Why Change The Habit of A Lifetime,

 For several years this blog has been a list of excuses and reasons I haven't been writing, sometimes because I've been working through stuff, working on something or for a number of reasons, so why break the habit of a lifetime?

I've expressed a number of times that life in what has become, to a lot of people, post NaNoWriMo, has been difficult. I haven't had the same motivation to write and during November, I didn't pick up a pen or sit at a keyboard that wasn't for my day job, something that even last years would have felt unthinkable!! but that is not to say I have been sat unhealthily wallowing in self-pity. Far from it, in fact. 

Although I haven't been writing - not even thinking about it much really, and truth be told I won't go back to it consistently until I feel that "pull" to again - and I haven't been reading much, if anything, either, I have been doing other things. This year I got out on the paddleboard more, bought a kayak and took that out on the water too, trashed the garden thinking I was going to take up the grass, level it and then pave it, then stopped because I got bored of the idea... I have spent a lot more time going to live music events, went camping, went on holiday in Northern Ireland and Wales, and most importantly in all of that, I met my partner. 

Life changed a lot because we're a we rather than me just being a me and only having myself or myself and Chai to think about. She's been adjusting because instead of her world just being my family and I, her world is now my family and I, plus him and his family and his family includes a couple of children (niblings) and children weren't something Chai previously did well with. His family also includes cats and from Teddy's reaction to cats I wasn't exactly sure that was going to be good either, but Chai has realised a couple of things - one, the cats will either run away because they're more nervous of her than she is of them or if she annoys them they will fire a warning shot (not sure if claws were out for said warning shot, but no one was injured, feline, canine or human), two, small children don't know what limits are, so they will keep feeding you crisps, sausages and digestive biscuits (the non-chocolatey ones!) until they've been told to stop circa a hundred times and three, young children have a much shorter attention span than she does, so if she watches for long enough, the opportunity to steal sausage rolls is literally! as easy as stealing candy from a baby. 

The last few weeks have been filled with tidying, organising and boxing things up and honestly, I feel like I've barely had time to sleep or breath, but hopefully we're on the tail end of it now. The months that my partner and I have been together have rolled by - that's not to say there haven't been hiccups, because there always are - and we're hoping that some time soon we can both get to the stage where we can pick up some of the things we did in our pre-us days, but one good thing is that we haven't dropped into a pattern where we've forgotten our friends since getting together. 

For once in a long time, writing will not be featured in my new year's resolution list, because I don't want to try and force it. When I try and force myself to write it feels like the metaphorical gears in my mind are jamming and the pressure doesn't help me to get anything out at all, let alone with any measure of ease or fluency. I'm not even sure I'm going to commit to trying to read, whether more or at all, because there is so much else going on that I don't want to try and demand some of my own time be focused on something that in that moment that I'm thinking about it might not even matter at all. 

So there it is, life is busy because life is full and that may or may not change a little or a lot. 

A Year On,

T'was the night before NaNo and... 

The truth is it doesn't feel like it at the moment. I don't think there was a single moment I could point to where I decided I wasn't going to complete NaNo this year, whether it was NaNo itself or by another name, but the only thing I feel towards it at the moment is a real and complete sadness. 

There has been a lot of things floating around the internet about the accusations and about things which did happen, about things which can be proved and others which can't, and there's been at least some discussion of what MLs feel towards it. I would normally say MLs, both current and emeritus, but I don't know of a single person who has been accepted as an ML by the organisations new order... There has been a lot of people expressing how they feel about a lot of different viewpoints and different actions by the current and former HQs, but the only thing I find myself wanting to say about it is this: 

We've lost something. 

What we have lost is something which can be quantified - we've lost a truly global community that connected people over a passion in a way that I've not seen any other single organisation do in this space - but also not quantifiable, because we've lost a community, we've lost a space, we've lost a feeling and so much more. 

A lot of the messaging currently coming out of NaNo HQ is about how everything is getting back on track, but something feels missing. It's not like a small piece crumbled away; it feels like someone punched a section out and everything that's left is still reeling and trying to figure out how to function without it. 

Personally I have not been writing a lot for a while. Part of it is one of the slumps I get into when something like this happens, though granted the last time 'something like this' happened it was the loss of my novel, not the loss of the whole organisation and community etc. Part of it is my life moving on in a very sudden and somewhat unexpected direction. (No, I'm not talking about it. Possibly that's more of a yet than a not ever, but for now, I'm not.) Part of it is the fact that work has had me spinning like a top and the last thing I want to do when I put my laptop down for the evening is pick up another laptop, and hand writing makes my wrists cramp up. 

I didn't want to write this today because it feels like it's making me more sad, but I also feel the need to acknowledge that sadness on the eve of the anniversary of where it all started to go really wrong. At this point last year I was still hopeful that there was something that could be done to rescue what we as a community once were, but this year I realise that there is no going back.

