girlofprey

My parents got back yesterday and they seem in good cheer and also completely wiped out. They said the holiday was like being in hell in terms of the work they had to do, and also - because they were in Turkey in August - it was like being in hell heatwise as well. They're making a lot of noises about how they're never taking the kids on holiday again, or at least not all three of them, but they sort of do that every year so we'll see. They barely disturbed my sleep at all the other night though - they came back a lot earlier than I thought they would, at 2am, when I was still awake anyway, and they were all fairly quiet, and I managed to drift off pretty quickly, so that was nice.

I feel like I never talked about the upshot of the last holiday, and the thing I wanted to tell them. I do worry that maybe I post a lot of my worrying on here and then don't post what the outcome was, especially if things turned out okay. So: I had to tell my mum that my MN's school seemed upset that they were out of the country and couldn't pick him up when there was an incident, and I did. She told me that she'd told them, more or less, before she went and they didn't say anything - apparently there was some school meeting planned, and she said she and my dad couldn't be there for that because they'd be on holiday, to school employees, and no-one said anything about it. Then she went quiet for a bit, and mentioned to my dad that this thing had happened, and seemed to be worrying about it. But then she told me that it really didn't matter for the future though, because my MN was finishing at his school (has now finished), and will be going to high school in the autumn, and the high school he's going to is in walking distance of his house, so they won't need any emergency contacts with cars to go pick him up if there's an incident. So the situation with him won't affect their ability to go on holiday in the future at all. So I was worrying about nothing, in the end. And now you all know, in case I didn't fill you in the last time there was a holiday worrying session.

A week and a half back at work, and I'm back to feeling unfulfilled again. Or maybe just tired, but probably unfulfilled a bit too. The one job I applied for hasn't gotten back to me. It was a hotel receptionist job, and it was an easy to apply for one on indeed.com because you just had to click to send your CV. There was an option to add a cover letter, but I thought 'baby steps'. In the job advertisement they said one year of hotel reception experience was preferred, but then after I clicked to send my CV, a question popped up asking how many years hotel reception experience I had, and I had to put in '0'. But they might get back to me. And I will probably apply for other jobs as well. I'm aware that most people don't find the job-hunting experience quite as excruciating as I do, but I do, so here we are.

It really throws me that 'slow burn' in fic now sort of means 'they don't get together till chapter three!'. Or, alternatively; 'I will write 80,000 words of fic, and 70,000 of them will be my own personal original world-building, and the characters will probably realise they love each other and probably sleep together in the middle of the story, but will then just go off and do plot things until the end, when they finally choose to get together'. It's not what I'm looking for. I just want emotionally inept people in love, who think about each other all or most of the time.

( Family stuff )

Also, a few hours after my post on Sunday, I thought I heard knocking on the door. I turned my volume down on what I was doing, but they didn't knock again, so I turned it back up. Then I heard another knock on the other door, and I came downstairs to see the neighbour who's been looking after our dog running around in the garden, then lean down like she was coaxing something into her arms, and then walk back to her house with her arms bundled up. So I assume the dog escaped and tried to come home. But no luck. He was foiled. No coming back till Friday, dog.

I just tried Borderlands 2 VR, because I love Borderlands, and it made me feel sick, but it was still pretty good.

Red Dead Redemption 2 has gotten me into orchids and horses. Which is interesting. I don't really have the time to invest in either at the moment, though. In Red Dead Redemption 2 itself, I'm still mostly avoiding the story, because a) it's a downer at the moment, and b) I find it quite boring. I still love the characters and the voice-acting and the dialogue, but I know that every mission will be Talk to the Person, Ride to the Place, Maybe You Won't Have To Shoot A Bunch of People, But Surprise No You Do, Use Your 'Slow Time To Shoot' Power a Lot, Try To Get Headshots and Do It Quickly Because the 'Mission Score' Likes it When You Do That, The Main Character Gets Angry They Had To Shoot A Bunch of People, End Scene, Probably While The Main Character Looks Moodily Off Into the Distance Wondering What Has Happened To His Gang These Days. And that's basically it. I'm doing a lot of side-missions and challenges, but now even those have started asking you to do stuff that I'm pretty sure you can only do in a part of the map that's currently not accessible - so I will have to progress with the story in order to get to that area to do those, and see the outcome of the side missions. So I guess I will move forward with the story! If I must.

