girlofprey

I called my boss yesterday, just to confirm after Monday's announcement that I wouldn't be expected in to work on Monday, and should look at the prospect of at least 3 weeks at home. And he told me that they had also assumed that, called round everyone on Monday night telling them not to go in the next day, and then got a call the following morning from the company we work for asking him why no-one had gone in. Apparently their company is essential, as was explained to my manager at lenght. He said he thought the one thing they could probably do without was receptionists, as we didn't have one that day, and we wouldn't be considered essential. But he had to double-check and call one of the others - the one with kids - to tell her whether she should come in. He assured me he would call to tell me as soon as he knew for sure. And he also said he thought our business, among others, would get a shock when the government explained further, and they realised that maybe they weren't essential. But then that second announcement from the government happened, that explained that all work was essential if you couldn't do it from home, and now I don't know. I really don't know what's going to happen, or if I'll be going in next Monday, or if I'll be punished if I refuse to go in, or what. Would be nice to know, but I don't. I don't know anything. Turns out all my worrying about whether the post would still be delivered was for nothing.

In fact, I'm getting parcels, and don't even know whether to open them. They said they were still getting deliveries in Italy even during their severe lockdown, but if the virus lasts for a week on hard surfaces and you're being delivered hard surfaces, then surely that's a risk? I've heard about people disinfecting all their groceries once they get them into the house. I have OCD and my judgement isn't very good on this sort of thing, and it is stressful.

Meanwhile, my Stardew Valley collection is going swimmingly.

Since Tuesday night, my computer hasn't complained once about the CPU fan not working.

I'm feeling pretty stressed at the moment, and I don't know what I can do about it. Not looking forward to next week, when I'll be starting to the week off with my parents and nephews coming home. My manager came to me today to tell me that both morning receptionists will be off for the next two weeks, and let me know that if I wanted to come in early on any mornings, that would be really helpful. I was sort of like "umm...ummm..." - a little surprised he even asked me. Then I later told him that next week at least, I didn't think I could do anything, and as I tried to explain he told me I was worrying too much and he only asked me so I didn't get annoyed he hadn't even asked me, to give me a chance to do some extra shifts if I wanted to. ??? I don't think I'll be doing any extra hours.

Also, I tried to talk to him to let him know that he didn't need to speak to the CEO about the sick pay form, because I found out she already emailed me last week, and he said he knew about that, he thought he was copied into it. Given that that email more or less spelled out that I was entitled to sick pay and would probably get some from the company, that was a little confusing? Especially since he was still saying that he couldn't make head nor tail of the form? I think I'm going to have to try to have a talk with him about exactly what his professional opinion on my sick pay is. I have no clue what people are talking about in the company anymore. I suspect no-one does.

I spent some of last week learning about Etta Lemon, one of the founders of the RSPB and a major figure in the Women's Anti-Suffrage movement - which I didn't even know was a thing. It was weird to read about, but in a way it makes me feel better about the fact that women still argue about women/feminism today, and feminists still argue today. It's not that we were united before, and now we've become divided. It was always like this. You've just got to hope the most helpful things win out, I guess.

Also today I was reading about the fact that The Ring series was heavily inspired by the Japanese Okiku folk tale - which led me to probably my favourite set of stories ever. Can't honestly tell if the text by each image is a good translation of the traditional story, a bad translation of the traditional story, or the website owner taking creative license. NB: You have to click on each card and go to their page to get the full effect.

After many times watching this video of a pregnant stray dog being taken in and she and her puppies cared for and raised by multiple people, my favourite fic idea of the moment is "people looking after a pregnant stray dog together" fic. Sadly not a lot of people are writing stray dog fic.

So. I'm nearly at the end of my week off. I'm not quite sure what I've done with it, but maybe not doing much with it and chilling is exactly what I needed. I wanted to go and see the doctor and talk about my issues at the moment, and I called up on Tuesday - repeatedly - when the same day appointments were released, and still couldn't get one, but I ended up getting a phonecall from the doctor anyway, which is probably all that I needed. And the doctor called back, and I explained what was going on, and he basically said I needed to contact our local mental health service instead. The one I'm already technically with, but maybe they need a bit of an update on the situation. I explained I already had their number on speeddial and he said I could contact them online too. I think online might be better and I've been intending to do it, but I haven't done it yet. I also asked him about taking Vitamin D with my current medication, and he told me that was fine, so I've started doing that.

I've been playing a lot of the Sims. I forgot how addictive the Sims is. You start playing in the afternoon and think "I'll just go on it for a few hours", and then suddenly it's 9pm and you have to go get or make dinner. But I'm playing with my Seeds+Deputy family from Far Cry 5, and LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT A VIDEO GAME ENDING I LIKED WAY BETTER THAN RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2: ( Spoilers for Far Cry 5 )

So I'm back into it, and I'm playing The Sims 4 instead of just writing fic or something which probably isn't a good idea, you can't easily do a slow burn, unspoken romance in The Sims 4, and you can't actually be super cult-y, the maximum number of people in a house is 8, and the maximum number of people in a 'club' is also 8. But when I grow pomegranates and make them perfect, and the Seeds are giving the Deputy those as a gift, it will be SUPER MEANINGFUL. Also I made a puppy. So that was cool.

