girlofprey

And now Dominic Cummings is going, what a nice week it's been.

The social worker did come by yesterday, and when I came downstairs my parents were outside with him in the garden, and our dog was inside. Knowing that our dog doesn't like being left alone too much, and is a bit suspicious of strangers, I lifted him up so he could see them out the window, and gave him a bit of a cuddle, which involved pressing my face up against his fur a little bit. I did consider whether I wanted to do that, given that I've heard coronavirus can be passed on in pet fur, but I figured it had been a day since he'd even been out for a walk (it was actually two days), and I didn't think it would last in 'fabric' as long as all that. I put him down and got on with breakfast, and shortly afterwards things happened and the meeting with the social worker ended. And my mum came in saying he'd been there two hours, and 'he's been petting the dog as well'.

Which wasn't great for me, obviously. I've been trying to rationalise it to myself, that it's probably a very low-risk way for coronavirus to spread or else they'd talke about it more in the papers, that it only really matters if the social worker had coronavirus in the first place (he's from Oldham and has been travelling all around the country visiting kids), and that he had a mask on so hopefully was following other guidelines like washing his hands and not touching his face to not even transmit it in the first place. But I'm still going to be watching myself for symptoms for a week, and my parents for symptoms just in case I'm asymptomatic for two weeks. It's not the scary start to Spook Month I was hoping for.

Nothing really got said at the meeting, I don't think. That court case never happened, or was just a pre-hearing or something, because the actual one is now in February (for now). The social worker said he was sticking around, and worried about my nephews' behavioural problems, which we all are, so we'll see. I didn't meet him, but mum and dad seem to think he's fine.

I also called my manager, and he did remember me, which is nice. But he said largely what I thought he'd say - that nothing's really changed since lockdown started, and after the recent restrictions that have been put in place the company we work for just wants to continue as they are currently for the foreseeable future. Which does sound like they're not planning to tear up the contract and fire us all at least - but also sounds like they're not planning to call us back in any time soon, or ask us to come in part-time so the government can top up our wages. So I reckon I had better get used to not being paid after the furlough scheme runs out. I have a bit of money to be going on with though, and no real outlays or dependants, so it won't be too much of a hardship. Just sort of annoying and boring and I won't be able to support the economy too much. And mum and I will probably have to have a conversation about the rent I pay her. But hopefully it will only be temporary though. And I might qualify for benefits in the meantime. I don't know how I would technically be seen on that front. And I also wouldn't really like to have to go to the Jobcentre.

I got paid yesterday, and it was supposed to be a day I started buying a bunch of things I've been holding off on, but my cat has an ingrown dew-claw - on the outside of her paw. I noticed it back in March, when the lockdown started, but I figured it wasn't enough of an emergency to go to the vet about. It doesn't seem to hurt her, but I do see her limping very occasionally and assume it has something to do with that. And the other day I saw her rolling around in the grass outside, and she grabbed that particular paw and started licking it and biting at it. So I think I should probably go to the vet about it, and therefore should probably hold onto a lot of my money until I know how much that will cost. I also need to buy a cat carrier, because I don't know what happened to ours, and my dad is genuinely angry at me that I won't just use the carboard box he's offered me. Mum, meanwhile, was absolutely adamant there was no way we could take care of the ingrown claw at home, while it seemed like that was the only option, until I started talking about talking the cat to the vet, and now she's been researching it and watching videos about it for a day. Trying to do anything I actually want to do is a real struggle with my family.

I also have tinnitus, which I assumed was just my deserved reward for a childhood listening to loud music and adulthood with headphones constantly in, and wasn't planning to do much about it. But now it's graduated from a ringing sound to occasionally a weird vibrating sound in one ear, and apparently it might be caused by earwax, which can be fixed, or in very very very rare cases a tumour, so everyone recommends you go check it out anyway. So I'll probably be going to the doctor and letting them breathe near me over that too.

And my room really really needs sorting out, but I don't think I'll be doing that any time soon either. Probably not until I've finished Ghost of Tsushima. That's not on my family, that's on me.

Well, it's July already, somehow. 4th of July in fact. Happy Independence Day to any Americans on my flist. We call it Fuck Off Puritans Day.