For only the first time since I was sixteen I have absolutely zero intention of trying to write fifty thousand words in thirty days, and honestly, there are zero words that adequately express how gutted I feel about it. 

The Last Month Has Been Rough,

How It Started

I'm not talking about June - I'm talking the last thirty days, four-ish weeks kind of month, and honestly, I don't think even that covers it, but man it has been rough. 

With one thing and another I have barely been at my own home, which has meant that my house is even more of a disaster area than normal and I need to do something about it, but what I can actually do, when I can actually do it, and also how I can do it, when there is zero motivation for me to actually do it, are all questions which actually don't matter to me too much at the moment, because I have too much else to think about to even get to that. 

Some of it I absolutely bring on myself. I was away camping for some of the time my parents were away, I drove to Wales to collect a kayak and then haven't found the time to take it out, which is annoying and I also now need to find a more permanent storage method for the thing because it's currently back in my living room after it spent MAYBE three days outside, but as I said, I've not been there, and I'm not willing to leave it less than secure, so it's dominating my living room.

How It's Going

This month? This month! It has been a lot more than a month at this point, I am telling you!

As I'm writing this, I still have not "moved" properly back into my own house and though I have been able to spend a little more time there over the past two weeks I can't say that I have always wanted to because of the aforementioned mess. Despite being a miraculously unorganised person at the best of times, it is the sort of thing that escalates quickly when you're just not in the house. How? Because things and tasks accumulate and there is no one to put them away or do the tasks. I realise that things like laundry and washing up need to be done only when there is someone there to cause the mess in the first place, but it's things like cutting the grass. Whether I'm there or not the grass is going to grow and actually I think it grows more when I'm not looking and when Chai isn't there peeing all over it, so now it's at a stage where it is wild, it is full of weeds and my hay fever makes the idea of strimming it back so I can cover and kill it (all part of the plan for the garden) feel like a really horrendous idea. 

Granted the weather not being great isn't helping get anything done. There is a whole plan around the garden now, and for the kayak to be stored (thinking about that has just reminded me that I forgot to put the cockpit cover on it before the last time I left my house and now it has rained like the days of Noah, so I can't do it until the boat is at least SOMEWHAT dry!) but all of those things require the weather to be dry and not the kind of baking hot that means I burn almost the second I walk out of the house. 

The good thing is that I did manage to find the time to take my lovely kayak, Jellybean, out on the water for a 'quick' inaugural paddle, and because the person who was helping me get her back onto the top of the car is not a kayak person (not that I consider myself a kayak person - way too early for that) she went up there still full of water, which meant when I braked going down a hill it all got thrown all over my windscreen in a way that was ridiculous enough to make me laugh like a hysterical person. 

So this month has been more 'balanced' but has also brought about more time in the office, more family issues to be dealing with and the unhappy development that when I gather my things to be leaving my mother's house, Chai doesn't even try to follow me which is pretty heartbreaking. I know she's learnt I'm leaving and she's generally not able to come with me, but it somehow makes me feel guiltier than the earlier version where she would run to come with me and then look at me with her big, sad eyes when I was telling her to go back in the house. I'm really hoping that some time over this week and weekend I can just get us back into our own home and she can realise I do absolutely adore her. If it weren't for the fact that I have no idea if she would even like it I would be planning a holiday for just me and her for 'when this all blows over'. 

It's a Cutlery Problem,

Except its not.

You may or may not have heard of Spoon Theory and how it is used to describe life with a chronic condition or disability, and honestly, I think it's brilliant, but at the same time there is such a lack of understanding of it that means it fades into being less useful than it should be. 

Why am I talking about this? Because I just found my holdall from when I stayed at my mum's last weekend. It's part of the floor-drobe in my room, and sadly the pyjamas I took with me are still in the holdall, so they have not been washed. There is laundry in the machine that has been washed at least twice, but my pyjamas are not in there, and the set I have been wearing is going to need to go into the laundry soon, too. How does this relate to spoons? Because I need to do laundry and make sure I have a clean and dry set of pyjamas, and that is going to steal a lot of my spoons tomorrow, and I still can't guarantee it's going to happen. 

I've finally found pyjamas that I love. They've by Oddballs, they're funky patterns and colours and they're comfortable. The pants are a bit long and I am yet to convince myself to rehem them, but they're comfortable and I love them. They're also expensive, so I have two sets and that should be adequate - I'm doing slightly better at this limiting impulsive spending thing - but only if I keep on top of chores. Which I never do...

