Bedshapes

And not before time – I cannot believe it has taken me over two hours to write up the Frank Turner gig, although admittedly there may have been some farting about with photography and coding. Dammit, why does that ALWAYS take about five times as long as you think it will!?

Lovely afternoon with ST looking at fireworks and trying to tire the kids out – I think it tired us out more, but that’s the joy of not sleeping properly and having demanding children. (As a side note, is there such a thing as a nondemanding child? I somehow doubt it.)

And so, to bed, as tomorrow is a long and busy day with a lot of travel (taking Menace to The Ex for the weekend. With a twisted ankle (me, not him…) – an unbelievably graceful and elegant dismount from ST’s car that was so magnificent it should have been filmed. I now have grazed knees (yes, I know – I’ve not had grazed knees since I was Menace’s age!) and a twisted ankle that hurts to move, let alone put weight on. On the plus side, I’m feeling a fuck of a lot better from the cold/flu/chest thing I’ve had for the last sodding fortnight… and not before time. Man, this is a long parenthesis. I might just move on to the next paragraph; it’s way too late to be anally retentive about my grammar.)

So, today I have made a new online friend (see this mornings’ ‘that website’) which is always lovely, affirmed a real life one in ST, and lost one (online). Sad, but not heart-breaking; even I have limits on what I’ll accept, and tonight’s line was crossed by about a fucking continent.

PEOPLE! I despair, I really do.

Right, sleepytime. Enjoy the review.

x

How not to morning

Yes, I’m turning it into a verb. Deal with it.

1. Ensure you don’t get enough sleep, so that when your alarm goes off you completely fail to wake up.
2. Forget that you told a friend she could come and use your washing machine before she goes to college, so jump up in a panic at half seven when you hear someone moving about downstairs.
3. Relax when you realise it’s only said friend, but instead of taking advantage of this ‘wide awake panic’ feeling and using it to get out of bed, curl up in the warm and go back to sleep.
4. Sleep through your next two alarms
5. Wake in another panic as aforementioned friend leaves the house for her bus, and realise you are now in serious danger of running late. Decide that 5 minutes more won’t make a difference.
6. Wake up 20 minutes later to your small child telling you that she is ‘just going to get herself some breakfast’. Agree to this while asleep, before waking up fully to the horror of what you’ve just consented to. Leap out of bed before your legs work properly to try and avoid this catastrophe, fall over your shoes, and career head-first into the door. Classy.
7. Head into the living room, naked, to see that helpful daughter has put all the lights on and opened the curtains. Grab a towel and hope to God no-one was walking passed.
8. Fetch cereal for child whilst cleaning your teeth and pulling some semblance of clothing on. Realise that you’ve not washed her school jumper. Facepalm before remembering that she’s only 5, and that in the grander scheme of things it doesn’t really matter. That, and the school still haven’t returned the one you sent her in with over a fortnight ago, so technically, it’s their fault….
9. Stop blaming others because YOU sat up all night on the god-damn internet because you couldn’t sleep. And because that website was REALLY fucking funny.
10. Throw clean clothes at your child while sorting the bins out and filling the sink for the washing up. Remember that you have a Tesco’s delivery coming ‘at some point in the next 2 hours’ so you can’t even go back to bed once child is safely ensconced at school. Curse inwardly.
11. Once child is sorted and dressed and clean and tidy and breakfasted, grab sunglasses and keys and head out the door. Upon locking it behind you, realise that it’s about minus fucking fifty, and you’re going to freeze your ass off. Thank God for central heating. In-so-doing, remember that you’ve not paid this month’s bill yet. Curse aloud. Remember you’re in the presence of a curious 5 year old. Try, with limited success, to cover it up when asked what ’shitting hell’ means.
12. Power-walk the child to school. Realise shortly into the journey that probably the worst thing to do for a chest infection is to go from centrally-heated house to bitter wintry morning, then power-walk yourself out of breath. Spend the next ten minutes coughing and wheezing like an 80yr old emphysema patient.
13. Deliver child to school, stagger home, collapse inside the now-far-too-hot house, making you cough even more.
14. Hear an unfamiliar noise. Discover you left the taps on for the washing up and have now flooded the kitchen.
15. Make a half-hearted attempt to clear up the mess before giving up and going back to bed.
16. Re-remember about the sodding Tesco delivery. Get back up. Sulk.
17. Stay awake for two hours farting about on the internet before Tesco Man finally turns up.
18. Discover that the one thing, the saving grace of your god-awful morning – the Terry’s White Chocolate Orange – has been substituted.
19. Give the fuck up.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how not to morning. Tomorrow I shall be doing things very differently.

