girlofprey

I've gotten spotty, out of nowhere. For years, most of my life really, I've had pretty clear skin, which was a blessing I appreciated, but now all of a sudden I'm just getting spots all over one of my cheeks and my chin. I feel like it might be something to do with how I sleep, like maybe I need to change my pillowcase for a clean one? But I feel like I'm not changing it any less frequently than I used to, and this didn't happen before. I mostly don't mind, except that it hurts, it makes it hard for me to touch my face without accidentally causing myself pain and aggravating the spots, and it actively makes it harder for me to sleep, because most of the positions I can comfortably sleep in put pressure on the spots, and if they don't make them immediately hurt I worry it's going to make them worse by the morning, so I just don't do it. So it's hard to particularly relax in bed or sleep. And I just don't know why this has cropped up so suddenly, maybe the change in season has affected my hormones? Or I skipped my pill by accident for a while? I don't know, but it's bothering me, and I guess I'm going to have to do something to try to make it better, even though all of my routine worked perfectly before.

Easter. It was nice. My mum worked yesterday, so we didn't have an Easter dinner, and we're not having one today, just a chinese takeaway. But we went out to Nostell Priory on Saturday, as the weather was so lovely. I wanted to see bluebells, and the National Trust claim that's one of the best places to see them in Yorkshire, which is nice because it's only about 20 minutes away. We also took my MN though, who was fine with the trip, but then almost immediately got bored with nature walks, then got interested again when he could skim stones on the lake, then got bored again. But it was nice. We saw an angry swan on her nest, and some ducklings on a pond, and some crows hanging out on the edges of the pond that possibly wanted to eat them. And bluebells.

Other than that, I've really enjoyed being off work. I always have a lot of plans for what I'm going to do if I get a decent break from work - I'm going to read some nature books I have, and some comics, and tidy my room, and go through some of the old CDs I'm trying to get rid of, and replay some of the big games I love. Instead I mostly play the same games I was playing anyway, and watch Youtube videos, which I would have probably watched anyway - but more. But it was still a nice break from work, and so lovely to just relax for a day and know I didn't have to immediately start getting back into the headspace for going back to work the next day.

As for work, I don't know. I accidentally got caught up in some cleaner conflict last week, where one of the (black, male) cleaners got upset about the job one of the (white, female) cleaners had been doing, because he'd been caught having finished all his work and putting his coat on 45 minutes before his shift was over the week before, by the literal head of the cleaning staff, and given an extra job to do. He then started criticising the job the other cleaner did during the day - because she can't really do very much with it, because it's during the day, and everyone's using the desks and areas that need to be cleaned - and saying some people like him do their jobs, and some people like her don't, and he gets criticised and she doesn't, and also she just happens to be the friends with the head of the cleaning staff and go out for cigarette breaks with her a lot, and it was discrimination. The (older) woman he was criticising happens to be someone who had a mini-stroke a few weeks ago, and came back to work two days later. So that was awkward. And he was saying all this to me, because it was the reception area they were supposed to be cleaning. Then the two cleaners literally had an argument about it, because apparently the day before this guy had brought all the other cleaners down to reception to show them how dirty some wall was, and say had bad a job this other woman and fellow cleaner was doing. Then the female cleaner said on her way out that she was off for a week now, which was probably best, and that she still felt like she wanted to go back to that guy and apologise. I suggested maybe he wasn't in a place to hear it, and she didn't. But wait, there's more! I mentioned to the supervisor (the cleaner who fancies me) that this had happened, but said I didn't know if he needed to talk to male cleaner, because I didn't want them to feel like I was telling tales and I didn't know if female cleaner would want to say anything about it. But apparently male cleaner sent some random text to literally the head of the cleaning staff that evening, and she didn't realise female cleaner was off the following week, so on Monday when I got in she asked me to go somewhere and enlighten her on exactly what had happened that evening, and I more or less had to give a statement about it. It was weird. And literally only involved me because I happened to be there that late. So. Yep.

And the car park's still the car park. I've started taking sudoku to work, and a book, and just doing that instead of thinking about it. Frankly, what's become increasingly clear is that I need to leave this job, and want to leave this job. But quite outside of my own unsureness of what kind of new job I want, more full-on or full time, or more full-on and full-time, and whether I could handle more full-on and full-time, and quite outside of my own low self-esteem and doubts about whether I could even get another job, and quite outside of my own struggles and stress with job-hunting and trying to fit job-hunting in around a job - I'm not too sure that currently, with the state the country's in and all the uncertainty in politics and the looming question of Brexit, whether this is really the right time to go hunting for another job, or whether it's better to stay somewhere that is at least stable for now. Maybe that's an excuse, and there's not really any good time to go hunting for a different job and making a big change in your life, but it's stressful all the same.