( Massive spoilers for Red Dead Redemption 2 and Red Dead Redemption 1, what the hell )

The children are here and we have all survived, but my dad is working in the morning and I have to go to work by 11 as well, and I don't know what time my sister's getting back and picking up her kids, so I feel quite sorry for my mother.

ETA: Also we went to my aunt's the other day to drop off her birthday card, and she lives with her daughter who has a rottweiler, and we met the rottweiler and it was big and lovely, and now I want a rottweiler or a mastiff so badly it hurts.

Well, after all that, it was a pretty successful Christmas I think. Or at least it was a relief after last year, and how awful that was. But we had a nice morning together, me and my mum and dad, I got most of the things I really wanted them to get me from my 'suggestions list', and they seemed to like their presents from me, or at least pretended that they did quite well. The dog got presents he enjoyed, and the cat got presents she enjoyed, and it was nice. Then all the kids came around, and despite the usual pushing and screaming, it was pretty nice - we even got some nice pictures of them enjoying their presents at their house. I say it was nice, they were only there for 3 hours and in the end it was like living inside a klaxon that was constantly going off, and me and mum were hiding in the kitchen. But there was no big drama, except when one of the kids scratched the hardwood floor in our Forbidden Dining Room, that we're only allowed into twice a year, and my dad stormed off. But he managed to keep his rage pretty much under wraps, and there were no big arguments that I heard of, and Christmas dinner was nice even though we forgot the parsnips, and then they left. And we had a pretty quiet Christmas evening in. Watched the Corrie Christmas episodes and hissed at Gina, and cheered for Sally and Tim (I CAN'T BELIEVE SHE WAS MAKING PAPER CHAINS IN JAIL), and then went our separate ways. And it was nice.

It still feels weird that I have to go back to work tomorrow, but c'est la vie. It should be quiet at least, and I've requested some time off in January to try to chill out a bit, and it's only a few days till the weekend. It's an excuse to go into Leeds and pick up some cheap post-Christmas stuff as well. So I'm sure it'll be fine. But it still feels weird and not quite real.

I still have quite a bit of a bottle of coke to drink, and I am supposed to be going to bed and sleeping tonight so I can get up in the morning. We'll see how that goes.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Hollaaa, it's the night before Christmas Eve, but it kind of feels like the night before Christmas because I said I'd get all my presents wrapped over the weekend, so I could relax tomorrow. So far I have done two thirds of them, and the last ones aren't too bad, although I think they will take the most paper. The (christmas shark) wrapping paper I'm using seems slippier than usual, so I'm worried all the tape will come unstuck by Tuesday morning, but I'm using a lot to try to compensate.

It turns out I am working tomorrow. In fact, I'm going in early, because my manager is pretty convinced we'll go quite early in the afternoon, so he said it would be nice if the morning receptionist could go early too, which I didn't think of but is totally fair. So I'm going in for 10, which means I have to get up at 8, which means I have to have a shower tonight. Another thing on the to-do list. He also said that the best answer he could get out of the bosses at work was that we could all probably go between 2 and 4 tomorrow, so he was pretty sure it would be 2, but if it turned out I couldn't leave till 4 he apologised and would make it up to me. Someone else I spoke to at the desk who's worked there for years though said that the latest he's ever gone home on Christmas Eve was 1.30, so hopefully it will be earlier rather than later, but we'll see. It still feels weird to be going into work, briefly, when we're in the final few days before Christmas. As everyone left work on Friday they kept saying "have a good Christmas - you won't be in next week will you?", and it was one of the most depressing things I ever hear. Yes. Yes I will. And back in on Thursday and Friday. But that's life, I guess. And I'd quite like to go into Marks and Spencers tomorrow anyway, as mad as it will be, so it's not all bad. Still a weird thing to try to prepare for though, as I don't think I've ever worked Christmas Eve before.

