girlofprey

Well, the snow is here again. Last week we had a day where the BBC had promised us "100%" chance of snow in the middle of the day, and that turned into ten minutes of flakes at about 5pm, so I wasn't too convinced by the forecasts last night. But here it is. It's settled and still snowing, pretty as a picture, and has been since about 8.20am apparently. And the road outside my house is slowly getting backed up with traffic, probably from the hill nearby. I thought people were supposed to be staying in for lockdown, never mind snow, but here we are. My parents keep up with our online local community page, and the posts are about 70% people warning about which roads are blocked or asking for help getting somewhere, and about 30% saying that sledges are just however much at a local supermarket right now. Which tells you a lot, I think.

There's a little banking of trees near where I live, and they're just covered with white, and the phone lines between houses are just like pretty white ropes now. People are trying shovel snow off their driveways and cars, and then they go in and it builds back up in about half an hour.

This week has been rough. The heatwave came at a very interesting time for my family.

Beautiful, perfect thunderstorm.

It's a bit awkward when you consider people with social anxiety, but I still think this is a really lovely Youtube idea, and video.

I haven't enjoyed the heat over the last two days, but I am looking forward to the thunderstorms tomorrow. After months of not going anywhere, much less the dog groomers, my mum finally had our small fluffy dog Frank clipped today, and he looks ridiculous, but I'm sure he feels a lot better. Also it's mum's birthday tomorrow. She got herself a cake and accidentally left it in the boot of the car during the hottest part of the day. But probably it will still be good. We are going to have a low-key celebration.

I'm a little bit awestruck and terrified about the temperatures they're predicting for tomorrow. And it's not even sunny weather - it's that weird close/stormy summer weather that's fun if it storms, but just sort of unbearable if it's just close. I think I'm going to take a walk today just in case I need to skip one tomorrow.

Today I saw Fox News criticising Donald Trump about the fact he's taking hydroxychloroquine. So you know things are fucking bad in America.

In other news, I may have finally learned how to wear earrings, after about twenty years. Instead of pushing the back onto the stud as far as it will go, crushing your earlobe, and then complaining about how your earlobe feels crushed, just push them on to the helpful, provided groove near the back of the stud, and then wear them and almost forget you're wearing them, it hurts so little. Amazing!

So I think the local farmers - some of which live just up the hill from me - are trying to have their last hurrah with crops before the autumn harvest, and have been spreading manure on their fields. But since it's been so f-ing hot, the smell is really carrying, and we've got all the windows open. So my bedroom has just smelt like shit for about two days now, as well as being incredibly hot. Not fun.

The worst thing about OCD is that you will sometimes get a situation, where something isn't definitely wrong, but it could be wrong. You're in the house on your own and there's a genuinely weird noise downstairs - it probably isn't intruders, but it is possible that it's intruders, intruders do come into houses sometimes. That sort of thing. The most natural thing it feels like to do is check - you feel like other people without OCD or anxiety might check - but in that moment you can't tell if checking is obsessiveness, or not checking is avoidance. And you really don't know what to do, either just to live in the world and keep yourself safe, or to handle and deal with your OCD properly. And that sort of sucks.

I can't remember if I mentioned that right after I came back from sick leave, my boss let me know both the other morning receptionists would be off for two weeks, and asked if I could cover for them. I said I couldn't cover for them for the first week, and thankfully the subject was never mentioned again. But what did happen is that I ended up being the only one doing the car park for those two weeks, because no-one else even has access to our email account - and because it's a time of the year when everyone wants a holiday, right before the Bank Holiday, we have considerably more spaces to give out than usual, and considerably less people to give them to. But still some expectation that we will fill all the spaces, or at least push through until we get to the people on the list who DO want spaces. So that was a complete nightmare. I kind of can't believe my boss actually let that happen, except that I can, because he doesn't seem to care or know. I had 26 empty spaces to give out on Friday. I managed to give away 17 of them, and then stopped, just because I really had to get on with trying to do all of next week, for both car parks, as well. So I had a word with my boss on Friday and asked him to ask K and C to just do all the car park this week, so I could have a break. He was a lot more concerned with trying to tell me not to worry so much about the car park, he couldn't understand why I was worrying about the car park, than really just saying yes, but he did say yes in the end. I had to have a short word with him about the fact he just doesn't understand what it's like to have anxiety, and that's why he can't understand why I feel like I feel, and also he doesn't really understand running the car park all the time, so he doesn't understand what that's like either. Without being insulting or patronising to him. It wasn't fun, but I think we got through it. I have explained that he can't fix my mental health problems by telling me 'don't worry about it'. Hopefully that will sink in. And he agreed to ask K and C to do the car park for this week, so I only have to do the bare minimum, last-minute stuff. So I get to actually not worry about that.

Billy Hargrove and Steve Harrington.

Well, I feel like I'm in an oven, and I'm sat in my shaded room with all the windows wide open. I stick my hand out the window, and it is again, like sticking my hand into an oven. The weather needs to take pity on us.

"I asked the Lord to make it warm", and so on.

Also, I got my extension for my sick note, which it always sounded like was a pretty straightforward thing to do. But the doctors' receptionist didn't ask me how long I wanted it extended for, and they've extended it until the middle of August. When my mum questioned this, the woman said it was just a guideline and I could choose to go back to work whenever - but when I first got my sicknote and asked if I could go back in during it if work really needed me (it was during a week I knew they were already having staffing issues), I was told it was illegal to go in to work while a sick note was active. So ???? I don't know. I'm going to go in to work anyway I think, next week.

Also, I asked my manager to look over the Sick Pay form they sent me again, because I couldn't do anything with it till my employer filled it in to say why they don't pay sick pay. He said he would. The form makes it pretty obvious, I feel, that they should be paying me the basic rate of sick pay. So we'll just see what happens with that.

It's been hot and humid where I live all day, about half an hour ago I started hearing random rumbles of thunder, and it just started throwing it down. I got up to take a look, and in the same moment I remembered my dad was out with my two nephews at football training, and I saw two random strangers with dogs huddling under the tree in our garden.

Weather is vicious.

For a long time, my life was basically that gif of Elizabeth in Pirates of the Caribbean going "Oh! The heat!" and falling over. Now it's just straight up the one of the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz melting into the floor, and saying "I'm melting".

A rat died in one of our rentokill boxes at work today, and one of my co-workers enjoyed it a bit too much to be honest with you. I hate most of the people I work with at the moment. The same co-worker recently told our (female) head of the cleaning staff to "shut up" when he thought she was interrupting a conversation between him and our boss. And then afterwards seemed to think it was fine because "she talks to me like my mum used to talk to me". Okay. Today overheard him saying another female colleague in a different building was getting "brave" in the way she mouthed off to other staff members. Also he recently tried to explain to me that the whole thing with Russia and Novichok was just 'false flag' stuff and yesterday he said he didn't believe in global warming, and I couldn't tell how serious he was being. I would be able to cope with it better, but he never stops talking, so I can't just ignore him.

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