I also intended to go buy some new work shoes, by buying the same pair I currently have again if they're still in Clarks'. I went in yesterday, and they are, but as they're quite an old style now they don't have a lot of availability in terms of different sizes, and I couldn't remember if I'd gotten Wide Fit or not. So I went home and said I'd look at exactly what I currently had in terms of fit and size, and then decide what to get in terms of a new pair of shoes, since there's a similar style Clarks are cycling in instead. So far I haven't looked at my current pair of shoes to make sure of any of that. So I've done a bit towards it, but not done it entirely.

So that, sleeping in and getting up late, has been my week.

My mum loves the Olympics, so I'm spending most of my mornings struggling to understand the rules of speed-skating.

Also I somehow managed to miss 2 of my pills? I went to take one today, looked at the blister pack and Sunday's and Monday's were still there. At least I didn't notice any severe withdrawal symptoms, I guess? Or any massive spikes in anxiety, although I did end up laying in bed awake for a while last night thinking about a game of Civ 6 I was playing. So maybe that was a thing.

Also my mum is now on anti-depressants. I think she was taking some medication for a while, but nothing strong, and she said she really just wanted something to 'get her out of the doldrums', and was hoping for Sertraline, like I'm taking. But she mentioned her trouble sleeping to the doctor, and they put her on something for severe depression apparently. Also they gave her a leaflet for counselling, because even if she takes medication, the situation she's in will still be there. So hopefully that helps her.

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

So that's nice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm not enjoying this week. Which is a shame, because it's barely started.

It's my birthday week too, although I suspect that may be part of the problem. I also have a Jobcentre appointment on Wednesday, a few hours before I normally wake up, and I have an appointment with a service worker dude two hours later, so it's like - if the Jobcentre appointment is weirdly long, which would be dreadful, it might clash, and if not I have to kill time doing nothing before I kill time doing nothing with my service worker dude. But it's the only time he was free, so. Maybe he'd be happy to come to Leeds with me. That's mostly what I want to do on Wednesday.

And then last week I suddenly started CBT therapy, getting a letter a few days before my first appointment. And the man I'm seeing seems super nice, but he's given me this homework which I seem to get every time I have CBT, which is an 'anxiety diary' to fill in, of situations that make me anxious, how I felt about them, what happened to me physically, a different response I could have to it (??), what I did, and how I felt about it later. And I never know how to deal with them, because if I fill it in for every ritual I have, I will literally just be doing rituals and filling in the diary, and probably coming up with rituals for how to fill in the diary. Which this week especially is not really a possibility. It was right at the end of the appointment when he mentioned it and we didn't have time to discuss it, so I don't know if I am meant to fill it in every day, or just one day, or just for every major situation that makes me upset. I haven't been doing it, essentially. I probably will fill in a few entries over the next couple of days. But ???? I'm sure it's really useful, and useful for examining your responses to things, hence why I'm apprehensive about doing it, but uuh. I just never know what to do with them.

And then in between that there is my birthday, and I'll be 29, which is lovely, but nearly 30. But it'll still be my birthday, and I'll feel like I should be enjoying it, but I probably won't, purely because I'll feel like I should. Also we'll be having my YN down. Because we're not going to go upsetting the regular routine for it or anything. We went out to a special different restaurant for Sunday lunch yesterday essentially for my birthday, we would have gone this weekend but it's Mother's Day so who needs that. But mostly my parents seemed to be making some subtle comments about how they didn't really want to, like my dad saying it seemed like a really long way to drive, which is funny because he used to drive all over the country, and my mum saying they have the same chefs as over the road, so we may as well have just gone there like usual. That was a whinge, but I wish they hadn't. It was really nice though. They had parsnips.

Also I have to remember to buy a Mother's Day card.

And the present I have asked for is a PS4 which I'm going halves with them on. Which I've wanted for a while, and will become necessary soon if I want to keep playing console games, but I'm still not finished with my PS3 or its games, and having them both hooked up to the same TV is probably going to be a hassle. I can't have them both hooked up, essentially, because the little TV in the other bedroom only has enough connections for one, and there aren't enough plug sockets in the wall either. Nor enough room to have a bunch of plugs lying loose all over the place because of all the kids toys they don't play with.

Also I have started my period. That might be a lot to do with things. My head feels high and tight.

I was meant to go observe a kickboxing class tonight, in the hopes of going to it soon, but I didn't, I'll leave it till next week. Also I keep waking up at 9am for some reason, when my alarm's not set till 12, and I can't get back to sleep, which isn't helping me not feel tired.