Also I've been reading Pet Sematary, but I can't tell if the main character's supposed to be the kind of person who wants to be in control all the time and that's thematic, or if Stephen King just thinks that's how men are and how women are, and I can't tell if the main character's supposed to be Special, and I just want to get to the scary bits but I have to fight through the weird unlikeable characters along the way, and I don't know. Just get to the spooky bits.

Coronation Street is doing it's best and Alison King is very good, but I don't know why every storyline about women having mental health problems has to involve them being detached from reality, and I don't know why they're having Carla be blamed for a death it will turn out wasn't really her fault, again (by Alya, again), and I don't know why they're having Imran persecute a woman who isn't actually guilty of the crime she's being accused of, again, and I don't know if Alya has brought up Luke, to or in response to Kate, but it's weird that it just seems to be all the same storylines again. And I wasn't really completely watching in the run-up to the roof collapse, so I don't know how dangerous Carla thought the roof was, so I can't tell if she really will not be blamed? Or if it was still a really big risk to put her workforce through even if the actual collapse wasn't her fault? Or if her being mentally ill is going to be some sort of get-out-of-jail free card, so they can have this storyline and just handwave all that. Which would be weird? And not unlike what it felt like they were doing with Gina? I don't know. It's all just very frustrating.

Dear Coronation Street writers: What?

The water is broken in our house. So that's good.

I just don't feel like we can say we live in a just and fair society while Jeremy Kyle is still on TV.

Coronation Street

I just don't understand what they're doing with Gina at the moment. Is this supposed to be more acceptable because she's mentally ill? Because if so, I find it even more offensive than before. It was bad enough when they were trying to make us believe that anyone would ever love or want to be friends with Tracey, but I genuinely just don't know what to make of this.

Liz's stalker daughter was the funniest thing I've seen in a while. I hope she turns out to be Tyrone's mum. And I hope Leanne dies. Followed swiftly by Imran.

E3 began today. Only EA's conference, but still. They're usually the boring one, because all they show is sports games and shooters. I was genuinely excited, because I thought they might show some new The Sims stuff - even though there's a new pack out in two weeks that they just announced, so it wasn't likely. They didn't, but even so I thought it was a solid okay, which bodes well for the rest of the show. Tomorrow is Microsoft, where they will probably announce some non-Xbox games, and Bethesda. So true E3 will be happening. The Bethesda showing will be on at 2am and is apparently a 2-hour conference this year. I am excite.

OTHER THINGS I MUSTN'T FORGET:

• It's Father's Day on 19th June.


• It's my mother's birthday a week later on 26th June.


• They're both impossible to buy for, so that will probably go well.

Also, The Pretenders are playing in Leeds in August. I love the Pretenders. And Culture Club is playing in Leeds in November. I love Culture Club. Also there are two operas on this autumn with Opera North that I've been wanting to see for a long time. And apparently Rich Hall is just doing a constant tour around England at the moment. I have no-one to go to things with, but I might go to these things anyway. Also the open-air concert they have in my home town regularly is happening again in a few weeks. Another thing to go to.

A few weeks ago I went on a little shopping spree in Marks and Spencer's, and I bought a miniature rose bush in a pot. It's lovely, but now I basically have an extra thing to look after that I don't really know how to look after. I have to keep it well-watered without drowning it, and in a well-lit place that's out of direct sunlight. The soil looks incredibly dry every time I look at it, and I can't tell if I'm just worrying too much or the heat that's happening at the moment is drying it out a lot. Be safe, rose.

I don't necessarily agree with reducing the sentence for rape, or certain rapes, but everything Germaine Greer says still feels like she's incredibly concerned for the plight of women, and wants to make things genuinely, measurably better for women, and I still love her, no matter how messy or unpalatable the things she says are.

Coronation Street: about fucking time, basically. My favourite part was when David didn't even get to Not Tell Sarah about what happened to him. Just Gail got to Not Tell her. On the other hand, Emmerdale is being amazing. Emma Atkins forever.

Stardew Valley is coming to PS Vita next Tuesday.

What a time to be alive.

I don't know that Shane sits well with most of my video game husbands. I don't know that he would get on with Joseph Seed. Although Joseph Seed would probably love him. But then I suppose there are a few other nice people in there for company. Ah well.

Other things I have done in the last week:

• Found out that some tarantulas are actually really beautiful.



• Wrote fanfiction for my own dream.



• Had a different dream last night that David Platt in Coronation Street actually did try to kill himself over what happened with Josh, and that's how his family finally found out about it. I just love it when people love David and want to protect him, and I just want to see that happen. GAIL WILL BE SO HEARTBROKEN AND UPSET. And Gary will look at him with so much sympathy. I want to see that happen and it's not happening yet. Who knows when it will happen. My dream made it real.

( Far Cry 5 - Spoilers )

Coronation Street

I think the thing I find most implausible about the whole David storyline is that he would ever have any interest in boxing at all.

