girlofprey

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 grandmother's funeral )

So that was the main part of the week, really. But it wasn't too sad overall - it was, but she'd been ill and sort of mentally not herself for so long and she was so old that we were all ready for it really, I think. It was a nice day.

Other than that, I am still playing computer games. LA Noire continues to be slightly annoying - a big part of it is questioning people and doing interrogations, and you mostly have to either check your evidence or watch their faces to figure out if they're lying or not. But sometimes it's not clear which bit of evidence proves which thing, or if they'll talk about something completely different based on that bit of evidence. And you're supposed to be able to tell if they're lying if they look away from you, but sometimes they look away and are telling the truth, and sometimes they're looking right at you and are just really good at lying. It's frustrating. Also, you're playing as kind of a dick. But I'm guessing that's mostly to try to explain how he can be a detective and still so shit at interrogating people sometimes.

However, we have a new-ish character. A cop with a strong Irish accent. Do you think he's:

A) Good?

Or

B) Evil?

Also we have a new character with a Southern accent. Do you think he's:

A) Good?

Or

B) A paedophile?

It saddens me slightly how much American fandoms hate people with Southern accents sometimes. Southern accents are often kind of beautiful.

On TV, and on a similar note, I saw an amazing new documentary series the other day. It's called 'Moonshiners', and it on the one hand follows people in Southern America who are making and bootlegging moonshine, and on the other hand also follows the police trying to catch people making and bootlegging moonshine. The camera crews must get so much side-eye from both sets of people they're following. They do have one lovely character though who said that he makes moonshine because it pays, and because he loves it, "And what can you replace something you love with? Nothing." Heart.

In other TV news, Springwatch has finished, and yesterday I saw a Poirot where Poirot basically looked up a schoolgirl's skirt, WITH HONOURABLE INTENTIONS, and then gave another schoolgirl a priceless jewel that technically belonged to another country. Why is Poirot such a dick? Also today I watched a bit of tennis, where the Queen's Tournament final ended suddenly in a default, when one of the player's kicked an official. David Nalbandian. Just an hour or so before my mum had told me she didn't want him to win because "he's not a nice person, he's just unpleasant". I believe her now.

I'm off now to play Dead Space 2. I'm also enjoying that...it's a bit more crash-bang-wallop than the first one, in some ways, and it's starting to get hard sometimes in the annoying way that Dead Space did. But it is still good in a lot of the same way. I sincerely hope it doesn't go rubbish at any point soon.

For anyone who's interested, I totally did do that research on the company I have an interview with last night. And even found out some quite useful stuff. So go me.

As for what I'm doing today, well, so far it definitely hasn't included dancing round and round to Always by Erasure. For sure.

Something I have been doing though is watching a bit of snooker. Has it always been blue? Have I just not noticed or not seen a match set in York before? I hate it.

Also, I watched Strictly for once last night. Which was lucky for me, because much as I kind of hate all the theme weeks they and X Factor and stuff have nowadays, I do quite like film night. I love Chelsee the most, even if I find it a bit weird the way she talks. Mostly I hope that for once one of the people at the bottom of the leaderboard go this week, because it really does seem like it should be Robbie or Alex. Also, Chelsee's dress was amazing. And yet Tumblr seems to be weirdly full of Harry. Whatever.

The only things I have to say at the moment seem to be about TV I have and haven't been watching. I haven't been watching much of the snooker. I don't think I really have the patience and/or stamina to watch an entire snooker match, or even session sometimes. I'm trying to build myself up, but I'm not there yet I think. Also, I didn't watch the Royal Wedding. I was thinking about it, but I got up on Wednesday to watch the snooker, and I got up on Thursday to go to my course in Wakefield, and I knew I'd be getting up on Saturday to listen to Adam and Joe, and I was really tired, so I decided to just sleep instead. I did see the dress later on though. I quite liked it, although I don't think it was very exciting. If it was me, I'd probably have had a massive train, made of gold. And possibly some chainmail. It's possibly for the good of the country that I wasn't either marrying Prince William or designing that wedding dress.