I'm getting paid next Friday, and that Sunday is the Ubisoft preview event, which seemed so long away when it was announced. And now it's almost here. But the weirdest thing is the fact that we're over halfway through the year, and still almost nothing is confirmed in the videogame world for this winter. The next generation of consoles is coming out. We still don't know exactly when, or how much they'll cost. I'm still saving up for the PS5, and hoping however much I've saved will be enough. There are multiple massive games coming out, and none of them have release dates. Probably because a lot are planning to tie in with the PS5/Xbox Series X releases, but still. Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 is coming out. I don't know when. Yakuza 7 is coming out. I don't know when. Assassin's Creed Valhalla is coming out. It just says 'Holiday 2020'. Cyberpunk 2077 just got delayed from September to November 19th, but who can rely on their dates at this point? We still don't know what the launch games are going to be for the two consoles or when they're coming out, and how exactly are they supposed to do that and not eat into each other's profits? Which is probably more than anything why no-one has set dates yet, but genuinely, this more than anything brings it home to me how much this pandemic has made everything uncertain. July, and we don't know when this year's next-gen consoles will be released. Wild.

But Ubisoft are having their conference, and they're going to talk about Watch Dogs: Legion, which is supposed to be coming out this year, and Assassin's Creed, which is also supposed to be coming out this year. And the rumours are that they're also going to announce the next Far Cry game, which will be coming out next spring, and the rumours are that Giancarlo Esposito will be playing the villain. I don't know if I'm ever going to get over Joseph Seed from Far Cry 5, at this point, but Giancarlo Esposito might well be enough to sway my attention.

And generally, I'm glad that I wasn't called back into work at this point - well, even more glad - because all this talk of local lockdowns would probably play havoc with that, a bit. No-one's even said what it means, if you're area gets locked down but the area you work in doesn't, or vice-versa. Or if it'll be a full, only go out once a day lockdown, or just 'restrict your movements' like we're doing now. But frankly, I don't know what's going to happen now the pubs are open. People already aren't following the rules or doing social distancing a lot, so how they'll do it while drunk I don't know. My mum has been keeping an eye on the figures for new cases in the nearby cities, Leeds and Wakefield. And yesterday, they suddenly jumped to double - for both places - what they were the day before. Which was higher than it's ever been since she started checking it. So she thinks it's either a weird typo, or shit's bad. My family and I aren't planning to go to the pub. Or to the hairdresser's. Sorry economy. We will see what happens.

The pizza I got tonight was incredibly hot, so in between the pieces falling apart and trying not to burn my fingers, I brushed the crust of a few slices against a colder part of the box, which I usually try not to touch while I'm transferring the pizza out of it. So I will have to wait two weeks to see if that comes to anything. Not that I would know the difference between being infected by that, or any of the other tiny terrifying things that happen every day, which seem like a risk even if not a large risk. A man stroked our dog yesterday without asking if he could. Mum wiped him down with disinfectant wipes when we got home (the dog, not the man). It all seems like too much, but also not nearly enough.

I'm still enjoying nature though. Today I learned that the little flowers I've liked lately are tufted vetch, and we saw a grey wagtail in our garden, and a chaffinch on our walk, and a small gang of starlings did a little murmuration thing over us. And I fed the dog watermelon. Those things are nice.

I kind of want to watch all of Game of Thrones, for beautiful Cersei, and to some degree Oberyn, but I also don't know if it will be worth all the rape. All the rape.

Today on Tumblr I saw someone reblogging how you can't be a real feminist and support porn and prostitution, and after all the SWERF stuff that's been going around in the last few years, it was a real relief.

Well. I went to pick up my prescription yesterday, and it was an adventure frankly. The storm that isn't quite happening is passing through, so we had wind blowing us around from the beginning, and blowing dust into our eyes - very unpleasant when you don't want to touch your face or wipe your eyes at the time. My mum came with me with our dog, so we had to deal with him sniffing every single inch of greenery along the way, like he does. We had a moment at the beginning where we passed some wisteria, and I really liked the smell, but mum couldn't smell anything, so I made a joke about whether she'd lost her sense of taste and smell, and she spent the rest of the walk trying to smell every flower we went past to make sure she hadn't. Sadly most of the flowers had no real scent, so we didn't have much luck for about twenty minutes, but finally she confirmed there was one she could smell.

