girlofprey

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.

Alright summer, you have summered it up, it's great, you can go now.

My mum is back from London. Which is nice, because I was a little anxious about her, given the state of things. Purely for anxiety reasons, I know logically it was unlikely anything was going to happen to her, and things do tend to actually be safer when everyone's on high-alert than the rest of the time, really. But still. It's nice to have her home.

I don't even know what to think about the state of the country right now. It's so sad, but I'm also constantly waiting for news of reprisals against Muslims. There already have been some, and yesterday a guy who works in our post room stood and watched a guy from the Centre for Muslims on our (silent) tv that just shows Sky News all days, and then said "bastards!" not quite under his breath, and walked out. And I know people want to feel safe, and it's good for people to feel safe, but seeing all the soldiers on the streets sometimes just makes me think of those dystopian films where you get flashbacks, and it's like 'this is when martial law started'. And maybe if the Tories hadn't cut funding for the police so much, and the numbers of police officers so much, we wouldn't need so many soldiers. We're going to have an election soon, in this atmosphere - I genuinely think they should postpone it, but I guess that would be letting terrorism mess with the political process, which wouldn't be great either. It's just...fucked up.

Anyway. Since talking about how I never get anything done at the weekend, I sorted through my jewellery collection - I have a lot of jewellery, is my takeaway from that, and I really like ceramics and glass - and I cancelled my kickboxing membership, and I picked up my new prescription for the pill, and I renewed my application for working tax credits. I had to call them up to tell them about my change in circumstance, in that I no longer qualify for the Disability element, timewise, so I basically had to do it over the phone. But it was relatively painless, once I had all the information. I think at best I'll get much less money than before - they might even want some back from me, since I haven't qualified for the disability element since March - but you know, it was nice to get it in the first place, and I wasn't expecting it. So we'll see what they decide in the future. I've told them what I can, at least.

I got all of this done pretty much by not playing video games for a bit. Except, you know, an hour and a half of my vita game every day, and Pokemon Picross when I'm bored (I'm on the alt-world challenges). So basically now, instead of playing video games all the time and feeling bad about all the stuff I haven't done, I'm doing things and feeling bad about all the video games I haven't played. Sucks to be me.

We've just had our Easter dinner, since mum was working yesterday, and the kids are all downstairs. It's very hard to remember isn't a Sunday. And tomorrow isn't bank holiday Monday. And that I have to go in to work tomorrow. Not even in to work, in to work early. I offered to go early to meet the note-leaving woman ages ago, and it never got sorted till now. We haven't had any problems recently, and I'm worried she's going to think I'm going in just to tell her how to do her job, but. There are some things we need to discuss, and it'll be nice to meet her, finally.

It sure is quiet on Dreamwidth. Someone should do a friending meme. I would do one, but I never got the hang of how you get the word out.

So. I got yelled at today by an extremely aggressive employee of the bank, who at one point referred to me as "the woman" to his friend. He was angry that I wouldn't let him through the barriers, into a BANK, without his security pass, and didn't want me to call his manager down to authorise a temporary pass. And my boss is on holiday for a week, so I can't talk to him about it, and the guy in charge in his absence I think is the guy in question's friend. So. There's that.

Also, before that, I was an idiot and decided to look at the comments on an article to do with video games and racism, and found out that everyone except the "far left" thinks that America should be mostly white and Mexican immigrants are trying to take over part of the country. I always thought that it was a bit wanky to just assume left-wing politics had the moral high ground, but apparently no, it's the literal definition.

And now I'm going to eat chocolate and watch D and D videos.

News of the Girl

• The train company that runs my usual journey to work is on strike tomorrow, so I'm going to have find creative ways to get there and back tomorrow. It doesn't surprise me, because my journey home has been rubbish for months now - always packed, even though it's not rush hour, and never on time, and the staff are always the ones who end up getting the abuse, rather than the company owners. So I am quite supportive of this strike. But it is still quite annoying. There is a bus tomorrow morning, but it's a lot earlier than my train, so I'm going to get a lift into town tomorrow morning. And then tomorrow evening, there will be a bus at some point, but how and when I cannot say.



• I saw Logan last week. I liked it. I can see why people say it's the best comic book film ever, but it is still a comic book film. And I didn't really like the ending. ( Massive Spoilers )
  .



• I did not go see anything this weekend, because I decided I wanted a weekend in. I do want to see the King Kong film though, even though it mostly looks like a big, gun-happy film. I still quite enjoy Tom Hiddleston though, even if he is quite embarrassing lately, and he looked quite good in the trailer, even though the trailer also looked quite weird.



• I hate Theresa May, I hate her. I see her walking around sometimes, like nothing is wrong, and I think "is this just sexism, why I hate her? Is a lot of it sexism?". And then I remember Yarl's Wood and I just get furious. I can't believe we're just allowing her. I can't believe she is just walking around and smiling, and has the gall to say the Conservatives are a party 'of the people and by the people' or whatever the fuck she said, and I just can't believe it. I can't believe we're allowing this.