Also, my mother is working tomorrow, so we won't really have a family Christmas Eve either when I get home, and she normally does a buffet/party food tea on Christmas Eve, so we're having that tonight. Which makes it feel even more like not-Christmas Eve. And she's been cleaning the house before Christmas - I swear we do more Christmas cleaning than spring cleaning - so I also need to change the sheets on my bed tonight. So much to do when I would like to just be relaxing. But hopefully it just means I can relax tomorrow, after getting home from work. When it's just me and my dad. We had an argument today where he just started yelling at me for something he's complained about before. So that should be fun, just me and him. I feel like I'll spend a lot of the night playing Red Dead Redemption. Which doesn't feel very Christmassy. But I do love Arthur Morgan.

I am a bit worried about Christmas to be honest, given what it was like last year. But my sister is less crazy this year, so hopefully that will also make the kids a bit calmer, and it will all be better. I'd prefer to not have to go back to work right after Boxing Day, even so, but I have to. So that's that.

I am still looking forward to Christmas though. Even with all the work and potential stress that comes with it. Genuinely.

Christmas whale.

I didn't get anyone any Christmas cards this year but I love you all.

So. After an extended situation with Social Services and my ON over the weekend, I'm completely exhausted. I don't feel like I ever relaxed over the weekend, and I remember distinctly thinking on Monday night "It doesn't feel like a Monday - it feels like a Thursday". Like I'd already been working for a whole week. I've been too wound up to go to bed, then too anxious to sleep, and then in the morning to tired to get up. The idea of going back to work tomorrow genuinely makes me want to cry, and I don't know what to do about it, except try and get some sleep tonight.

I did bring myself to ask my manager for some more time off work last week. It wasn't so bad in the end, as I managed to build up to it - he (and I) were back from some time off on the Monday, and at lunchtime the office was full of people so I didn't like bringing it up then, and then he came later and asked how my time off was for me, and I could say then that I needed to speak to him the next day about more time off maybe - so I made sure to bring it up on Monday, but didn't actually have to ask till Tuesday. And I was a little worried about going back to work, but the first Monday I was back was pretty quiet, which made me feel a lot better about the possibility of him saying no to my request at least.

Asking him wasn't great, as it never is when you have to discuss your mental health in a professional capacity, but I managed to get my point across and I think got him to vaguely understand what things are like for me. And then I asked him for two full weeks off, before the end of October - specifically, I asked for 'after the 19th of October', because that's when my train pass runs out, and now you have to buy tickets at stupid machines at the station I don't fancy doing without it for a week, or having to buy a monthly pass and waste the money. At the time I didn't quite realise that was about three weeks away - in some ways I regret that now. But in any case, he said he'd look into it for me, and seems to be genuinely doing that - and even brought up the idea that I might need more time off, if I felt the two weeks weren't enough, which is entirely possible and it's nice that he's kind of prepared for that. But it took him some time to try and arrange it, and yesterday he came to me and said that he was pretty certain he could arrange the second week, and the Wednesday to Friday of the first week, but that he might need me to come in on the Monday and Tuesday of that first week. Which is - so much better than not having any time off at all, but I really felt like I needed that two weeks off, and at the moment I really feel like I need to get the things I ask for, because they are the things that I need, and I don't know what to make of that offer now. I genuinely believe he's just struggling to cover it - apparently a lot of the team are just coincidentally off that week - but it puts me in the position of now having to either suck it up and just go in for those first two days - and it is only two days. But then I've also got to consider how I'm going to feel after the two weeks are up if I didn't get that two weeks I really feel like I need. Or am I going to insist and say "no, I need the time off", and take those days off sick no matter what he says, putting him in a really bad position, and possibly putting myself in a bad position with that job going forward. At the moment, I don't even feel like I'm going to make it to next Friday, or a week on Tuesday or whenever it is, like I might need to take time off before even that. But I don't know. I don't like doing this. I'm just going to have to try to get some sleep tonight and hope that helps me out, and that the weekend helps me out too, and that I just feel better after that. I'm not feeling great right now. I don't really know what to do about it. Other than get some sleep.