The TV I have been watching: On Thursday, Long Lost Families. Is anyone else watching this? It's a sort of reality programme about Davina McCall and Nicky someone reuniting long lost relatives, usually people who have been split up through adoption and have been searching for people for years with no luck. So it's a fairly emotional/manipulative set-up to begin with, but on Thursday I was properly bawling my eyes out. The first week was pretty sad, but this week we were following two people, and one of them was a man searching for his real father who he never knew. The man's mum and his dad had been teenagers when he was conceived, and they hadn't got married or anything. And the man didn't know why his dad hadn't stuck around and helped raise him or be part of his life, and the dad's family had a bad reputation, and the man's family had always told him his father was a bad man. But when they found his dad - who was currently working as a carer for people with autism - he'd said that basically when the man's mum had gotten pregnant, her mum came round to the house and shouted at him about it, and then told him to stay away from her daughter, and stay away from the family, and everyone he knew had told him to just forget about it and pretend he never had a son. The only time he ever saw his son was just before he was six months old, when he saw his ex-girlfriend pushing him up the high street in a pushchair, for two minutes. And then he'd left town, and never wanted to find his son because he'd never been a dad to him, so he didn't think he had any right to try to be part of his life. It was so sad.

And the other person was a woman who'd given her son up for adoption to try to save her marriage. She'd been married, also as a teenager, and had a young son by a man, and then she and her husband split up, and not long after they split up she had an affair with a black guy. A few weeks after that she found out she was pregnant, and when she told the black guy he didn't want to know. Not long after that, she ended up giving her marriage another go, and there was a chance the baby was her husband's, and she really hoped it was, because they'd already talked about having the baby put up for adoption if it wasn't his. But then she gave birth, and the doctor told her the baby was mixed race, so obviously not. And she begged her husband to just try taking the baby home and raising him like he was his, and they tried for three months, but eventually the husband just said he couldn't do it. So she gave the baby up for adoption, but she'd talked to the couple who were adopting him so they knew she didn't want to, and she gave them a letter to give to her son saying she'd always want to be part of his life, and she'd be there for him if he wanted her to be. But he hadn't gotten in touch in 30 years, so she just wanted to find him to make sure he was well, and had had a good life, and to ask him not to hate her. They found the son, and it turned out he was really well, and he'd been looking for her since he was 14 or 15. It's just REALLY HARD to find people, sometimes. So that didn't help with the not crying thing. It is quite a manipulative show in some ways, they have this thing where the people give the producers of the show letters to give to each other before they meet, and they end up reading them out on camera, as though that's a THING THEY WOULD TOTALLY DO, and they wouldn't want to READ THEM PRIVATELY OR ANYTHING. But it is quite lovely a lot of the time as well, if you like quite tear-jerking stuff.

ALSO, I watched So You Think You Can Dance again this week. It's really weird this year, I think, because in almost all the couples the girls seem to be better than the boys. Or better at performing, as well as dancing, at least. Apart from Matt, and possibly Luke this week, I can't think of one boy who stands out when they dance with their female partners. And I know they want to keep their boy/girl couples, but it just seems really sad that they'll be getting rid of a girl every week, when they could get rid of two not-great boys. Although it's weird as well, because people are getting used to their partnerships now and starting to get on well together, so it's a little sad to see couples split up as well. I'm really glad that ( Spoiler ). The dances are often really good though - a bit odd sometimes, but usually good -it's just that they are often one-person shows at the minute. Which is quite sad.

And that's it sort of. Except that I watched Vera tonight. I quite liked it, I liked Brenda Blethyn and Vera, and I like her DI and her relationship with him. And yay, Gina McKee! But some of it seemed a bit farfetched, or unexplained. Which is a bit of a shame. Hopefully it will improve a bit next week.

In non-TV news, I got a letter from Yvette Cooper, because I sent her an email from 36 Degrees about the NHS. She and other labour ministers are against changes to the NHS, for the record. And I love Dawn. And I love Charlotte. And I love Priti (ETA: I have now fixed this link so it's the right one). And I hate the people in the comments who hate Priti. FUCK THEM. FUCK THEM ENTIRELY.

Oh, also, I have been playing Folklore again, and I have pretty much finished four realms with Keats, so I have only one more to go before I can hopefully move on with Ellen again, yay! I got stuck again, at the same point I pretty much got stuck with Ellen I think, so I did the same thing as I did with Ellen, went back to the realms I'd already finished and tried to make my creatures stronger. And then I managed to finish realm 4, and nearly chapter 4. Keats still annoys me a bit, but less so now, and even less so if the story goes the way I think it will. Rah.

So. Tomorrow I'm planning on playing more Folklore, watching at least some of the World Championship snooker final, and also trying to fill in my Incapacity claim questionnaire that needs to be back in to the people who sent it to me by May 6th. Possibly forgoing either the snooker or the Folklore to try to get that questionnaire finished. Chances are.