• Dear EU Commissioner who said he'd like us to eventually get back in the boat with Europe: I would love to be in the boat. Please save me a space in the boat.



• Mostly what's happening at the moment is I think about making an LJ post, and then my thoughts collapse before I get to the end of what I actually want to say about them, and I go back to playing Horizon: Zero Dawn instead. I'm really enjoying Horizon: Zero Dawn, and I really like playing a massive, big game starring a female character, but it is kind of a shame that Aloy (the main character) is 18, and not really by our standards a fully adult woman, and that despite the fact they were all "she's grown up in a very matriarchal society, she goes looking for her mother!", a lot of it is really about her relationship with her father figure. And all the dudes who obviously want to bang her. All the dudes who want to bang her is great, and a nice flipped version of "every sexy woman the male hero meets and helps wants to do him". But I am hoping for another main female character to come along sometime shortly.

aslofdkijnASLKNFDcklsamndckAM<NSdklnblaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh

It turns out the revelation is: it's really shitty to have a cold.

And on top of that, of all the coughing, today featured: period pains, more emails about the car park than you would believe, mystery dry cleaning, someone parking where they shouldn't in the car park causing someone else to park in another business' space causing the person from the other business to overpark and block them in, packages no-one seemed to want to collect, and coldness on my poor, sore throat.

But anyway. In Stardew Valley, I have started to date Shane, which so far is underwhelming, but then he had a really adorable cutscene, and I couldn't believe it. Also I have an adult pig, and it hasn't found me any truffles so far. Also I have a current quest to get another Prismatic Shard, I want to see what that's all about, but it is Slow Going so far.

(I promise the rest of my life won't just be Stardew Valley updates. Soon, there will be Mass Effect: Andromeda updates).

Also, the news is sad.

Well, today was exhausting. First, I had a doctor's appointment to review my pill - which I just remembered I forgot to take today. The nurse didn't seem at all concerned about the whole 'bleeding for 3 weeks out of 4' thing - I started bleeding again yesterday - and asked if I wanted to continue on it. I said I wouldn't mind trying a different kind, to see if that works better, so now I have a prescription for a pill that only has a 3-hour window - taking it 8 hours late probably wouldn't be a thing then. Although I can't tell if that's for periods, or just for getting pregnant. But anyway. Then I had to go around town trying to buy something for my ON's birthday, since I figured I'd see him tonight but then it turned out he was going out for a meal with the family (which I couldn't go to, because I work too late, whatevs), so I had to get him a gift and card and get it to mum before I went to work. Then, after getting into Leeds, I ended up going to do a little shopping, and having to run back to the office, to make it on time for work. And THEN - we had more visitors than you could possibly believe, at work. The company's being bought out apparently, so they had a bunch of people from the company who's buying them, to try to work things out, AND just regular people for meetings, AND a group of people for interviews. I signed someone out who had pass number 10, shortly after handing out pass number 63. Like that. And, we have a new signing in book, which is terrible, and some people don't know how to use properly. AND we had some guests we hadn't been told about replacing some guests we had been told were coming. AND a bunch of those people needed security cards. AND the key log didn't seem to have been filled in properly. AND I had a CEO's bag to guard with my life. AND then a bunch of people for an interview, for which one woman was half an hour late. Just straight-up, "I was told to come at half past" late. Which I had to sort out.

Tomorrow I think it's going to be like that again, but also I will have to do the car park.

But anyway. In between all of that, I did manage to get on the internet a bit, and learned that Scalebound, the one game that made me even sort of interested in an XBox One, has been cancelled. 4 years into development, and with it looking pretty finished and polished actually at E3 this year. Strange things are going on with Xbox. And slightly worrying things, if you like Xbox and/or the console wars. Also I'm generally sad no video game of being BFFs with a great big dragon is going to exist. The world will be poorer for it.

I did it. I finally found the base post of a joke I've been laughing at for about a year now.

That was me yesterday, only instead of skipping breakfast, it was me thinking I'd just catch a train home from Lancaster.

It was appalling. When we got to the station, it said my train was delayed, but not by how much, but I figured it would only be a few minutes at most. It turned out it was delayed because of a trespasser on the line, which due to the time of year and how long it took them to resolve it, I'm going to now assume was someone trying to kill themselves, which is really sad. But it meant we were just stood about at Lancaster station for an hour, with them every now and then making announcements that the train was still delayed, they still didn't know how long it would be till it arrived, and then trespasser was still on the tracks. The best part was, the problem was happening at Morecambe, which was nowhere on my route home, but our train was coming from Morecambe, so we just couldn't get going till it was done. They cancelled 2 trains to Morecambe over the next hour, and started talking about replacement bus services. I stood out on a freezing cold platform for about 25 minutes before I realised that what with the cold and all, that probably wasn't the best plan, then went and had a chocolate brownie from Costa and sat in the passenger's lounge. My mum called, and my phone died, but happily there was a plug socket right in front of me in the waiting room, and I managed to charge it up enough for it to last the rest of my journey home. Finally, after an hour, they announced that a (delayed) train to Preston would have a connection to Leeds, so anyone who'd been planning to get on my train should probably get on that. Which was no easy feat, because it was packed to the rafters, particularly around the doorways - and not really in the aisles, so clearly people just didn't want to move. But eventually we got to Preston, and eventually we got on a train to Leeds that wasn't too packed, and I managed to give my parents some idea when I was getting home so I could get a lift from our local station. And the scenery was really beautiful in the sunset and the twilight. So it wasn't all bad. I did try to have a nap on that train and then as soon as I sat up from it ended up coughing my lungs up, while everyone on the carriage looked at me like I was Patient Zero, including a Brenda Blethyn-looking woman at my table. But anyway. After a short, cold stay at Leeds station, I managed to finally get home.