Probably.

Possibly.

Although I do say that a lot.

Faith in Humankind

Status: temporarily restored.

It doesn’t take much to make me despairing, or unhappy, or rage incredibly hard. Generally reading the news will do that to me, and as such I have decided to refrain once again – I’d rather be unaware than continue to lose a little of my already limited optimism every day. I did this before when I was low – I just couldn’t handle hearing about how awful humanity is to one other. Then I started again, because I dislike being ignorant and ill-informed. However over the last few weeks I find myself more and more distressed about things, and frankly I have bigger things to be focusing on right now. So, no more news.

And so the morning after that I decide this, I log into a forum I’m on – one usually full of sniping and flame wars – to see that someone’s posted a ‘please help me – my computer’s broken’ thread, and not only have lots of members replied trying to help, but one stranger even gave out her number (in private message) and then spent nearly 2 hours on the phone diagnosing and then fixing the problem for her. A totally selfless gesture. The lady in question is back online, and eternally grateful to the lady who helped (and to all those who posted suggestions), and everyone’s happy. And shortly we’ll be back to the bitching and sniping no doubt, but just for an hour or so, I’m going to bask in the glow of community spirit. It doesn’t happen very often, but every now and then my faith in humanity is restored, and this is one of those times.

Anniversary

And so we reach it – the one year mark. (Actually we reached it last week, but [in what I'm taking as a good sign] it passed me by unnoticed until a few days ago). Court case over, therapy started, and only a few small metaphorical cuts and bruises to show for it. Time will tell if they heal as fast as they look like they will or if they’re a hint to something deeper, but at the moment things look positive.

Proper update soon – just wanted to get this down on ‘paper’ before sleeping.

Oh, and I’m starting to feel a little better, at frigging last.

Still bloody poorly!

Ok, it’s been a week now, and I’m sick of it. No pun intended. Had the bona-fide flu earlier in the week, and although I’m no longer in fear of not living to see tomorrow, I’m still poorly and can’t speak, can’t sleep, can’t taste anything, and generally feel like hell. Which is just delightful. I mean it about the inability to speak: I’m on my second day of being unable to utter a sound except for the very occasional strangled mewl. It’s making parenting interesting, I’ve taken to banging on things to get her attention before miming what it is I want her to do/stop doing. Her reading is improving dramatically though, as using the whiteboards is a great method of communcation, albeit not very useful for ‘immediate’ things!

God, I’m so fucking sick of this now. I just want to be well. Temperature again today, and I’m back in bed again despite having been here since 8pm last night. I can’t stop shaking which is quite distressing if nothing else… my whole back, stomach, and chest are aching from the tension of the shakes. It’s fucking horrible. I might go to sleep purely so I don’t have to be awake and living through it. I’m bloody useless – I can’t even make the phonecalls I need to make. Dammit.

In slightly less whinging news, had a fantastic party for Halloween at JL’s over the weekend… click on the pumpkin for more photos. Menace was ace, and up til about midnight before we quietly snuck away and settled her down. We all headed home about 2am (Mum and S stayed over) and – mother-of-all-hangovers the following morning aside – it was an amazing night. Lots of fun.

Right, I’m going to snuggle into the duvet and try to stop this bloody shaking, it’s moved to my legs now. God damn being ill. Least the menace is back at school now, though! Right, laters. x