So these fantastic dopamine giving pjs are not able to make me happy and give me a boost to do other things because I don't have the spoons to keep them clean and available, let alone the presence of mind to get through the process of collect the laundry, put the laundry in the machine and set it going, turn it off at the end of the cycle AND empty it into an appropriate receptacle, then hang the laundry somewhere that it will dry, so it sits in there for days then needs rewashing with something to make it smell better, or if it gets hung outside I forget about it and it either rains on it, and then it smells bad and needs rewashing, or I have to take it in when it's dark, or there are spiders or bird poop on it, and then it either needs rewashing or I just hate it because it has spiders on/in it, and that makes me want to puke... and then it either hangs on the airer until I need to wear it, until my mum comes around and folds and puts things away for me (that doesn't happen that often to be fair) or until I have another wet load of laundry that made it to the same room as the dryer and it needs to find somewhere else and more often than not, that is not the wardrobe! 

Basically, I need more spoons, or another person to come and help me do things. Or a decent laundry service in the area which takes away the dirty things, brings back clean, folded things and then all I have to do is take it out of the bag and put it into the wardrobe. Though of course, that still will not happen. 

I Need More Time,

 I realise this is a thing that a lot of people say, but my God, I feel like I need more time. 

I spend however many hours a week working, whether that's in the office or at home, and then outside of that I'm involved in a Scout Troop and a Cub Pack at two separate groups and have all of my own hobbies as well, I have my dog, I have family to spend time with, I have my friends to try (mostly fail, but still try!) and keep up with and somewhere in all of that find time to do things like cooking and cleaning and laundry and all the other gumpf that people have to do and sometimes I feel like I'm meeting myself coming backwards. I get that most people would say drop some of the hobbies or the Scouting or other things, but I don't want to because at the end of the day, that's my life. 

I like my job, I enjoy it, but it's not the sort of thing where I think 'this is my absolute passion and if I did nothing else, that would be fine'. Being completely honest, I go to work to do my job, earn my money and then come home and do everything else. I know that's most people as well, and unfortunately that's just the way that life works out; not everyone can spend their life working in a field that they are passionate about, because ultimately there are some things that not many people are going to have that kind of passion for that still need to get done. I accept that completely, but it means that I need all the time I can have outside of work to make me feel like I'm actually having a life. Without it, it's just eat, sleep, work, repeat, and that sounds awful to me. I realise that might sound privileged, but it doesn't sound like much of a life at all to be forced into that pattern. However, I also know that when I'm doing as many other things as I do, other things fall by the wayside, as they have to, because everyone only has a limited amount of time. 

I mentioned about working towards a qualification in yesterday's post and I am working towards it and doing what I can for it, but somehow I have to magic up a lot of free time out of seemingly nowhere to practice the skills I need for it to have any chance of passing and the thing I'm working towards right now is only level 1, with the potential for a few more levels after it if I decided I wanted to go for it. I've not really made a decision that far just yet, but that's partly because I want to get through this bit first before I even let myself think about anything further. Trying to find the time for myself, and it be time when other people are available, is more than a challenge and honestly, it's a bit infuriating. I almost regret moving out of my flat in London only because there were services to keep up with some things (like laundry services) just on my doorstep and honestly there are quite a few tasks I would love to be able to just pay someone to take off of my hands. There's this whole theory of how it's not just money that means different things to different people but it's time as well. If you're a person who can afford a cleaner, to pay for someone to wash your car, tidy your garden, walk your dog and do all those sorts of tasks that take up time but might not bring you joy (I mean normal poop walk kind of dog walks, not big walks where you get to have a bit of an adventure - my dog can't do those every day since she only has little legs) an extra hour goes straight to either something like wellbeing or hobbies or something you want to do, but if you have all of those things to do, an extra hour disappears in a flash to all of those jobs and little things, and honestly, it's maddening! And the best answer anyone can give to it is, that's life. Well, I get that, but it doesn't make it any less irritating knowing that when I take time off of work a lot of it goes onto either errands or jobs in the house instead of things like sitting in a kayak and going on an adventure. 

You're Being Rather Quiet For Someone Who Can't Shut Up,

Usual reference to ADHD because yes, I'm still talking about it... 

I've spent a long time not knowing that was the thing that was different in my brain than a lot of people around me so people have made a lot of comments about me talking too much, or repeating myself, interjecting into conversations and my general lack of patience when other people are trying to get to the point and seeming to take the longest way around possible, and honestly, I think that all of that has probably added to the feeling of RSD (Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria) that I think is the biggest reason for me not posting things on the blog as often as I write things. Through March I either wrote or started to write a few different things and either stopped in the middle or didn't post them because a little bit of my brain with a very loud voice said 'Urgh, no one cares Charlie!' It's frustrating, but other than keeping fighting against it when I can, I don't really know what else I can do. 

In the time since I have been away from writing this a few things have happened, and honestly, it's been a bit brilliant. I've managed to get through a couple of courses that I have wanted to do, which has been fantastic because there is nothing worse than me getting bored and sadly things at work have been a bit quiet so I've been really bored with that and it's been driving me a little bit crazy. Trying to find things to do has been challenging, but it has allowed me to do a couple of things during the day which I have needed to and has been encouraging me to take a proper lunch break, go out for a walk or go and get certain errands done.

