A Simple Life of Luxury

We’ve probably missed the summer, but it is time for some home improvements. Organising these projects always takes me longer than actually getting them done, but some of the timber ready for a new timber deck arrived today. With Shem building it for us (hopefully next week) we could have a nice new decking area overlooking the dunes sooner than we thought.

Can’t wait to sit out there drinking cider and watching the sun set.

Some photos from our trip to the Father’s Day special at Fantasy Farm Park. Morgan, Josh, Sarah, Anna and I had a nice morning there, certainly worth the short trip from Borth.

Some may know, and other may not know, that going back to work after having Morgan was not as straight forward as it should have been. Foolishly it seems, I expected to go back to work with the minimum of problems. I was going back full time to the same job I thought and also thought that as I worked for one of the biggest local employers I would be well looked after. After all they publicise their family friendly policies. Don’t get me started on flexible working!

This was not the case and I have my pay reduced significantly and had to fight to be back doing the same job. I had to get the Union involved (my local Unison rep was an excellent help and offered lots of support) and threaten to go to a tribunal before I got anywhere. It was then agreed that I could have my job back but I’ve had to go through a lengthy regrading process in order to get halfway close to the salary I was earning before I had Morgan.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I have had confirmation this morning that my regrading was successful and my pay will be fully backdated to the date I returned to work. Brilliant news but I can’t help wondering why I had to go through it all when all I did was have a baby and go back to work.

I certainly wouldn’t be without Morgan now but it is really hard going back to work full time and looking after a baby (and it’s not getting any easier as he gets older and can run around and say NO!) Surly employers should realise this and look after their staff, making their return to work as easy and stressfree as possible. It seems to me that there are lots of guidelines in place for looking after a pregnant woman at work but nothing at all for when she returns after having the baby and maybe this needs to be looked at by people more important than me.

Anyway, all’s well that ends well as they say. Pity it’s taken nearly a year to get to this point.

I had to go to Kite Valley Cottages the other eveing to take some photos of their annexe improvements ready for some updates to their website. The owners are friends of ours so I took Anna and Morgan with me and we fed the lambs whilst we were there. We also found a slow worm and had a pleasant evening in the sunshine surrounded by gorgeous welsh countryside.

I’ve finally got around to checking out what all the fuss about Social Bookmarking sites is for. For those who don’t know what they are read this description of Social Bookmarking.

I’m still not convinced about them, but I do quite like ma.gnolia.com simply because it is the prettiest of the social bookmarking services I have tried. I will persevere with it for a while as I can see some benefits of its use, but generally don’t get the time to use yet another website. I could even add a feed of my ma.gnolia links or groups to the sidebar of this blog just so that you can see the things I’m looking at from day to day… We’ll see.

I don’t think I’ve heard one for a while, but we have a Cuckoo in the garden at the moment which is a nice surprise. We hear it all the time and have seen on perched on the telephone wires now and then. I know they aren’t particularly rare and aren’t difficult to hear or see, but we haven’t had one here before.

Another lovely day here, so we made the most of the location we live in and took a walk across to the beach for a picnic in the dunes and some fun on the beach. All followed by more messing around in the garden and another BBQ…

All of this relaxing in the sun has exhausted me, and certainly exhausted Morgan who crashed out on the living room floor.

What a glorious weekend..No wind which isn’t great for me, but with lovely sunshine and decent temperatures it was nice to simply chill in the garden and have a nice BBQ in the evening with a few of the neighbours. This did of course require some frantic shopping in the morning for BBQ supplies and of course the purchase of a BBQ to cook it on and a gazebo to provide some shade!

All went well though and it was nice for Morgan and Josh to finally get some use out of the bouncy castle and other outdoors toys we have bought for him. Lets hope the unmer brings more weekends like that.

After 3 months on choloesterol lowering statins I had another blood test. The cholesterol levels are down from 6.2 to 4.8. The doctor wants them down below 4 so I’m now on slightly higher strength statins. At least they are doing the trick.

Despite having work coming out of my ears at the moment I have over the past few days managed to play around with the Classifieds Section of my Forces-of-Nature website. Although the functionality isn’t that different (there is only so much you can do with a list of For Sale adverts) it has had a major overhaul from the ground up. I shall soon be adding the ability for advertisers to upload images as well and will be developing a sophisticated search feature. But the basics are up and running and hopefully it will become the trading place for windsurfing, kitesurfing and surfing kit.
I can’t afford to spend too much time on it, but it is good to work on Forces-of-Nature every now and then as it was the first website I ever built and sometimes seeing the way I did things originally can be a bit of a shock and shows me how much I have learnt since those early days!