Did a breast exam this morning, once again felt like I was close to a panic attack. Having had to shut off the water already (I was in the shower), at one point I felt like I couldn't breathe properly and had to open the door to left the steam out and cold air in, and then I had to sit down, and realised my ears were ringing. This was while trying to not worry about it as much as usual, and having pretty much successfully not done it till it hurt. It was not great. I will probably be talking about it with my therapist tomorrow.

Doing this meant I was running late, at which point I got a text literally as I was leaving the house about my appointment tomorrow, saying that it wasn't at the time I thought it was. Got to work pretty much on time to find out that the email problems we were having yesterday due to some sort of network migration were continuing, and I had to call IT to sort it out. Then I had to start going through the emails from yesterday that we never saw, some of which were the whingy 'I want a parking space and I haven't won the lottery and I see empty spaces every day' kind, so I had to explain those, not just reply. Then we got a query about something the Head of Facilities had to decide, so I forwarded it to her, and she asked me to reply to it and 'make it clear' what our policy was. Then I realised that the network migration had fucked up our email system to the point that it made it almost unusable for us on the desk - not entirely unusable, but a lot more annoying and prone to issues - and when I say fucked up, I don't mean it was broken, I mean the way it now works means that a basic thing we always did now doesn't happen anymore - we have to do it manually, if we even remember in the first place. I called IT to say this was happening, and they more or less said 'yes, I guess that's the way it is now'. I spoke to my manager about it, and then casually complained to an Executive Assistant we deal with a lot, and they both suggested that we should continue to tell IT this is terrible and try to get it changed. But from the sounds of it, it doesn't sound like it can be. But we'll see. Also, the way that we finally got our inboxes back was a long, complicated process, and apparently it has to be done on every computer we use, and so I had to take notes on what the IT person did and do it again, myself, that night when I closed reception down and went into the office and used a different computer. I will have to do that on every computer I use from now going forward, if I want to see those inboxes while using it. Thanks IT. For ruining everything. I'm sure the random pictures of people we now see when they send us emails will be totally worth it.

So I ended my day by setting up new inboxes all over again, and furiously writing out notes to the morning receptionists about what had happened, how bad it was, and what they would have to do from now on.

And then I left, and my train was late.

So not a great day, overall. However, I did find out that the shop in Leeds where I've preordered my copy of Far Cry 5 is launching it at midnight on the Monday, and staying open through the night to do so. So I could have it all Tuesday. I'm trying to persuade my dad to take me, as a birthday gift. He's resisting so far, but I might be able to win him round.

Coronation Street

• David is perfect.



• I suspected Fiz hadn't told Tyrone about Hope, given the way they left the cliffhanger on Friday, but I had just the previous day on Emmerdale seen two other cliffhangers about women not having the courage to own up to something, and that was a bit of a triple-whammy, so I hoped for the best. Oh well.

The World

Another reason why 'witch hunt' is a completely inappropriate term is that witches don't exist, rapists do.

That's a thing I see literally no-one else saying.

Coronation Street

I think Sinead should date outside the street. Is mostly what I think. I also love Carla, and I loved the Carla-Daniel team up when I thought it was going to be about them hating Tracy, but if they're going to get together it's a bit **yawn**

Anyway. I have mostly been replaying Borderlands 2 lately. Sarah McCakesy emailed me over the New Year to say she'd played Tales From The Borderlands, which is a game I never quite got around to, and it reminded me of my love of Handsome Jack, so I decided to go back and have another run-through. It's such a good game. There's such a sense of - space. And it's so beautiful, especially in the remastered version. Sometimes I just stop and take screenshots, it's so pretty.

It's funny how quickly the year goes, when you think about it a certain way. January and February are kind of the dead months, at the beginning of the year, but I spent all of last week thinking forward to a week when I wouldn't have three train strikes to deal with, and that's this week, which starts on 15th January, which is practically halfway through the month. Then it's only 2 weeks to February, and Valentine's Day is when I start to consider it the time when interesting things start to happen again in the year, and that's only two weeks in. And February's a short month, so only two weeks after that we're into March, and that's basically the start of spring. And only 27 days from my birthday, and Far Cry 5 being released. Having said that, I'm mostly counting my year in terms of video game release dates, as usual, and ????? Playstation announced last year that a bunch of their new exclusive games were coming 'in the first half of 2018', and we still don't have release dates for them. E3, when everyone makes their big announcements, is in June, which is basically when the first half of the year is up, so WHEN WILL YOU ANNOUNCE THE RELEASE DATES, PLAYSTATION? WHEN? Are they going to start doing Playstation Directs? Are they just going to casually announce it in a blog post? Are they just going to release the games with no announcements, like Beyonce and Lemonade? What is their plan? What is happening? Not that release dates mean very much these days, with all the delays that keep happening. But still. WHEN?