But in true ADHD style I've picked up a new (well, kind of) hobby and I've been getting all of the things for it, which include the qualifications I'm doing, and that has meant a few trips around the country to be picking up kit, and until yesterday, I haven't been able to actually take part in said hobby since about last October.

The upshot is, still here, still me, still writing, but only posting when I can get past the negative voices in my head.

Why Did You Call Your Dog Something So Stupid?,

 I can imagine that a big question from the last blog post would be "Why Did You Call Your Dog Something So Stupid?" and honestly, I would a hundred percent understand why anyone asked that question, because it is a really dumb and ridiculous name, but I guess the first answer is it's not actually her name.

Chai wasn't Chai until she met me. Her name was China, and honestly, I like the idea of changing a rescue dogs name as something of an ending of a chapter and to try and help them partition in their mind that when things were like X I was called Whatever... I know that that is way too over complicated for a dog, but I kind of hope calling her something different she associates with something good, if that makes sense. Honestly, the intention was just to call her Chai and that was that. 

Except for sone reason, I called her Chai Pants once, and it stuck. And then a couple of weeks later I was packing a bag to go *somewhere* can't remember where, it's not like it matters, and she was on my bed (must have been a few months later because I wasn't worried about accidents at the time) and I was putting out things on my bed that I needed to pack and that included pants. And I'm setting them out on my bed and I go back to the drawer, turn around and see she's toddled across the bed to the pile of pants and she has a pair on her head. I honestly couldn't stop laughing. I don't know if it was something in the universe saying, well if you're going to call her something loopy she's going to have to earn it, but it was brilliant.

Then another time, I called her Chai Bean. And I have referred to her as just Bean a few times and she knows I mean her. Maybe it's just my tone or something, but she will occasionally answer to Bean, although I have also called her Chai Banana before and she doesn't answer to Banana in any tone. 

I picked her up at one stage and was playing around and jamming all of the names together and one of the things that came out was Chai Banana Vanilla Coca (I think I'm spelling that right, but I'm spelling it phonetically to how I was saying it so it doesn't matter) Bean, and it amused me, so it stuck. What helps with that is that she didn't care. I mean, obviously she didn't care, she's a dog, but some dogs get upset if you laugh at them, particularly if you dress them up for Hallowe'en and then laugh at them, but Chai isn't like that. She has this incredible expression that is like, what on Earth are you doing to me now you weirdo, but when I dressed her up in a dog safe doctor (or dogtor) costume and laughed, she wasn't fussed, and I honestly think her Percy Pig hoodie is her favourite thing in all the world, and honestly, it's mine, too, especially with the hood up. She's not a dog, she's a living ball of fur that I make ridiculous, but she's the light of my life. 

Chai Banana Vanilla Coca Bean,

 Out of all the silly titles I have ever given my blogs, this one is probably one of the silliest and that's because it's named after a few of the silly names that I give to my silly little girl. 

This blog has been morphing in my head as I've been trying to get to write it (it's been a whole process - do not judge) and I have to admit that I think I've written something close to being like this before but decided for whatever reason I was not going to publish it and I don't know if I actually deleted it or not, because when I searched the blog for Chai's name, precious little actually came back, but I did find this little gem from around 2021 (note to self, write reference to the thing first before closing the page the thing is on so you can go back and check dates etc)

"She came from a breeding farm, peed all over the carpets and crawled her way into my heart when I wasn't looking, but she's wonderful - except when she is barking at three o'clock in the morning, at which point, she's a lot less cute. She petrified of everything, but getting braver, meeting the family and starting to have a life that doesn't involved producing and looking after puppies, and I couldn't want any more for her."

I stand by almost every word of this, but the thing I can't stand by is the 'I couldn't want any more for her' because honestly, I want her to have a sibling, and there is a big reason for that. 

This whole post has come about because I saw a beautiful and broken dog on the page of one of the rescues I really need to unfollow for the moment, because I know there are things I need to do before committing myself to getting another dog, and it's not fair to Chai, to me, or to any other dog to even think about rushing that because I've seen 'the perfect dog' on a Facebook page. This isn't going to make a lot of sense outside of my head, or has the potential not to anyway, but here goes nothing... there is no such thing as THE perfect dog, because every dog is the perfect dog, what there is such thing as is the perfect home for each dog. I know that Dogtor Chai (she was dressed up as a dogtor for Hallowe'en and it is still the funniest thing I have ever seen bar one video about flags in the Six Nations) and I would both love to have another dog living with us, and I also know both of our minds would be totally blown and worlds would be turned upside down when the new girl (because let's face it, we're probably going for another girl because we're an all girl household/ Coven of Bitches) arrived, but we have plenty of love, blankets and tuna to spare and I think we could help another traumatised girl to find herself again, but this time it might not be as hard as it was before. 