We went by the train station to see what things look like now, since I might have to use it shortly, and it wasn't much different to be honest. There were a few Coronavirus posters up, and the car park was empty. A train pulled in, and we had a look, and there seemed to be some sort of notice on the doors, which I assume was telling people not to open them as the conductor could do that. So at least there are some new procedures in place. We walked off, and that was when I realised my foot was really hurting. I bought some new trainers a few months ago, and I really like them, but they've got higher tops than my old ones and the material's stiff, so it's been rubbing the back of my ankle for a few days. I put a plaster over it for yesterday's walk, and then my foot made very clear to me that the plaster had come off, so I had to go fix it, and then was hobbling the rest of the way. Wind blowing at all moments.

Finally we got to the pharmacy, and the last time I went it was empty. This time there was someone inside, someone else just outside the doors, and another woman walked us just as I got there. So I had to make use of the queue markers, but the woman in front of me didn't make full use of hers and was sort of stood between them, so I had to use the one slightly further back. It took a very long time, but finally the man in the pharmacy came out, and walked down the queue to get back out, instead of using the open exit to the barriers on the other side. Madness. A delivery man for APC turned up for the doctor's surgery, which is sort of attached to the pharmacy, and he didn't care about walking right up past the barriers we were all stood behind, and then he seemed really confused about the fact the doctor's surgery wasn't just open, and he had to press the buzzer to get someone's attention. The second man in the queue came back out of the surgery, and nearly walked down the line to get out, and I had to actually tell him the way out was behind him. He still had to try to argue, that he thought that was for people going to the doctor's surgery. But he left that way eventually. Finally it was my turn, and before I went in my mother called out to me I had to wait for them to signal me, but they weren't doing that, so I just hovered around the door for a bit while the mask-wearing pharmacist stared at me in confusion.

But I got my prescription! Painlessly. Then we could go home. I spent a little while sanitising my hands with the free 70% sanitiser I was sent the other month, and found it genuinely hard to cover all the areas I wanted to cover before the gel dried up. But I managed, using up a good chunk of my hand sanitiser in the process, and we walked home. On the way, one old woman coming the opposite direction down the pavement wouldn't even just stand to the side to let us pass with a bit of distance between us and her, and then we saw a jogger coming towards us down the narrow pavement who did the same. Why even jog on the pavements under the current circumstances? There was nothing even on the road at that moment, so he could have gone down the tarmac for a second. But he didn't.

And then we got home. It took us an hour and a half. It doesn't give me confidence for how well I'll cope if I have to leave the house every day for work. It's easy to be comfortable in your own house, when you know where everything has been, and if anyone near you has it you're probably going to get it anyway. Being outside the house for hours of the day will be a different matter.

I haven't called my manager yet. I was going to, but I want to plan exactly what I'm going to ask, and I want to ask it as tactfully as possible, and I don't know if he will give me a straight answer. Not that he'll keep information from me if he has it, but if he doesn't have it, he does tend to give me advice on worrying less and believing in people more, and about having anxiety, and basically just imply I shouldn't be asking the question. And shouldn't keep asking the question. Rather than admit he doesn't know something he probably should. And honestly, after my mental health call on Thursday and the trip out yesterday, I didn't have the energy. Mum is now trying to say I shouldn't call him on the weekend, because it's not working hours. I don't think it matters in the current situation. And I think the sooner I can get answers from him, and the sooner I can give him an answer, the better. And there's a lot to talk about. One of the other things the government are advising against - as well as public transport - is hotdesking. And literally all we do is swap people around the one reception desk to suit different shifts and breaks. That's a procedure that will need extra cleaning around it.

Other things I have done lately:

• Watched a lot of cat rescue videos from a channel in Korea, and done a lot of crying.


• Found out Moby Dick was based on a real whale. I knew it was based on a real incident, but not a real whale. His name was Mocha Dick.


• I love Jaws.


• Bought £118 worth of books I will probably now not be able to read, because I have to go back to work.


• Mum cut tufts off the dog's face, in lieu of an actual dog groomer. It turns out our regular groomer has been open throughout lockdown, and shouldn't have been.


• Enjoyed Animal Crossing, and also not enjoyed Animal Crossing.