Home was a slightly different story. I'd been expecting all the sympathy from my mum cos I was ill, and when I told her about it on the phone she said she'd go out and try to get me all the cold remedies. Which I thought was odd, because usually she just gives me whatever's in the cupboard. But when I told her I was going to take the next few days off work, she looked at me in horror, because she'd thought I would just take all the cold remedies till I was all dosed up, and then go into work. She's been fretting about sickness at work and self-certification notes all day, which doesn't really help my anxiety. But I think she has a slightly overblown sense of what rational self-sacrifice is, so I am just not taking her advice. I feel way better now than I did on Saturday, but I think I'm going to take tomorrow off as well just to recover, and then try to go back in on Thursday. My boss has been super lovely about it.

I put the sides back on my new computer tower yesterday. In a show of either confidence, or not wanting to be bothered, my dad said I could do it, and I did. It makes it look very finished and beautiful. I'm currently trying to make a Windows 10 boot disk, even though I can't authenticate it, or do pretty much anything, without internet. But I'm going to try to maybe find a place for the tower, and plug in my keyboard and mouse. No word yet on the ethernet extender my dad was talking about, which is how I'm going to get internet, but it does feel like things are moving on at a decent pace.

I had a dream about the apocalypse last night. Well, first I had a dream about a storm that literally ripped apart most of my home town. Then I had a dream about a proper, everything destroyed, deer and lions in my garden apocalypse, and told my dad (in the dream) "I had a dream about this last night". I think it's from reading the comments in too many posts about the state of American politics at the moment. Although the actual posts are becoming no better - yesterday on ontd_political there was a post by someone saying there was no 100% conclusive proof that Russia was involved in swaying the election, so we shouldn't act like they might have until there was 100% conclusive proof, and the CIA were always lying, and I didn't understand it at all. Until I got to a paragraph about how "anyone who had opposed the smooth, self-entitled rise to power of Hillary Clinton is now accused of being in line with the Ruskies", and I understood what it was actually about.

By the way, can't really explain how furious them calling Hillary Clinton's bid 'self-entitled', when American politics is dominated by men and she has literally been hounded by the Republican press for years, actually makes me. People still say awful things about Hillary Clinton, and I worry sometimes that I'm eventually going to get Truth Delusioned into believing them. But for now I still take inspiration from her.

Anyway. I did end up getting a little stressed out by the overtime last week, although some of that was just about buying so many parts for my computer, and feeling like I had to rush into buying my mum's present so I could hide it within those packages. It totally worked though, because she ended up taking the delivery including her gift, and had no idea about it. As for the PC - I'm in a funny sort of waiting game right now. When I went to buy the PSU I'd been recommended it was out of stock, and Amazon were like "buy it now, we'll send it when it's back in stock". So I did. And now it's been back in stock for more than a few days, and I haven't received any sort of email saying they're sending it to me. Meanwhile, they're promising anyone who orders one now that they can have it the next day, if they choose express delivery! Hmm, Amazon. I'll probably send them an email if this continues. The PSU being the power supply for the computer, it is a pretty important part. And I can't really check if any of the other parts I've bought are faulty or super or whatever till I build the entire thing. But apart from that I've got everything else I need. Apart from an OEM version of Windows I've been recommended by my games shop guy, and - since most of those I've seen are on disc, and nowhere does it suggest the computer I'm currently building has a CD-ROM, a plug-in CD-ROM. I have no idea when I'm going to build it, though. Certainly not before the PSU comes.

Other than that though, yesterday was pretty productive. I took some stuff to the charity shop, finally, and picked up some wrapping paper and a card for my YN's birthday tomorrow, and even managed to pick up my MN and sister's presents. I also got an idea for what to buy my dad this week, and I can pick up my ON's present in Leeds when I'm there for work, which only leaves my YN's Christmas present, and I'm told he loves Paw Patrol. And I'm looking forward to going back to my regular hours next week, and I have the Last Guardian and Trico's amazing, and generally everything's going quite swimmingly at the moment. I am bleeding again though. Which is kind of annoying.

Anyway. Speaking of female artists I used to love and then forgot about, do you remember when we learned to Hit Em Up Style?



I don't really love this music video like I do the last one, but I do love the song.

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.