Also today at work me and S - the only other person on the team in the office - were discussing our potential building move, and he seemed to think they had a particular building in mind now. It was near the other company our Facilities company helps out with, which is basically the area they'd discussed for a while. But they took me into our other building a while ago to show me more of what our company does, and I genuinely don't remember a reception area except for the one on the ground floor - which will be run by building management, not our Facilities company. So now I'm genuinely wondering if I have a job after the company moves buildings - not that I'm desperate to hang onto this job particularly, but I don't really want the rug pulling out from under my feet. And it's a little bit paranoid, but now I'm genuinely wondering if my manager has been stringing me along, basically, to try to make sure I stayed at this job as long as they needed me, without telling me that maybe I wouldn't be needed after the building move. I don't know. It's another thing to bring up with him maybe, I guess. Maybe I just missed the individual reception areas at the other building when I went there. But I don't think I did. And he has been trying to give me other admin work for the Facilities company in general in the last few months, until it became clear I couldn't really handle any extra work, particularly admin work. A way of trying to keep me in the business in a different role? I don't know now.

Parents have gone on holiday. I do not have the dog. My mother finally offered to pay my sister to look after her own dog for a week, and then my sister agreed. So there we go.

I have the house to myself for a week. I have to go food shopping tomorrow, and initially resented it, but then remembered when I go food shopping when my parents are away, I can buy whatever I want. Fruit I probably won't eat. Smoothies. Ice cream. My mother already got my two cartons of smoothies, because she is a star. Still. Freedom.

I also got paid today, so I am catching up on all the things I couldn't buy yesterday.

I've been feeling extremely tired and stressed this week, and had a weird pain in my stomach all yesterday that I didn't quite understand. Then today it turns out I'm on a tiny, tiny, tiny, miniscule period. So that explains quite a lot of that.

Sony have brought out a limited edition PS4 Pro to celebrate the fact that, since they brought out the original Playstation, they have sold 500 million consoles. I'm equally touched by their success and covetous of the PS4 Pro. But I probably won't buy it. Because I've already pre-ordered this limited edition Spiderman PS4 Pro. Because I am insane.

I'm going to Nottingham tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it. But at the moment I have to plan and pack and keep an eye on my finances in case the hotel bill wipes me out. Also my mum is coming, which is lovely. She just randomly, after I booked it, suggested that she could come up on the Saturday with my ON, and stay for the one night in the same hotel. But she then immediately tried to get me to talk to her about tickets and what the cheapest possible tickets could be, and maybe what time we were planning to come back on Sunday, and planning exactly when we were coming back is not what this weekend was ever supposed to be about. Also it's supposed to be going to heat up again, and I'm questioning the sanity of going to an open-air festival for multiple hours of the day. But I'm looking forward to it. I love the festival and I love the bands and I love Nottingham. I'm excited to go back. I've been looking at google maps all weekend, remembering where everything is and looking at what's still there and what isn't. There are more escape rooms in Nottingham than there used to be, is mostly what I've noticed. But I think there are more escape rooms everywhere than there used to be.

Next Friday, my parents are going away to Benidorm with my three nephews, and despite the fact that I thought I made it clear I can't really look after the house and the dog when they go away, while I'm working, they are planning to leave the dog with me. The last time they went away, we had the dog go stay with my sister, again. Since he is her dog. This time my MN has apparently said my sister is planning to go to a caravan with her new boyfriend while her kids are on holiday - ????!!!?? - and my mum hasn't even asked her if that's true, or if she can have the dog. She just keeps talking about how the neighbour has said the dog can stay in her back garden all day, till I get home from work, and that she's trying to get him on trays of food instead of the big cans. My dad doesn't say anything, just sort of curls his lip. He obviously just thinks I should do it, because he's not that bothered about how hard I find it. I will not be able to sleep if I'm worrying about whether or not the dog is going to wee or poo in the kitchen overnight, which he sometimes does for no apparent reason. If I can't sleep work and living is going to be hell. I already have to clean out the cat's bowl more often than usual because it's constantly full of fly eggs, because my dad won't close the garage door, because he wants it to be cool in there when he goes in there to vape, I guess. Give me a break.

