girlofprey

Well. I had a whole day of chilling planned out. Going into town to pick up some stuff, playing some video games. It's my sister's birthday, but my mum was working all day, and I don't tend to go do anything even when the family's all here. But not so much. My sister called around 12pm, asking if mum was around. She went away when I said mum was working, but then called back. Would I watch my YN for a few hours? Like, just 4 hours? Because she had something very important to do, and he was going to a party. Dad had already left a note asking me to maybe take the dog for a walk - which is fine, the walking, but not the poo collecting - so I was pretty thrown by all the sudden requests. But I eventually agreed to both things, since it is her birthday. I went into town - she needed to borrow £3 for the taxi she'd taken, and luckily for her I had it, because she asked me literally 2 minutes before her taxi came - and picked up my YN. My ON was also there, and ended up asking if he could come with us, rather than stay with his mum because he didn't know what she was doing. So that was 2 kids. I had a thought that maybe we could go have lunch together, me and the YN, but both of them had only just had their breakfast, so they weren't hungry. It was raining. I hated it.

I came back and argued with my YN for a short while about whether he could go out unsupervised on his bike rather than waiting 5 minutes for me to have lunch, and then my dad got home from taking my MN to football as I passed them off to him.

Also the dog, who I walked and picked up after this morning, apparently wasn't done and pooed in the living room while my dad was out. So now he's in dog jail. I literally have no idea why, except that my dad wasn't sure if he'd been fed this morning, so suggested I feed him just in case, so maybe he had too much food. But he didn't make a noise or anything about wanting to go out. So it's something else for me to worry about if I have to look after him for 2 weeks on my own.

And that was my Saturday. Also too much chocolate and Youtube videos.

I've come to terms with the fact that I won't finish It before the film comes out. So all I have to say is; if you've read the book, please don't spoiler me. I know you probably won't, but please don't. If you go see the film and you spoiler me, I will get you. I'll Pennywise you. I'll come up out of a stormdrain. I won't rest.

So. Just bear that mind.

I've talked to my mum about the dog, and it turns out I was doing way more of a walk than was necessary in the evenings. She just takes him out around the street for five or ten minutes. So, if I can give him a bit of a walk on a morning - or at least most mornings - that seems a little more doable. But I still feel like those two weeks are going to be hell - my sister will have the kids, she's more likely to turn up at our house for some reason or another, or to ask me to have one of them over so she can have a break. Whenever their dad picks them up, he tends to do it from our house because my sister doesn't want to see him (understandably). So...is she going to still want to do that, or is she going to have to see him, or is she going to book a bunch of taxis? On top of all the stuff I'll have to do to keep the house running without my parents, suddenly, around working, and never mind what I'll have to do with the dog. But. We'll see how it goes, I guess.

I had to get my cat some more cat food this week, and I decided to get her Whiskas for a change. But I accidentally also got her food in gravy, rather than in jelly like she normally has, and now she won't eat it and I am :(

That feeling when they mention the water in Derry.

I've been aggravated this week. One of the morning women at my job is on holiday, and my boss couldn't find anyone to cover for her, so I worked from 10am till 7pm today, and will do so until the end of the week. I've been at work so long, it feels like Thursday, but it isn't. However, they've been super good about my breaks, so I get a lunch hour as well as my usual half an hour at 4 o'clock, and actually today was fine, and sort of super busy, and maybe that'll be good for me, taking my mind off things.

