girlofprey

My dad's such a jerk. I was just watching Coronation Street (second episode only, I need to catch up at some point), and they're doing a storyline about a character's new boyfriend being a transvestite at the moment, and tonight she was going out on a date with him when he was all dressed up, and my dad literally jumped up to go do something in the kitchen, shouting something about how they'd lost 3 million viewers, and they've got a new executive producer or something, and he's friends with 'Colin' (??), and he keeps bringing in all these new stories about "homosexuals", it's all his doing, losing viewers, etc. I tried arguing with him by pointing out the number of serial killers they've had on the street over the years, only for him to say something along the lines of it wasn't him saying it, it was all in The Sun, he could show me. Twat. They've actually made Ken's gay grandson slightly more interesting tonight, although from what I've heard I don't know what the future holds for the teenage lesbians. But. It's still mostly straight characters on the soap. He just doesn't want to look at a man in a wig. It's times like these I want to tell him that I'm bisexual (if he hasn't already guessed), but shouting it in a fight doesn't seem like the best way to tell him. If I ever do. Hmph.

Anyway. I've been feeling a bit weird and restless over the last week or so. I've been going to a couple of my hometown's local festivals over the past couple of days, so that might be it. Just strung out and slightly more anxious than usual all the time. I'd like to assume it's my hormones or something, but I think I spend about half my life nowadays feeling a bit weird and assuming it's something to do with my hormones. Maybe it is. Sadly, while it has been a few weeks since my last period, I've never been terribly regular, so it's pretty impossible to tell when anything's actually going to happen. Alternatively, it might be having done all the things last week with my appeal and trying to do some volunteering that's put me a bit on edge. Or, I've been eating too much sugar lately. Possibly one of those things.

I've been watching some more Danny Phantom lately, which is an animated kids show really, but one I really like. Also, I don't think I've ever seen a show so set up for underage fic as that one. Yowza. BUT, having finished off season 1, I got onto the season 2 disc last night, only to discover - after a number of episodes that didn't seem to follow on from each other - that like the American Gothic dvds, they haven't put the episodes on it in the right order. So I have to get a list from the internet or something so I can watch them in the right order, or watch the ones I should have seen by now but haven't to start off with. Which is irritating. I never had this problem with Daria. Or only slightly.

Also, the kink memes I have been following have gone weird in a new and exciting way. Not seeing any prompts for the pairing you like is one thing. Only seeing prompts for your pairing where one of the characters is basically a Bad Guy as a plot point to set up the fic for another pairing, is another thing. Seeing prompts for your pairing where one of the characters is basically a Bad Guy in plot point fashion, but without it being to set up another pairing, or ANY other pairing, is...another thing. Hmph.

My plans for this week continue apace though. I've emailed K about possibly going to the Riverside Festival with her. She's in Berlin at the end of the month apparently, but I don't know if she's free at the beginning of August yet. And a cinema near me is showing Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 1 this week, which is nice because I never got round to seeing it when it came out. And I am quite interested in seeing Part 2, and seeing it in the cinemas, so. It'll be nice to be able to. Also, my DVD of Single-Handed series 1 has FINALLY arrived, and series 2 starts on Thursday. Starting with Jack Driscoll finding out a 'terrible family secret'. Oh Jack, will your family ever stop being terrible and having secrets? I shall have to watch to find out I guess (my guess is, no). So. It's not been a 100% bad week, so far.

So. My terrible week has begun. I'm not feeling too great about it. I went to the doctor's today and got my sick note and everything, so that was fine, but I didn't get much sleep last night, and I don't think I'll be getting much tonight. Actually today didn't go entirely smoothly, but it went alright, and it's tomorrow that I'm really worrying about. I don't think I had it the right way around when I was talking about this week's appointments last week, but tomorrow is my Disability benefit assessment. And it's the thing that I'm looking forward to least, so hopefully when it's over things will be better. But at the moment, it's tomorrow, and I'm worrying quite a bit about it.