What do I mean? Well, the topic of conversation which cropped up around aforementioned beautiful and broken dog was this "unfair" stipulation of having to have a resident dog to adopt dogs with certain backgrounds and issues, and how *IT'S NOT FAIR*. Firstly, any adulting using that phrase makes me want to sarcastically ask ARE YOU NEW? and secondly, that depends who you're trying to be fair to, and the rescues are trying to be fair to the dog, and that is the right thing to do. It might make you feel all happy and special to think, oh, I can nurse this dog back to whatever with all my love and affection, but there is a reason that they need another dog. I say this as someone who is one hundred percent a dog lover and not anything close to a dog or animal behaviour expert, but also someone with first hand experience with dogs who are shut down. If someone is saying 'must be homed with another dog' it's not to stop you owning a dog, it's not to be unfair to those without a dog and it's not discrimination, it's putting what the dog needs first and not producing a situation like Chai and I.

I'm not going to get too much into the circumstances Chai was in before I got her, because it's not fair for me to do that. I got a snapshot of her life, I don't think the people had her were bad people at all, but she was a part of a business and the product they were selling was her pups. Being a breeder does not make a person inherently bad; not by a long chalk. What I will say is that she was not lead trained, didn't wear a collar, wasn't socialised with people and she had had multiple litters of puppies.

I turned up to get her with a gorgeous new collar and lead (yellow and bees, a thousand percent me, definitely not something the dog gave a single sh!t about. She was running around the garden refusing to come near me or the person who who had just transferred her ownership chip to me, but eventually they got ahold of her and I clipped the collar on, and bingo, we're off to go home. Except we're not because it took her less than two seconds to slip the collar and go back to playing the game of Round and Round the Garden. So we try tightening the collar and go again. Same result. No dice. Thankfully, they had a spare harness, which despite a lot of wriggling in protect, Chai couldn't slip, but not for lack of trying, and at this point both the humans are thinking this is taking an age and we're getting nowhere, so she's carried to the car by them and then my mum drove me and Chai back to my place for the simple reason that I can't drive and when I said to my mum, she's nervous as hell, just don't engage with her, don't try and stroke her, just don't even look at her if you don't need to, because she's going to need time, my mum does just that. She drops us off and she leaves me to it. 

It's mid August, but not the hot kind of mid August, and my house feels pretty cool, but this scruffy little ragamuffin is panting like she's being cooked and I know enough to know she's terrified, because she's in a new place with a new person and she doesn't know what's happening, so I just think, screw it, I'm going to sit on the floor in the same room, I'm going to put on some easy background noise (didn't think about the fact that she wasn't used to a TV) so Beauty and the Beast live action on, and I'm just talking to the air occasionally, calmly, quietly, just to let her get used to the sound of my voice. When I tried to take her outside to see if she might pee outside (I was trying to save the carpet - it didn't work) she found the dip in the grass (she says as though there is one single dip and not a multitude of them) and sat in it, and she didn't want to come out. If I had a jar that I had to pay every time I thought 'What the DUCK have I done?' for that first day, week, month, probably four months, I would be simultaneously rich and poor, because all of my money would be in it and I would have a heavy reliance on IOUs. 

This was two and a half years ago, so the exact details of every day that happened between then and now is obviously not seared into my brain like the lines on a steak, but there were some highlights. She seems a bit more chilled so introduce her to the person who was my intro to the person I got her from. She's a woman, so not someone Chai will be immediately terrified of... except I then needed to get the sofa cleaned because she went from sat on one side of it to jumping across it and over the air to the floor, peeing all the way. She would hide behind the sofa if there was even a small gap for her to squeeze through, she peed all over me because a motorbike went past when we attempted a walk, she tried to get through the fence at the park to get away, she got away from me on a walk once and ran across every exit of a five exit roundabout and nearly got hit by two cars. I was screaming her name after her, crying my eyes out and I couldn't find her, so I called my mum devastated and not sure what to do. One of her best friends is decidedly not a dog person (both my dog and my mum's get called Mutley by this person and I'm not sure it's a compliment) but when I called my mum because I had found her - her lead got caught up in brambles that I cut my hands to ribbons getting her out of - was just about to drive my mother to me so they could both help me search and find her. I felt like the worst dog owner for losing her in the first place, and in my head it just meant that she didn't want to be with me and effectively saw me as her captor. I know that was daft, but I was spiralling.

There were times where I sat on the stairs with Chai in the living room, and I cried on the phone to my mum because I felt like I was failing her. I felt like the worst dog mum (and yes, I do call myself a dog mum) in the world and like everyone else was so put together and it was so easy, and here I was with this little fluff ball who thought I was the devil. I said a few times that if she had been from a rescue I would have taken her back. It wasn't a lack of love, because I did love her, but I just couldn't cope, I didn't know how, and neither did she. The big turn around, the part where I thought MAYBE I can get through this, maybe we can get through this, was having my mum's dog stay with me for two weeks.