I don't know what it is, but somehow the takeover at work and the summer holidays seem to have culminated into some sort of perfect storm of constant activity. I'm spending way more time on the car park than usual, because the 30 redundancies the new company made pretty much as soon as they took over came into effect on Friday, and a bunch of people left, so we have way more empty spaces than we used to. And a lot of the people who are still at work are on holiday, both people with permanent spaces and people on the waiting list, so I am just hammering through the list way more than usual. Plus they're doing some sort of desk/floor move thing, so the Facilities team - which is 3 people - have been crazy busy all week, and then we had about 4 contractors in for various things in yesterday. Today my manager had to go to the Manchester office, but just before he did an executive assistant reminded him they were supposed to organise our meeting rooms for a Town Hall with the CEO, which is like a big meeting/presentation thing, so he had to leave the other 2 Facilities guys rushing to hastily set it up in the 15 minutes before it started. And then, while he was in Manchester, a crowd of teenagers came to the building, claiming to be from a Citizen's Service, and they - and the adult with them - said they had a meeting with our woman who does a lot of charity liaison stuff, but unfortunately she left the business on Friday. I ended up signing them all in to have a talk/tour with a woman from HR, but that meant we're now down to about 15 visitor's passes, because the visitor's book is nearly empty and the guy that orders the new one is on holiday till August 8th. Oh and some people showed up to clean out the ducting in the kitchen, and that stunk the whole place out for about 2 hours. Right around the corner from the Town Hall meetings.

So. Interesting times, at least.

I feel okay. Tired, but like I said, at least it was busy. We'll see if there's any cumulative effect over the next few days, but hopefully I'll make it to the weekend. And like I say, they do kind of need me at the moment. It's just really bad timing, given everything else that's been going on lately.

Also, I know it's a lot of pretentious wank, but sometimes you get to a point in a situation where you just can't feel anything about it anymore, and it's not because you're heartless, it's because you're heartbroken.

But I called my local mental health service yesterday, and I'm having a telephone assessment on Sunday to see about them giving me some further support, so we'll see how that goes. When I told my mum about that, she said "what do you think these people are going to be able to do for you?". And then we mildly argued about whether she got slightly upset the first time she found out I was seeking mental health support, when I had counselling back in University, and she said she felt like she didn't know why I couldn't just talk to her. Spoiler: she did say that.

Also I finished Trails of Cold Steel 2. You might think I finished it long ago, when I talked about the final fight, but no. After that fight some crazy shit happened, all sorts of unexpected revelations, and then suddenly it was 2 months later, in a different city, and I was playing as 2 people I'd never met before. And then we went back to the school, so our main characters could finish off their school year. Then some more weird stuff happened on the campus, and I discovered what the actual final fight was. It was considerably harder and more irritating than the other final fight. And the main character made it really clear beforehand that there was no point to it, they were basically just killing for fun. But I did it and I finished it, hurrah. It made the ending slightly sour for me. But now I can wait for the third game, and see what finally happens to all my lovelies. If indeed I make it through any of those final fights. It's still slightly sad though, because the new one won't be coming out on PS Vita, so this is the last time I'll play it on there. Not sure how much I'll enjoy the grinding on the PS4, when I have to play it at home. But we'll see.

There are many films I want to see coming out over the next four weeks. The one I'm most excited for is The Hitman's Bodyguard, and that's two weeks away. I hope it's good. But anyway. It's not a terrible problem to have, I guess, looking forward to something.

( Difficult stuff )

I went to see Spiderman again today, because Michael Keaton is amazing. I still spent a lot of it wishing someone would slit Tony Stark's throat, but the bits with Adrian Toomes were amazing.

My mum got a call on Sunday night from my sister's neighbours. My nephews were apparently in the garden yelling and throwing stones and throwing stones at cars that passed, and my sister was coming out occasionally to call them morons but not do much else. Apparently, my nephews have been doing plenty to these neighbours, such as weeing in a bottle and throwing it over their fence, and throwing stuff over the fence in general, and throwing large amounts of stuff from their bedroom windows into the garden, or into a gap between their garden fence and their conservatory. The woman who lives their used to teach my ON at his school, and they're very sympathetic to the kids and my sister, but they say they've been living in that house for 42 years, and now it's just like being in hell.

So that's nice.

The thing of it is, it's not even like the kids had been in all weekend and were going stir-crazy. My parents had my MN on Friday night, as they usually do, and he slept over, even though there was no football the next morning. Instead he had a presentation, and all of the kids went to that, even though my ON was a bit weird apparently. Then they came back to our house for a few hours. And on Sunday their dad had them, and took them out for the day. So what else can be done? Frankly?