I don't know. I've heard a bunch of horror stories online about the current disability system, and about people with proper physical conditions which stop them from working being pronounced fit for work. So I'm sort of not really expecting to get it, or trying to make myself not expect to get it, so it's not too huge a let-down, or so I don't blame myself too much. On the other hand, I do want to try my best to get it. All of my counsellors and the services I'm talking to at the moment have told me to explain what the worst case scenario with my symptoms is, or what my condition's like when it's at it's worst. But at the moment I can't even really think of that. I know things are bad, but they're not really as bad as they were when I was living on my own, in terms of affecting my ability to actually do stuff. But then again, I'm doing a lot less now than I did when I was living on my own. I don't know. I don't want to accidentally make out that it's better than it is, but I don't want to lie either. And I don't know what they'll want to hear that would convince them I'm not fit to work, or not feeling well enough to work right now. Not just so I can say it, whether it's true or not, but there might be plenty of stuff that they find important which I might not say because I don't think it's relevant, or I forget. But then again, I don't even know if it'll be about me making a big speech and laying out everything I have to say about how I'm feeling, or if it'll be more about them and the questions they're asking. I don't know.

I just wish it was over. Except that I don't, because I do want some time to sleep and to prepare. Except that I do, because I'm not sure I'm actually going to sleep or prepare. But it will be over by tomorrow, and hopefully I'll be feeling better by then. I'm getting a bit worked up and am pretty sure I'm acting weird. Also I've just eaten an entire tub of Ben and Jerry's knock-off ice-cream. So yeah. Anyway. It's not till tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully if I get some sleep tonight I'll feel better, and at least by tomorrow it'll be over I guess.

It's just come at a really funny time, as well. Obviously having it in the middle of a week which is unusually full of appointments for me is not ideal. And we've been having some issues at home lately. Nothing major - last week me, mum, my youngest nephew and the dog went for a walk, and our fairly old (he's 12) dog had an unfortunate incident of falling into a little ditch by the path and not being able to get back up again. I had to get down in the ditch with him, free his foot from some grass and pick him up until he could get his legs underneath him. And then he was eating grass and he was a bit sick for the next few days, not getting up from his bed very much and not eating his food. He's better now though. But also, our fridge is broken, and has been since last week as well, and mum's sort of freaking out not knowing what to buy, and not wanting to fill the freezer because she has to defrost the freezer for 24 hours before the repairmen come out to fix the fridge, and we don't know when that's going to be. So we're keeping everything we can in a mini-fridge in the garage, and in coolbags, and coolbags don't keep things as well as a fridge obviously, so I'm worrying about things going off. And our cat - who pretty strictly normally just kills birds and leaves them outside the garage for us - apparently killed a rat the other night and left it outside, so mum was worried rats might be being drawn in by the food in the garage. And we don't know what we're eating any day really, because we can't put stuff in the fridge and keep it, and the stuff we do have might have gone off by the time we get around to eating it. So yeah. It's kind of tense at home, unfortunately.

Anyway. I did mostly want to come on and talk about things that make me happy, rather than impending disability assessments. Mostly I wanted to talk about Coronation Street.

( Coronation Street )

I have a bunch of other things I want to post about, have been meaning to post about since last week really, but I don't really have the focus or the energy at the moment. And there's probably better things I could be doing with my time. It'll be okay, I think. I'm just not feeling too great at the moment. But it'll be over by tomorrow, I guess. Chances are I'm rattling myself more than I need to be, especially since I've been pushing myself to catch up with soaps and stuff over the weekend. Which was nice, but still. Anyway. It might not even be as bad tomorrow as I'm thinking. Which I would prefer, obviously.

So, my week has once again been incredibly busy-seeming, without me actually seeming to get anything done. Monday was basically recovering from Halloween/the weekend, Tuesday I was getting ready for the CBT group and Jobcentre appointment/interview I had pretty close to one another (read: I filled in some forms and washed my hair), and it was also the day I came on my period. Thursday I woke up with massive stomach cramps, and then my mum brought my youngest nephew over as usual, and then let me know that she was working a night shift that night, so she wouldn't be back after taking him home. Then yesterday I got up and remembered, as I'd only done occasionally throughout the week, that not only was it Bonfire Night, it was also my dad's birthday. So I rushed out to town to get him a card before the shops shut and just managed to meet up with my mother to get a lift home with her and my oldest nephew. When we got back my dad was there, so we gave him his cards and we agreed that he could take my nephew and me to my nephew's karate lesson while mum put some shopping away, then we came back, my nephew got changed, and we all went round to my sister's to go to a bonfire near her house. Eventually we got back and watched the soaps and The Event until pretty late into the night. Then today I basically slept in, got up, had lunch, checked the internet, ordered pizza with my mum because in all the rushing around yesterday she didn't really get a chance to buy any food for the weekend, watched Strictly, watched Casualty, watched most of the Armstrong and Miller show, and am now here. Tomorrow we're going out for Sunday lunch, and then having my sister and two nephews and my grandma over for cake and sparklers for dad's birthday. Yay.