All she wanted was to be close to him, to follow him, to do what he did, and although they both had accidents, during those two weeks, we got the hang of toilet training and there was a significant amount less p!ss on the living room carpet, and it felt like I could breath again. Not just because there wasn't the cloying smell of piss coming from a fresh puddle, but because there was light at the end of the tunnel. When Ted went home she did backslide a bit, but not so much with the toilet training, and honestly, I was thanking the gods because it got to me far more than I thought it would. When that carpet went, I wanted to throw it on a bonfire, but also felt like it should go into an incinerator for toxic waste because it was disgusting (I spot cleaned it thoroughly as things happened, but some things will never come off of a carpet, and I'm so glad I now have a solid floor there). As she's been out more, been to cafes and pubs and things, she's grown more used to people and noise and different smells, and whilst she isn't completely food motivated (giving her sausage won't make her like you, if she's scared, she won't eat it) she's started to understand that people aren't all bad, that noisy cafes might serves sausages and she can swim. She's been on holidays, she's ridden up front in the car (with the airbag turned off and appropriately restrained), she's been paddle boarding (wearing a life jacket and with me refusing to try and stand up so I don't knock her in without the ability to pull her out again) and there are a few things lined up for her to do this year which will mean she's done even more. It's a big life, but she would be more comfortable with another dog to share it with, because she is always happier when she has Teddy with her, and they spend A LOT of time together. 

I'm glad I didn't give up on her, because it would have broken my heart to do it, but I also know that it very nearly broke me keeping her, more than once. She was a lot for one person, with no other dog, and she has learnt so much and become so brave, but when I think about how challenging it has been for me, I can't help but think what I put her through to be with me, and to an extent I do feel really guilty. She could have been homed with someone else with another dog or with a pack of shih tzus and whilst she wouldn't have the life she has with me, she would have maybe been calmer quicker, and maybe she wouldn't have needed to be learning to love pubs, like paddling and maybe more. She might never have had to get used to kids, which is the really challenging one at the moment. There are reasons why I decided I needed to take her and they were mostly good reasons mixed with maybe a little bit of selfishness and a lot of misunderstanding of what it was going to take to look after her and help her, but I would like to think she wouldn't trade me for anyone else, and I definitely wouldn't trade her, but if we can one day adopt another, and she can be a big sister to a girl who is recovering from what she went through, I will be glad, because for as long as dogs are treated this way, I would like to help, and I know now what it takes and how much it takes to do that. 

So why did I write this? Because no one should feel entitled to rehome an ex-breeding dog, and because the thing to remember is it's not about you. I know when Chai and I are ready, there will be a dog out there who we can help, and that's what it's about. We can help them, not a we need them to come and live with us to help us be more of a family or whatever.

Being Unhealthy Makes You Unhealthy,

I realise that sounds like stating the obvious; honestly, I do, but there's something more to it than just saying being ill means being ill. 

Over the past sixteen ish months I've learnt a lot about myself and some of it is stuff I was having to re-learn about living with anxiety and low moods, and some of it was learning about the issues I've had for a long time that were attributed to other things, like laziness. 

I took a period of time off work because I was not well, and it took me a while to feel better, and whilst I am feeling better in general these days, I am not back to "normal", I don't know when I will be and actually I don't know if I ever will be, because the normal that I was then might not be the normal that I get to when I feel normal again. 

In the midst of all of this, I'm realising that recovery isn't this perfect upswing; it's a bunch of tiny steps and back slides and then deciding to keep going and keep trying. Most of those back slides are going to be unintentional, because the brain is a weird little place and sometimes we feel worse than we did the day before just because. Those are the days that are the most difficult and on those days it is really difficult to fall into good habits which mean we make those little back slides in a recovery journey.

For me a big part of a good day is being able to focus on things, but I have a bad habit of hyper-focusing on things and it makes me forget to do other things, so I can end up forgetting to go and make myself food until I'm too hungry to think about it and I just want something I can eat in the moment, which means I eat a lot of ready in minutes things, which aren't exactly healthy, and I sometimes forget whether I bought bananas or not. (I also know that bananas aren't the answer to everything but they're pretty good.)

Thing is, when I forget to eat until I get like that, I end up eating late, which means I sleep late, because that's always been a thing. If I eat just before bed I won't settle, partly because my stomach won't settle and partly because it wakes me up. 

As soon as I don't sleep, whether because I've leant into the fact I was tired and haven't really moved much during the day, whether it's because I have eaten late, or whether it's because I just don't feel safe a lot of the time and that doesn't make it easy to sleep, it causes me to have other issues. I don't really know what causes me to feel like I'm not safe, but it's how I am, and it means that I'm going to lend the problems of one day over to the next day, because lack of sleep gives me headaches, makes me grouchy, makes me feel like I'm having a low mood and also makes me inclined to feel quite nauseated which doesn't help convince me to eat properly the next day.