• I went on the internet on Thursday and suddenly discovered there was a Borderlands 3 expansion reveal and a livestream on the new Sims 4 expansion happening out of nowhere, blessed I was with video game news.


• Found out my local games shop probably isn't open at the moment - I tried calling them a few times to ask what was up, and there was no answer, so I think the information on their facebook just hadn't been updated.


• Manfully (womanfully) resisted by the new Shark RPG game that's out, until I can hopefully buy it from them.


• Debated when I might actually be comfortable ordering things online from other countries again. Now? Next year?


• Considered buying everything Marks and Spencer's was offering me for the garden, like a sunbed and fire pit, to try to jazz up our stay-at-home summer. Although if the weather's like it was on Wednesday, I think I'll be quite glad to stay at home.


• My dad, who has replaced all our crockery with new grey ones, has now decided to replace our back lawn with articial grass. I don't know why he wants this to be a house with no life in it. I'm buying the most colourful pictures I can.


• Watched all the livestreams and don't know if I enjoyed them or not.


• I got home yesterday and realised the wind had pulled an entire poster down from my wall while I was out. I have left it there until I feel like dealing with it.


• Tried to buy brownies from my usual place online, now I feel more calm about buying online cold food, only to discover they're either making them at a reduced pace or getting a lot more traffic than usual, because they keep telling me everything's sold out, and to try again on Sunday. This is also what they told me when I tried to buy some last Sunday.

I got an email this week from my company, saying over the next two weeks they're going to be discussing things with their clients regarding possible back-to-work strategies. It actually came on Wednesday, but I didn't see it till yesterday, oops. My work email is not super active. Anyway, I don't really know what to expect. Obviously it's unreasonable to expect to be paid for months and months and months while I stay home and rest, but I honestly struggle to see how they're going to want me to go back. The lockdown is probably not going to be lifted by much, if at all, tomorrow, and even when it sort of is, people are still going to be expected to stay home as much as possible. And for people who can work from home, which our company clearly can now, I'm guessing a lot of people will work from home anyway - if they're not outright encouraged to. If that's true of my company, there won't be a lot of people coming in so no need for car park management, and they're probably not going to be wanting visitors or people on site no matter what - so I struggle to see what use a receptionist would be. I've been vaguely, cravenly hoping that the fact our facilities company have a contract with the larger company, including paying for receptionist cover, means they'll still have to pay my company until the contract runs out, and my company by law will have to pay me. So if the government insist or advise I have to stay home, since I wouldn't be doing very much even if I go in, I'll just be paid for months and months and months for staying home.

But it probably won't work out like that. They might insist I go in just for the sake of it, if we have a contract. Or - as was suggested to me by other members of staff when things all started - my company might just insist they won't pay me for nothing, so if there's no need for me as a receptionist, I'll have to go in as a cleaner, and just make up the hours in some way. Which will be very interesting for me, both from an OCD perspective, and the perspective of not really wanting to be massively exposed to potential infection right now. I think I'm mostly assuming they'll let me go? But then wondering if maybe contracts and it being a national situation means they won't be able to. I guess I'll see. But it sounds like things are happening - things that might come to nothing, depending on the government's advice, but still.

But it has made me think of the wider issue of going back, for the country, because workers can't just go back to a workplace by themselves - if you're going to run a workplace, you're going to need cleaners. And a lot of the cleaners if this country are either BAME or fairly old - it's certainly the case at my workplace. And given that those groups are much more vulnerable to the virus, it seems completely unreasonable to demand they become the most exposed to potential infection. Especially for the pittance cleaners are generally paid. But what are people going to do? Hire a whole new industry of cleaning staff, while also paying our current cleaners because it's not their fault they have to stay at home, and they shouldn't have to become destitute for it? At this point, having me go back as a cleaner rather than our usual staff starts to seem like the most reasonable option - except for living with my mum and dad, who I don't really want to expose to anything. I'm honestly not sure how we're going to handle it, as a country. I don't trust us to handle it well.

Also, my sister texted my mum yesterday, and mentioned she thought the Coronavirus was no worse than seasonal flu, and it was just population control, 'world was evil'. It's hard to tell if she was joking or now believes that stuff. She has medication she's not taking at the prescribed dose in favour of 'doing what feels right for her', so honestly anything could be happening.

