WFH

I worked from home today as I had a 9:30am appointment with my midwife. Typically, I still had to join a conference call at 9am but I could happily stick it on mute and walk to the meeting as it was held in the local school/children's centre literally just 10 minutes up the road.

It was the first time I'd seen Anne (the midwife) in about 4/5 weeks and the first thing she said was 'wow you have a bump!' It does seem to have 'popped' in the last couple of weeks.

We listened to Bump's heartbeat and she measured the height of my uterus at 25cm, bang on where it should be so hopefully my dates are still accurate. I must admit that after all of the wedding favour sweets I've eaten over the week I was a little worried about sugar showing up in my tests, but that was fine, instead the litmus paper went bright purple for bacteria present! She didn't seem worried but has sent the sample to be tested. I mentioned my creeky hips to her too and she's given me the name and number of the hospital acupuncturist.

After the appointment I walked down the road towards a dentist we'd spotted a few weeks back and registered myself and booked an appointment. I had the awful realisation as I was filling out the answer to 'when was you last dental appointment' that it's been 10 years! How shocking is that?! I have the appointment on Monday morning so fingers crossed it's not too dire.

When I finally got back home from my long walk in the rain, I was greeted with the subject of today's blip: a letter from HMRC. My friend Abby got a £390 tax rebate the day before so I was really excited to rip it open and find... a letter detailing my tax code for this financial year. Underwhelming much?

I threw it down in a huff and didn't glance at it again until an hour later when I noticed that the address was handwritten on the envelope and the letter was dated July 3rd. Then I checked the address on the letter itself and saw it was for a house I lived in as a student in Lincoln in 2002!

I thought it was worth giving HMRC a call, just in case I'd missed any other mail and after 20 minutes on hold all I got was a smug lecture about it being my responsibility to keep the tax office informed of my address- clearly something I've failed at given I've moved 7 times since the address on file. Whoops!

I asked if I'd missed any other correspondence and after a pause the woman on the phone tells me a tax rebate was sent out in November last year for £1,300 and would I like the cheque reissued?!!

It will take up to 6 weeks to arrive but it's made me feel a lot better about ordering that iPhone 5 as a 'pushing present' to myself! I was originally going to take it from my Q3 bonus (for exceeding my target) but now I get to bank that for Bump.

I definitely need to work from home more often. I get so many more Real Life tasks done!