As long as it's something you recognise and do your best to stop, as much as is humanly possible at the time, recovery is still possible. Sometimes that will be a monumental effort and other times it will be easier, but on bad days it's going to be the hardest thing you've ever tried to do, and what is worth remembering that the good days can outweigh the bad if you let them.

Saturday,

 I was going to write this as two different blogs, but the reasons for one of them are the reasons it's going to be one instead.

Today has been a great day because not only has the rugby been back on (it actually started yesterday with the joys of Ireland giving France a good walloping) but also England were playing WITHOUT FARRELL and they won, even though they made a hash of it (Italy got the losing bonus point because the England defence is utterly shocking at the moment) and then Wales got their heads out of their asses in the second half of their match to pull the game back to almost level and denied Scotland a bonus point by a last minute hold up. Whilst the ball wasn't grounded because it went down onto an ankle as opposed to because it was actively held up, the defence through the second half of the game had been incredible and in those last minutes of the game they gave it everything. And it was incredible. To me, even though I know Wales lost and they only got a losing bonus point, this felt like a massive win. I took much more joy from the Wales game than the England game, probably because I love an underdog story, and it was good to see the litany of newer players coming up, where England are still relying a bit too much on the older generation, and that does not bode well for the next couple of years. So yes, rugby, loved it, and not just because one of the players was working so hard to get a try that he didn't seem to realise he had his ass out to the wind for a bloody long while. Or because I got a bit overexcited when I saw one of the players was wearing Oddballs on the pitch.

The reason this is all one blog is because I am so tired right now. 

I started my ADHD medication a few days ago and whilst it is helping to give me a bit of clarity and honestly, this is the best I have felt in a long time and is definitely the best I have ever felt on any form of medication, one of the less fun side effects is tiredness. I was looking forward to being tired, because it meant that I would be able to sleep, and I have been able to sleep and that is great, but because I've not got to the point (because it's only been a few days) where I am getting up earlier, because of being able to sleep earlier and sleep better, I'm tired when I want to do things like write, or watch TV, and it slightly feels like the sort of tiredness that stops me from doing things. I know that consistency with my medication is one of the things which helps it to work better for me and I know that my head is in a better place with the medication than without it, I don't feel like I can live my normal weekend, because I can't drink if I'm not at home (or rather I won't drink if I'm not at home, because it feels too risky), I need to try and keep a similar schedule to my weekday so that I keep working towards functioning better at work, and because I like going out and getting lost in something and spending hours out, and I am getting too tired to be able to do that, because I need to focus on my ability to get home. 

But overall, the side effects I was warned of with the medication haven't been anything like as bad as they could have been, I'm not resistant to the medication that I need, and actually the fact that it's working is proving I wasn't misdiagnosed with ADHD, which was something I was very worried about. Whilst I know that it's early days and I'm nowhere near a hundred percent, this feels like a really positive thing. 

The Cost of Existing,

There are a lot of times when we discuss the idea of the difference between living and surviving or living and existing, and it's about trying to make us see what's important in our lives. Some people are tied into a fight for existence, because it's all that they can afford to do. Some people say it is their own faults, some people say it's a fact of life and others still will say it is the society we live in. And then we start talking about the cost of living crisis.

The cost of living crisis isn't a cost of living issue, it's a cost of existing. Having a room over your head isn't about living, it's a basic survival need. Having electricity and gas and water, whether that's for cooking, warming you're space, drinking, washing yourself or washing your clothes, whatever, that's not about living, it's a simple existence. We need to eat, we need to wash, we need somewhere safe to sleep. Every time there is good news that seems to 'steady the ship' like the government budget giving people a little more money a month if they pay National Insurance, you get an announcement from something like the water company where they are putting the prices up despite the fact that they are failing in their duties to do even basic environmental clean up from things that they have done wrong.

Why am I talking about all of this doom and gloom? Because this, and the National Housing Crisis we are also experiencing are being perpetuated because of a few different things that could probably be changed pretty easily.

Firstly, there are homes in the UK that are only available if you have cash to buy them and not if you need to take a mortgage and that's because mortgage companies will not lend on homes under a certain square footage. I don't know what the reason for this is, other than the potential that it could limit the saleability of the property later, but particularly at the moment where there is big interest in things like tiny houses and van life, it seems crazy that you can only look to own one of those homes if you have fifty or sixty thousand pounds in the bank, or more, plus legal fees and moving expenses, plus anything you need to kit out your studio or tiny home or whatever you want to call it to work for you and to be to your taste. There are less issues in the rental market in terms of size - if someone will pay to live there, you can rent it. There are some issues when it comes to number of people for the size of a place and fire safety regulations in order to evacuate a building, but these two things basically make these properties available only to landlords who charge the earth for them.