A month ago my main concern was getting pigeon shit in my mouth or eye from the bridges I walk under to go to work. Now I've just spent most of the day panicking that I might have killed my mother because I ate some chocolate on the train without washing or sanitising my hands first. I am looking forward to my mental health appointment tomorrow. Assuming it doesn't get cancelled.

Also I have to keep having conversations with my colleagues like 1) the cleaning manager woman thinking the virus is germicide, and China and America spread it deliberately, 2) P (a facilities dude) saying he'd read that the symptoms of the virus are really similar to the symptoms you get from being near a 5G mast, so people think it's maybe a cover-up, and 3) my manager telling me he was sick of all this virus stuff, because now they were going to close the schools, and the kids were giving each other coronavirus which was fine, the only problem was that they might give it to a 20 year-old footballer (?) with leukemia, and then he'd just 'die a bit faster' than he would just from leukemia. And two of those people saying that they believe everything happens for a reason and everyone has a destiny so we shouldn't do anything about this virus because you should just let people die when they die. And I'm like yes, I'll remember that if there's ever an accident here and someone gets a deep cut and wants to put a bandage on it. I'll be like "no no...let nature take its course". It's bizarre and I don't know how to talk to them. I'm glad I get to stay home soon.

My mum is not self-isolating. She's going shopping and getting her nails done. And she wants the kids to come over and see her soon. But she is only just in her 70s and fairly healthy, so I guess whatever. She also has to go into work, because NHS work is Essential.

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.

I'm feeling kind of crap at the moment, but at least my boss has offered me Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off as well next week. I really wanted 1st October-5th October off and he can't do that, but he said his previous offer of next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday still stood. Which is nice. My eye is not better, and frankly I'm not worried about it, I don't think it's infected just got inflamed for some reason and is acting weird. But I did promise myself that if it was still the same tomorrow I'd try to go to the doctor about it, which means getting up at 8 just to call the doctor - many times probably, because it's always engaged to begin with - just to see if I can get a morning appointment I can get to, and won't make me miss work. It seems ridiculous when I'm not really worried about things, but it's probably for the best to check on it, and I'll feel bad if I don't, so eh. Guess I'll get up at 8 and see what happens.

Welp, it wasn't any better this morning. If anything it was worse. So we went down to our local hospital. But thankfully, as my mum is a nurse there, we got to sneakily jump the queue a little bit - one of her fellow nurses said we could see one of the doctors quickly, and they'd let us know if there was any point us even waiting around the few hours, possibly, to be seen or whether we'd just get sent away again at the end of that. So we went to speak to a doctor, and he had a quick look at it, and said it didn't look like it was infected or anything, that it was probably just a bit of inflammation. He also didn't seem worried around the lump by my ear, which after closer inspection last night was very like the tender lump on my cheekbone that was a bit swollen too, so probably just all part of the same thing. So he basically said I could wait around to get seen if I wanted antibiotics or something, but otherwise to just take ibuprofen for the swelling, anti-histamines for the itching, and paracetamol if it was painful. So me and mum made a quick pill run to the supermarket, bought all those things and came home. Then realised due to some box or other that they say to check with your doctor before taking ibuprofen if you're on SSRI's, which is the exact medication I am on. Further reading of various pill leaflets convinced us that there was no actual danger to doing that, especially on the low dose I'm on, it just might make one of both of the medications less effective. But mum called the hospital anyway, just to save me worrying, and double-checked with the same doctor, and he said it was fine, and hurrah.

So. I'm on various types of medication now, and hopefully the swelling will go down. It feels a little better already to be honest, which also might be due to the fact that I'm worrying about it less and not making all my muscles tense because of it. Or because since the doctor literally said "don't touch it", I've made a concerted effort to definitely not to. But either way, fingers crossed. I have a weird pain in my neck now, and I'm telling myself nightmare stories about something spreading across my face and getting into my brainstem, but that's not very likely, and frankly it feels more like I have a stiff neck from holding my head still while trying not to itch it, and sleeping in weird positions to try not to lay on it, than anything. So I'm guessing that's probably fine, and maybe related to the eye thing but not necessarily caused by it.

All the pills.