Superman's like "haha, I will" and rips it apart. Then the butler tries to SHOOT SUPERMAN. Like a fool. But Superman just laughs it off. And then saves a woman who was about to be wrongly executed for something she didn't do. It's great. Of interest to me: Jonathan and Martha Kent were not in the story from the beginning. Superman was raised in an orphanage, where they were like "golly!" about his super-strength, but decided not to say anything about it. But Lois Lane was there from strip one. And she is amazing. An example of their dialogue:

Clark: "Why is it you always avoid me at the office?"
Lois: "Please Clark! I've been scribbling 'sob stories' all day long. Don't ask me to dish out another."

Interestingly, I guess because of the time, Clark Kent is the star reporter at the Daily Star, and Lois is a 'sob sister', which basically means an agony aunt/writer of the sentimental pieces. She's pretty mad about it though. Perry White won't put her on a story about a dam bursting, so she tricks Clark and goes anyway. But then she nearly drowns in the flood and Superman has to save her, so it's not like it's super feminist. But still, she's great. And Clark is all about her. Which is quite lovely.

I get paid today, so I can continue to buy computer parts and actually try and get the thing built. Woo hoo. Also the tax credits place have written back to me, and now they want to pay me £380 a month instead of £390. Which is fine. Still seems bizarre to me, and I suspect it won't last past April, when the new tax year starts, and all my 'freshly working, was recently on ESA' stuff won't really apply. But I've queried it, and they've said it's all fine, so it's very welcome. Given that I'll probably be fine on my wage, I can just put it into my savings account. And then, if they decide they DID make a mistake, it will all just be there anyway to give back to them, and I will be mad, but it will be doable.

Meanwhile the company my company's working for is losing money every year, apparently, so I don't know how safe my job is, and my sister's partner's firm went bust, and I thought he'd been taken on by the firm that took over from them, but apparently everyone except him and his friend got picked back up, so he isn't working. And Christmas is coming, and my sister just got a £150 fine for not showing up to an anger management course they said she had to go on after assaulting a woman last year. So it's all a bit up in the air. But we're out of the depths or recession, say the Conservatives! So hooray. My sister and her family are moving into the new house this weekend apparently. They can't afford to pay my parent's rent yet, obviously, but they will at least be in there. So that's something, I guess.

The more I hear about Bernie Sanders, the more I think he's just a cunt.

And Jeremy Corbyn seems to be taking after him, and that's a shame.

Tonight my train home was delayed due to flooding, and then my train home broke down a few stops from my stop. They got it going again. But still. It was not my favourite train ride home ever.

My Playstation Vita made it bearable though. The littlest Playstation.

Also, when I got home, I had a letter from the HMRC about my Working Tax Credits. They have given me them, which I sort of suspected when I looked at my bank balance the other day and had more than I thought I did. They are going to give me £400 a month. Which seems like a lot. It seems sort of ungrateful to even be shocked by it, and I'm not unhappy about it, I just...was not expecting that. They're going to give it to me until next April, the beginning of the next tax year, so I don't know if it'll continue after that, but. Wow.

I would feel a lot better about it, but ever since I sent off the form I have been worried that I accidentally confused Contribution-based and Income-based Jobseeker's Allowance. I know that they probably actually looked into my circumstances and tax records/national insurance information, and maybe that part didn't even make that much difference, but I'm still super-paranoid that I'm going to be accused of fraud somewhere down the line. I'm going to call the helpline tomorrow and just double-check. But if all goes well that's...very comforting. A lot more than I was expecting.

The more I think about it, the less the temporary work thing makes sense to me. Because if I actually do find temporary work, I'll have to come off Jobseeker's - and the whole point of it at the moment is to stay on so I can get some help up until my job starts, bus passes and the like. I could look for work that's under 16 hours, so I can stay on benefits - but there's not a lot of that out there, and I'm not sure that's the kind of job hunting the Jobcentre are really happy to pay out for. Plus I've got holidays planned in October, and I'm going to have to do some training shifts for my permanent job. So I think I'm going to put it on hold for now, and discuss it with my advisor tomorrow.

I have decided to livepost my first day of job-hunting, out of misery.

First up: referring myself to Rightsteps again, as my job advisor suggested. I looked up their phone number at about 11 o'clock. It turns out you can't really apply over the phone anymore, you have to fill in an online form. The thing I love to do. I called them anyway, but by the 5th 'would you like to stay on hold?' message I decided to give up. So I am currently doing a virus scan on my computer, because I freak out about filling in personal information otherwise, in order to do that. I was going to have to do that anyway, for job applications. In the meantime, I am reading the work diary my advisor gave me, which is mostly about all the sanctions they can and will apply to you. The minimum is 4 weeks, rather than the 1 week it was last time I was on Jobseeker's. The maximum is 156 weeks. Three years.

Also they have removed the part about how you can't apply for JSA if you've received an ESA payment within the last calendar month from the 'are you eligible?' page. Which is odd. I'm definitely sure I saw it. That might hurt my claim to have my JSA backdated a little bit, although that probably wouldn't have gone through anyway, I was not 'actively seeking work'.

I just got home from a shift at the Hospice. Found a letter waiting for me from Universal Credit. Apparently, 'the benefit is only just being rolled out and at this time you do not qualify'.

Sigh.

When I was applying online for Jobseeker's Allowance - which I was encouraged at every possible opportunity to do - it literally shut down the claim form and sent me to the Universal Credit site as soon as it thought maybe I qualified for that instead. So I'm just going to have to call them and insist they do it over the phone. And not take no for an answer. At least, the letter says that if I claim for Jobseeker's (within a month), they will take the date of my claim as the date I claimed for Universal Credit, if I show the letter I've got. But still. Fuck's sake.

Sigh.