The bonfire was good, aside from my taking my two nephews on the teacups ride at the little fair they had and managing to bash my youngest nephew's lip, twice, moving him around the ride. But in between those two time, he seemed to be enjoying himself. Um. Anyway. It's quite a big do, at a pub, so the fireworks display is usually good, and the fire - when we could get to it - was pretty big. However, the flying burning debris and embers from the fire told us we were probably a bit too close to it, so we went back a bit again. But the kids had a good time (I think), and we had a good time, so it was pretty good all round.

Anyway. In the mean time, these are the things that have happened to me:

• I went to the second week of my CBT therapy group, as I said. We had to/were asked to do a questionnaire thing in the first meeting, to bring to the second, to see if we really had OCD. When we got there, in the second meeting, the women leading it said that a score of over 40 on that questionnaire was generally taken as you having OCD. It turned out I'd added mine up wrong, but when I did it right, it turned out I had a score of 90. So I'd say I probably have it. Yeah.



• It turned out that the way to get me to buy almost anything lately is to sell it on the internet and claim it is the "Last Chance" to buy it. In the past two weeks I have bought a print you can no longer see on the website from Scary Go Round and this t-shirt based on that principle. Basically all Jon Burgerman needs to do is declare it is my last chance to buy everything on his website, and I am financially screwed.



• Although on the bright side, I ordered that t-shirt apparently from Canada, and I placed the order on 26th October and it arrived last Wednesday. Beating any order I ever made from Threadless by about three weeks. Score one for Canada, my friends.



• I want to buy a new winter coat. I'm thinking of this one from New Look. But there's quite a lot of things I've been thinking about buying or doing lately, and I have only a finite amount of money, so it's going under advisement.



• I found two new webcomics I like: No Rest For The Wicked, which is based on fairytales, and is GREAT, I LOVE IT. I love Red, and I love November, and I even kind of love Perrault. Oh God. And the other is Snowflakes, which I don't like as much as some of the others I read, and which is a bit weird once you find out that the orphanage is meant to be set in some mountains in the Andes and yet pretty much all of the characters are white, but which has kind of sucked me in nonetheless. I LOVE PRITI. OH MY GOD. I LOVE HER. I get the feeling from the comments and stuff that a lot of people love Wray (who is also quite great) the best. They are idiots. PRITI IS CLEARLY BEST.



• Also, Irregular Choice apparently hate me. Every year it seems to be the same. It's not enough that I've already fallen in love with a number of pairs of shoes that I couldn't afford and have now sold out. They have to now put out these. And these. And these. And these. And these. And these. Do they hate me? I'VE DONE NOTHING TO THEM!



• I continue to be floored by how pretty a lot of the women on Hollyoaks are nowadays, and how amazingly they dress. Oh my god.



• Nathan Wylde is leaving Emmerdale sometime in the next few weeks, and it sounds like it goes pretty badly for him before he leaves. Even worse, or at least as well as, being kidnapped for a few days and then tortured by his sister, which he recently was. And he is going to be kind of a dick, apparently, and is probably going to be tricked into something he doesn't want. It mostly all I am thinking about these days. That and porn. I am trying to decide what they won't do to him. ( Sort of spoiler )
  . But what else will they do to him? They can't utterly destroy him or how could he ever come back? I can't picture anything worse happening to him and him not having a complete emotional breakdown and going into catatonic shock, perhaps. Unless that is what they're doing, and should he ever return that will be when he sort of comes out of it, to WREAK HIS VENGEANCE UPON THE WORLD. Sometimes I wish Emmerdale was that sort of show. I have been comforting myself lately by imagining him being completely destroyed and losing everything before leaving Emmerdale, and then turning up again a few years later as a super-rich super-businessman, and being all "By the way everyone, I've bought up all the land in town and am going to turn it into a strip mine! Ciao, fuckers." OR, I wish it was the kind of show where eventually SOMETHING/SOMEONE MUCH WORSE would come along and threaten the town, and they would be all "God. They are the terrible. To beat them, we are going to need the worst human being, and best liar, we know" "..." All together: "Nathan!" And then they go and track him down, and maybe he's come good, or maybe he just still hates them, and they have to convince him to come back and help them somehow, and they kind of fall in love with how great he is. With Declan sort of leading the charge both times, obviously. Probably it won't be anything like that. Probably it will just be AWFUL. Oh God.

And now, having had both Halloween and Bonfire Night, we are basically into the Christmas season. Somehow. Great.