After the conversation I had with my boss last week about the dude saying one of our female bosses was getting 'brave', I was then sat in the office when the post room guy no-one likes started talking about how he'd won a couple of free drinks and was going to have them at Leeds Pride. He's not gay, he talks about women and his girlfriends all the time, and my boss has described him as 'an abuser and predator of women'. Which is nice. Anyway, the others in the office started teasing him about which he was out of LGBT, and he said he 'wasn't gay, he was normal'. He was going with his girlfriend, who also wasn't gay, but normal. And 'the last thing he'd ever want to be is gay'. So I went to talk to my boss again, because there have been complaints - from our CEO - about how much this guy talks, basically just to tell my boss what had happened, and ask if there was any chance this man might be encouraged to stop talking soon. Also I told him I was bisexual, just to get my situation across, and because literally why wouldn't I tell him if it came up. And he started talking about how he was fine with gay people, but he didn't like people who pushed their sexuality in your face, and how he was accosted once in a gay bar when he was younger, and probably this guy (who everyone hates) was just naive and chose his words wrongly, I wouldn't understand because I have an English degree, he probably only meant that he wouldn't want to be anything other than straight, the same way I wouldn't want to be anything other than bisexual. He is generally a nice person, and sometimes he was nice in this conversation, and I think I caught him off-guard a bit, but oh my god. And he told me he wasn't planning to treat me any differently now he knew I was bisexual, I shouldn't worry about that, and he told me that a few times, and I said "you shouldn't", and I meant that he morally shouldn't, but also that obviously I could take him to a tribunal if he did. Also he told me a story about how he'd once worked with a lad who was a genius, but nobody knew because he was working on a building site just to make some money until he got made partner at a law firm, and that he'd learned because of that not to judge anybody when you don't know them, and then gave me significant looks.

I decided overnight that it wasn't fair of me to bring the subject up, because it's really not his responsibility what people - who technically don't even work in the same company as us - say in the office, and he has been busy lately, and his mum's recently died. I was going to tell him the next day, but before I got a chance he said he wanted to speak to me. We went back into a private meeting room, and he said I'd caught him on the back foot the day before, obviously what the guy said was wrong, and no-one liked him. It was just because Pride was coming up, and people were going to talk about it, and then started talking about whether we needed Pride anymore, as a society. He obviously thought we didn't. And once again, told me he didn't view me any differently because I was bisexual, he wasn't going to treat me any differently. As far as he was concerned, I was a normal person, he was a normal person, the man in the postroom was not a normal person because he was kind of stupid and a twat. Also I learned that when he'd said the man was a 'predator and abuser of women', he just meant he stalked people/women on Facebook, and would probably stalk me if he got the chance. Mmhm. I said I didn't want to discuss gay rights with him, but it was fine, and if things got any worse I'd decide if I wanted him to have a word with the guy's manager or anything.

Yesterday, my boss asked to have a word with me again as soon as I got in. Apparently this guy had been saying something similar again about Pride, about how he went but he wasn't gay - he 'wasn't like them' - and my boss could tell that it was just naivety and stupidity, but it was something that would have pissed me off. So he took this guy aside and said that someone - and it could have been literally anyone, just someone who walked in from upstairs - had said something about how this guy was talking about gay people, and his 'vile manner'. My boss said he massively exagerrated what I'd said so this guy wouldn't be able to guess it had come from me. So yes. And he said the guy might do some digging - he probably would do some digging - trying to find out who'd made this comment, but nothing that had been said should trace it back to me. My boss just wanted me to know that it had happened and what he'd said. He also reiterated that he didn't see me any differently now he knew I was bisexual, and didn't think he'd been treating me any differently. And I said 'tribunal tribunal tribunal' in my head and said it was fine, he'd been fine. Which he had been, when we weren't in that meeting room having conversations.