Based on that, my sister/mother called a meeting with my sister's social worker, which went...okay, apparently. The neighbours, on my mother's advice, reported the kids to the police for anti-social behaviour, and now they're not sure how far that's going to go. But it sounded like there was stuff the social worker didn't know, like genuinely how often my parents have the kids. So maybe something will come of it? But who knows. At the moment we're mostly preparing to have their dog, Frank. I wish I was more excited, because I do want a dog, but again I wanted it to be my dog. And all I can think about is how this is going to disrupt things for the cat, if they never get familiar with each other, and how we can never have the doors open when it's hot in summer again, and we're going to have to have a walk schedule and someone's going to have to pick up after him, and etc. But apparently she's still forgetting to feed him, and she hasn't had his coat clipped in months, so I don't know if there's much else we can do. In good conscience. Other than call the RSPCA or send him to the pound. I'm sure it'll be lovely. He's a lovely dog. But it is basically just cleaning up after my sister, again.

I called the doctor's yesterday, to see about talking to someone about my mental health stuff. Apparently I can't book an appointment, because all the pre-booked ones are now taken until the middle of August. The best I can do is call them in the morning to try to get a same day appointment. Which means getting up to call them at 8am, just to see if I can get through, and if I can get a suitable appointment, and at the moment rushing around to change my routine at short notice isn't going to be good for my stress levels, to be honest. But it is the best shot I'm going to have apparently, so I'll probably try to do it later in the week, or next week or something. I also looked into one of the helplines my mother recommended, and it was closed down, but I told my mum and she said she'd just spoken to them a few days ago, and it turned out I had the name slightly wrong. So there's always that if things get bad.

But still. You've got to laugh, haven't you?

It was my mum's birthday yesterday. Apparently, she got woken up by her sister at about twenty to nine in the morning - her sister is in her seventies, had a stroke a few years ago, and her only daughter is currently in hospital recovering from an operation to remove a brain tumour, but they were expecting her to come out of hospital a few weeks ago. Then my mum had to go to a CPR training session. And after that, she decided to let my ON come over, because it was her birthday and because he normally comes down on a Tuesday, but she was working today. And - I didn't get the full story of this, but it was something like; a community/school nurse was at my sister's house, and wanted to weigh the kids and measure their height. My MN and YN weren't in, so my sister either asked my mum to go look for them, or my mum was just driving away with my ON and saw them. Much, much further away from the house than they should have been, considering my MN is 8 and my YN is 5. Apparently, when she stopped to pick them up, my YN was crying, and saying something about how a man had chased them, threatening to call the police, because my MN was throwing stones. My MN, at the time, just refused to get in the car, because he'd found some older boys to hang around with. It was around this time my mum's sister called her again, crying. But, after that was all done, we went out for a meal, and it was pretty nice.

Today my mum had a twilight shift at the hospital, which basically means she's working from 12pm to 12am - pretty much all her shifts are 12 hours these days, but sometimes she does day shifts, which are about 7am to 7pm. She normally only does one a week, but for some reason the shifts have fallen, this week and last week, so she's doing two on consecutive days. So she did the CPR session yesterday, is working a twilight today, and is working a twilight tomorrow.

So she was up this morning, getting ready for a 12 hour shift at the hospital, and apparently my sister called her, asking her if she could look after my MN for an hour, because she wanted to get ready for a Jobcentre appointment, which had been rescheduled from last week after she was 15 minutes late and they refused to see her. Because my MN is still not at school till tomorrow, because she didn't sort out his transport. She apparently said her appointment was at 11:40, and "you're not at work till 12, are you?". At which point my mum had to point out that no, she had to get to work for at least 11:45, to be ready for the start of her shift. In the end, she agreed to watch him, and my sister said she'd just meet her before she went into work, and pick up my MN then. Let's hope that worked out. Before that - I essentially woke up to mum telling me my sister had called her, while she was getting ready, and she also told me that my MN had apparently said that while he was out on his jaunt yesterday "an old man had forced him to smoke weed". When my MN came to our house, the story had apparently changed to it being one of the older, 12 year-old boys he was with who'd forced him to smoke weed.