I need to start getting into more fandoms where the bad guys are just jerks, and not actual monsters, because I keep thinking up plotbunnies and then thinking 'Wait. That wouldn't be fun for anyone.' You would think the Legion from Fallout: New Vegas would be a great example, because they're idiots who are trying to be actual ancient Romans and wear feathers on their heads, but unfortunately they're also [trigger warning for rape] [spoilers].

And Kevin's back in Coronation Street, so I have to keep avoiding looking at his face, especially when he talks about how great it is to be back and other people welcome him home with big smiles on their faces. Also they have him living with Jack in a house with Tyrone, who spent the first 6 months or so of the baby's life raising him IN THE SAME HOUSE as his own, what the fuck?

But I love:

• Maria talking to Kirk.


• Maria on a counter.


• David being nice to Roy about sandwiches.


• Maria, Carla and Julie as witches, CAN YOU IMAGINE JULIE AS A WITCH? She would just make flowers grow and mend holes in people's clothes, and give them outfits so they COULD go to the ball. Also she would get to live with Carla and Maria and their babies, and help them raise their babies, and she would be so happy, oh my god.

I wish Ross Barton from Emmerdale would throw himself in front of a car to save a child again, or have another conversation with his dad where he sounds uncharacteristically upset or anxious. Moira is going to do some matchmaking between Chas and James this week, and for a minute I thought the episode description said Ross and James. That was probably tired wishful thinking on my part. But. Someone should do some matchmaking between them. Loving family matchmaking.

Not enough people write fic about Dane Vogel, or even remember he existed, it's the bane of my life.

Blah.

( A lot of worrying about my ESA )

And I had a weird appointment with a service worker yesterday. My official worker is off for two weeks, so I'm seeing sort of 'interim' people, and yesterday it was a woman I'd never seen before. She was quite nice, but from the things she said she'd obviously had problems before and felt very proactive about being over them. I found her a little brusque, in places. Like I was explaining about my family again, because she didn't know my situation, and she was asking questions when I mentioned things and stuff, and then later she said she didn't know why I'd talked so much about them, and it wasn't always helpful dwelling on past problems. Then later she was commenting on the way my 'manner changed' when I'd spoken to mum about something, and how there are ways to say how you feel while still 'keeping your manners'. And I kind of get what she was saying and she was probably right about some things, but it was - very different from the style I'm used to. A little intense for two hours.

But then it also made me think about all the stuff I'd feel more comfortable saying to her than to my usual service worker, because he's a man. I mean he's perfectly nice and I don't feel threatened by him or anything, but there's still stuff I feel weird saying. Like about buying new bras and stuff. I talked to the woman yesterday about how I get depressed sometimes when I get PMT, just because of my hormones I think, and she suggested sage oil as a non-medical hormone balancer. I can't imagine having had that conversation with my current worker. It's sort of unusual for me to have a male worker because I've always generally had female ones, and I kind of wanted to have that experience. But I'm wondering now if I might really want to change to a female worker, just so I can talk about more things more comfortably. Hmph.

There's some personal stuff that's come up in the last few days that I'd really like to talk to my counsellor about. However, I called up this morning to see if it'd be possible to see her any earlier than next Monday, and it turns out she's a volunteer who's only in the building on Monday's, so they can't even get a message to her. Which is a bit of a shame. They do have a drop-in session tomorrow though, it's kind of early compared to when I usually get up and I have no idea if I'd actually get to see anyone or how long for. But I might go check it out. If not, it's not that long now until I'd get to see her, and I have talked this stuff through with a friend already. It's just thrown me a little bit, I sort of always assumed if I needed to see my counsellor early or talk to her, I could. But apparently it's just pretty much Mondays when she's available. Hmm.

In other news, some marketing type things that happened to me recently are a) a cold caller hanging up on me, which if anything is normally the opposite of what happens. A woman called me, asked to speak with me about my contract mobile phone, I told her I wasn't on a contract and she said "You're not on a contract? Sorry" and then just hung up. Lovely. And b) yesterday I was in McDonalds, and the card swiping machine they had was advertising McDonald's coffee and donuts to me in it's idle time. Is this what the world is turning towards? Everything will have a screen, and every screen will be advertising something? Because that will be a terrible world. That is my prediction right now.

On the plus side, I did manage to pick up my Netbook. Unfortunately I don't really have anywhere to set it up - my bedroom is kind of a mess. And short on space. So I've decided to buy a case to keep it in before I actually get it out. And I still hate the colour. Oh well.

ETA: Oh and also, I changed my Livejournal email to my new gmail account, experimentally, and now I'm suddenly getting comment notifications in my inbox again. Rather than just 'your subscription is running out/pay us money' messages. So I guess it must just have been an odd Hotmail thing. Which is weird. But I'm not going to argue with getting them again now.