So that happened at work. Pride is this weekend.

I had my hair cut on Monday, on the day off I finally managed to have, and now my hair is short and things are wonderful.

The Child Protection meeting is this afternoon, and I'm currently waiting on a call from the mental health place I think to tell me that I can't have therapy anytime soon. A guy called last night, but I was on the train so he said he'd called back this morning, but he more or less wanted to check if I could really only do Saturdays, because due to a change in the rota, he could currently offer me two Saturdays, but then we'd have to move to evenings if I was continuing with him. I told him I couldn't really do evenings, since I work till 7pm every night, and he asked if I could do early mornings, like 8.30am? I

Right, so he called just as I was writing this paragraph, and we've sorted it out. I was going to say mornings aren't great anyway, because it's a matter of having an extra thing to do and place to go and thing to get ready for before I go to work, and I know I only work part-time, but it's still a stretch. And getting up to go for an 8.30 appointment would be abominable. But it turns out he works in my home town on Thursday mornings, and could offer me an appointment at ten to eleven regularly. Thinking about it now, given where the surgery he works is, it's going to make it a real pain to get to my train station for work from there, but ah well, may as well give it a go. To begin with he started talking about whether a phone session would be acceptable, and given that I started off asking for a phone session because I knew I couldn't do weekdays very well, and was told I really should push for a face-to-face appointment, they were better for that type of therapy, it was a little frustrating. Frankly, given how weird and halting he just was on the phone, it doesn't give me super confidence we're going to have great conversations, but I shouldn't judge, I'm sure he's very qualified, and we haven't actually done the therapy yet.

But yes, Thursday mornings, starting from next week. That's an extra thing to get to next week, on my last week before my holiday, on the week I also have a doctor's appointment on Monday morning. And so much for my week of doing nothing, nothing at all, except go get Far Cry 5, play Far Cry 5, and go to Eastercon. But I have been waiting a long time for this, and it's nice to finally get on with it, even if it did all change at the last minute and was quite sudden.

I'm still mostly looking forward to Far Cry 5. Every day leading up to my holiday feels like it's crawling. It's a little sad that I'm looking forward to Far Cry 5 more than my birthday, which is the same day. I don't really know what I want, I don't want anything that day except the Far Cry 5 collector's edition, which I'm buying myself, and my mum called a few weeks ago to ask if I was working on my birthday, because she had a possible study day then, and I more or less told her that it would be nice to see her in the morning, but I was very much planning to go to Leeds as soon as possible, get a game, and then spend the rest of the day playing that game. So maybe there wasn't a lot of reason for her to be in the house that day. I would like to go out for dinner that night, and I would like to go to Pizza Hut, because I love Pizza Hut and we never go. But a conversation with my mum recently reminded me that actually, given that I'm not working that day so there are no bedtimes to consider, I will probably be expected to go with my sister and her three kids. Which doesn't thrill me. They don't do well in restaurants, and I don't think it will be a relaxing time. But at least it will be a night out I guess.

I'm thinking of going somewhere on the Monday beforehand, because what am I going to do on the Monday beforehand except wait for Far Cry 5 to come out? I was sort of hoping we might go to Cannon Hall Farm, which is a working farm centre in Yorkshire, and it's lovely to go this time of year because there are all the baby animals. But recently my mum saw a competition on Facebook to win a family ticket to Cannon Hall Farm, and entered it, and then told me "but we're not going if we win obviously. It's too far in the car". So that's probably out. I might just go to Scarborough on the Monday. I love Scarborough.

Also I was planning to go see Alpha this weekend, because last weekend I didn't really feel like it, and now that things are actually starting to happen again I can just put things off, and have something to do next weekend. But it turns out there are no showings this weekend at my local cinema, because they've pushed the release date back to September. So so much for that.