Tonight, I came home and asked my dad if he'd heard about mum's exciting morning, and he said he'd had an exciting afternoon, because he'd gone over to my sister's for something, and my MN was acting like a lunatic. Apparently he was running around with a mop, and then my dad took it off him, so he started jumping on furniture, trying to push things over. My sister didn't react much to this, so my dad told her to do something with him, she tried to tell him to stop, he told her to fuck off, and she ended up kicking him. After which he ran outside, picked up a brick, and threw it through a window of their shed, smashing it. There are three windows in the shed, and he's broken them all, apparently. My dad then started talking about how my MN needed to go away, just go away somewhere, probably to a padded cell. And how my sister's been ruining my dad's life since she was 13, and it's all just bollocks.

And I'm not doing very well, to be honest. This might be obvious from the posts I'm making lately, but...this is just exhausting. And awful. And honestly, it might not be so bad, but given everything that's going on with my job at the moment, I just don't know what's going on with that either. If I could be confident that I could stay at my job, getting my wage, for as long as I wanted to, until I chose to leave, at least that would be something I could feel secure about. But, even though there's no particular indication the new company are going to let us go, I can't feel secure about it, not until we get some concrete news one way or the other. So I don't know what's going to happen with my family, and I don't know what's going to happen with my job, and I don't know what effect either of those things are going to have on my mental health. And I'm just really tired, and I can't tell if it's because the weather changed over the weekend and everyone's tired, or I ate too much, or I'm just actually not sleeping enough, or it's my hormones. But I just feel miserable. I cried at porn the other night. It was this really good dubcon, which was mostly overall consensual, just a bit pushing, but wasn't just about the 'empowerment' of complete submission, and it crystallised some of my attitudes/issues around dubcon. It was around the same time I saw a post on Tumblr shouting out to and supporting our new label, 'hypersexuals', who are apparently people who have kinks that upset or disgust them, have sex all the time, and have sex as a form of self-harm with people they don't like. Maybe? Maybe all of those features are supposed to be separate? I don't think they should necessarily be lumped in under one label anyway. But I definitely don't think it's helpful to just put them under one label and passively accept them in a way that lets people avoid talking or thinking about subjects, rather than thinking or talking about why people have those feelings or do those things. I'm sorry, I'm not being very progressive right now. I probably just don't understand tumblr, or young people, and how supportive but also critically-thinking they truly are.

Anyway. That post annoyed me. But they crying thing, I genuinely don't know if it's because it crystallised a few issues for me, or because I'm feeling incredibly emotionally raw because of everything that's going on at the moment. I got a bit teary last night, because my mum turned 68 and started asking if she was an old woman, she wasn't an old woman was she? And my dad started reminiscing about when he was young and used to punch people so hard he detached their retinas. I think they both miss their youth, and it upsets me to think in ideal circumstances, I will outlive them and they'll die and I'll have to live without them. And also their present is so awful, and that upsets me when I think about it, even though we've all kind of accepted it as normal at this point. I followed that up with a dream last night where my sister was younger, and just had one young kid, but kept coming into our house and insisting she should stay with us and eat our food because she didn't have any food for the kid at home, and she tried to make this up to us with beautiful singing, and I had to tell her that no matter how beautiful the singing was, it did not in fact make up for her invading all of our space and our house, and shouting at her that she was an awful cow and she was ruining all our lives. I told my mum about it this morning, and she was like "that was no dream".

Anyway. This sucks. I don't really know what to do about it. I could go see my doctor, but I honestly don't know what they can do for me. I'm already on anti-depressants, that I'm pretty sure I should have been weaned off of this spring. Other than that, I don't know that I have time for counselling or anything. I could call Samaritans to talk about this stuff, but they can't really talk back to you about stuff because they aren't trained, so it wouldn't really be like having a conversation about it. I'm just...I don't know if I should just hunker down, and hope for the best, wait for it to sort of get better. I've already had to take a step back from video game news, because it's just too stressful given what some arseholes on the internet think. I feel like crying right now, but I don't know if it'll help to just let myself be emotional about it. Because at what point do I stop? I should probably talk to my mum about this. But I don't really want to put any more on her shoulders. But I don't think I'm coping super well at the moment, and it might help the both of us to talk about it.

I booted my computer up as usual today, and when I clicked to go on the internet it chose to open an infinite amount of Firefox windows. Bold choice, computer.

Truth be told, I'm a little concerned about it. The fans - or something - have been squeaking more lately, even when it isn't hot, and the whole computer keeps crashing, I think when it's trying to download new graphics drivers or something. It definitely did when I tried to watch a livestream at E3. I've only just built this computer, and it cost a lot of money to do so. Don't be broken, computer.

We're on the second week of 'babysitting sometimes' for my sister, and it's already gone tits-up. It turns out what's actually going on is that she's got some sort of flirtation thing going on with the guy who takes my MN to his school (when he has transport to his school), and so she wants some free time on the weekends to see him. So who knows what's even going to happen with that, and apparently the kids' dad has heard about this and said if she has anyone round to the house, he'll come in and smash their face in. Which is lovely. But anyway, regardless, that's the reason she wants us to have the kids 'sometimes'. She was apparently meant to be seeing this guy last week, but he cancelled at the last minute, so now she's seeing him this week. So now we have all three kids, except my mum was so worried about what my dad would say about it, she didn't tell him till this morning. And since he was taking my MN to football yesterday morning, and we were going to an open-air concert yesterday evening, he had stuff he was planning to do today. So currently, my dad's at the tip, the kids refused to go with him, so my mum's downstairs cooking a Sunday dinner, while trying to keep an eye on two of our nephews outside. I would go watch them, but they're only going to run in if there's a problem, so I'd basically be standing sentry for no reason. My ON and I have just been up town, because it's my mum's birthday tomorrow and there's some stuff we needed to get at the last minute, and basically it's been a very busy weekend and there's not been a lot of communication. And my sister's currently off on a date.

It wouldn't be so bad, but like I say, we had my MN to sleep on Friday night, and then my parents took him to football yesterday morning, and then we immediately got my ON, who came to our house to play on the computer, then came to the concert with us, then slept overnight. It's not like we don't have the kids otherwise.

Soaps just seem to be full of rape victims being tormented by their rapists these days.

And on a similar note, the police were apparently around at my sister's the other day, because my MN and his arsehole little friend were 'perving on some girls'. On the one hand, I'm not surprised given that similar things have happened before. On the other hand, I genuinely never thought my nephew would be the type of boy who would hurt girls just to impress other boys. But here we are.

I finally married Shane in Stardew Valley. I found him a few mornings later in his little nook, contemplating whether to have a beer or a cider at 6am. I don't know why all our boyfriends have to be so unfulfilled and alienated.

My ON is down at the moment. Apparently his dad is moving out today. Or meeting with a landlord at least - my mum's not convinced he'll actually be gone right away, but still. It's something? Things moving on at least. We'll still have to wait and see how things are when it's just my sister and the kids living on their own, but yeah, it'll be a change. And I'm glad he's going.

I'm sort of happy about the next few weeks. After today, I have a short week at work, then another long week, and then I have a week off. And it'll be E3, so the current games news drought will be over, and we'll find out way more about a few games that have been announced lately. There's a wild shooter coming out that pits you against a militant cult in rural America, and apparently according to some people on the internet, that's true racism. Whereas previous games in the series being set in Africa, a South Pacific Island, and Asia, and having you fight Africans, Pacific Islanders, and Asians definitely wasn't. It's weird when people show how nothing they are.

And in the meantime, Wonder Woman is coming out, which I'm going to see, a new series of Camp Camp is starting, Tekken 7's out, the Elder Scrolls Online's Morrowind is coming out, and the Let's Play company I watch are bringing out a new game-focused podcast show, which is nice, because I was just thinking recently how much I miss the old one they did. The format of the new show seems a little annoying, but eh, we'll see. Of course, in the middle of that we're going to have an election (which I still think they should postpone), which will probably have a very depressing result, but. Apart from that giant blemish, it looks like a nice few weeks.

I wish there was some way I could show you the Justice League poster I got in a comic a few weeks back, and has been sitting next to my keyboard ever since. It's most of the male members posing like they're members of a boyband. And then just Batman being a freak. Never change, Batman.