Additionally, when people are interested in things like van life, the cost of buying a van (especially a ready converted one) maintaining it, let alone insuring it! can feel like a drop in the ocean compared to finding places to park it. There is a growing community online assisting in finding free parking spaces, and particularly Scotland are becoming more accommodating allowing for such places in touristy areas where they know there will be demand for them, but it's still not easy, and it's still the sort of thing where places to clean your composting or chemical toilet are not readily available facilities, and there aren't places like Walmart from the USA where it is possible to fill the large vats people use for water onboard, so even that can be a challenge. It's not insurmountable, but it makes this sort of life more difficult than it needs to be. There are similar issues for people living on narrow boats as well. 

Whilst people can use narrow boats and campers as a cheaper alternative to a second home with the added benefit of being able to move it to anywhere you want - within reason - there are people who have found a way to make it work as a cheaper way of existing (providing the fundamental things they need to survive) or even as a way of life. I would love to be able to live in a wan and travel, but with my job being what it is and particularly the political decisions around spending more time in the office than at home, it's not feasible, because I would need to spend so much time in one city, and this is in spite of the fact I can do my job completely successfully with a laptop and a decent internet connection which I can get from almost anywhere. 

This isn't just a moan about me and what I want and what I can't have in my life, even if it sounds like it. I guess it's me saying I believe that the rules of law, and mortgages and insurance and so many other things are contributing to the fact that most people are in survival mode and we're basically saving to have a life in the future, or to live whilst we're on holiday, on annual leave or for the weekends, and we put it off so much I'm not sure we ever even really remember to do it. People talk about life being what happens whilst you're busy making your excuses, and to some extent that can really be true, and it's why it's important to squeeze as much life into the time you have as you can. If I knew how to change things to make it possible to get a loan like a mortgage on a camper van, I would change it. If I knew how to make changes so that people could get a mortgage on a tiny home so that they could have somewhere to live that was affordable, believe me, I would, and if it helped more people to break out of the rent cycle, where rent takes up over a third of a lot of people's incomes, I really would, but it's not something within my personal gift.

I Can't Believe I Finally Get To Write This,

A couple of days ago I finally got an appointment I was waiting to have for a very long time, and the result of it is finally getting some meds to try and help me manage the symptoms of ADHD that have been causing me a lot of problems recently. But saying it like that feels like glossing over some of what happened so I'm going to take a step back. 

I have been trying to get a diagnosis for what I struggle with for a long time, definitely since I was 16, but possibly longer than that as well without me remembering the details. In places I feel like I have had little support on this, and other times I've had support that hinged upon conditions. We can help you if it's this, but since it's not that, the support has now gone, and you need to look elsewhere, but we're not going to tell you where. It's not what we thought it was, but we're not going to tell you what we think it might be. Maybe that's because specialists are very focused on their own areas, and anything outside of that is kind of just the void. It was difficult and there were times I struggled with it a lot more than other times and plenty of times where I thought just accept that this is your life. The idea of advocating for myself wasn't something I really understood for a while, and it's something I haven't always had the energy or capacity for. 

I walked into the appointment that I had a couple of days ago with a coffee in my hand and a splitting headache because I had barely slept due to worrying, and because I needed to get up rather early to get there. I thought I was going to have to advocate for myself to be able to get the medication that will hopefully help me. Without trialing the medication I have no idea if it will work, but I honestly thought I was going to have a fight on my hands to get to trial it, because hey, there's a lot of other things we can try first, but then the clinicians pretty much told me that they know that trialing the medication is the best thing, that for eighty percent of people it works and the hope is that I'm in that eighty percent. They needed to run a couple of tests to make sure that my physical health could cope with the type of medication I would be prescribed, and then they got me the prescription. I honestly didn't expect to feel disappointed at not needing to fight, but I guess that I had worked myself up to it so much that I couldn't comprehend not having to fight. I guess that when I have spent so long feeling like I was banging my head against the wall, getting somewhere without having to argue, getting support without having to demand it just feels weird. It's not bad, of course, but it is weird. And unexpected. 

I'm writing this on the eve of beginning the medication, because I needed to drive today and I couldn't start a new medication and then drive, and on the day that I got the tablets it was too late when I had them for me to be able to then start them that day. (I also wouldn't have started them and then been driving the next day because that sounds like a recipe for disaster, not knowing how they would impact me overnight.) Obviously, I'm probably going to write something when I've had a few days or weeks to settle on them, but I guess that is dependent on how they make me feel and whether or not they realise my biggest fear, which is that the medication to help me function stops me from being me, or it limits me in how much *me* I can be.

Please Try Not To Laugh,

Because right now I am serious. This is an issue and it becomes an issue every camp. And what is immediately obvious or what I should make immediately obvious is that I have sensory issues. I react to a lot of things a lot of the time and my skin has what can literally be thought of as an allergic reaction to stress when I am unwell, struggling, not coping, whatever you want to call it. I get what Americans call Hives as a reaction across my body, as such I stick to things I know, I stick to what I like, I stick to washing liquids I know I am okay with and sadly it still happens, but whatever, that's life, right? 

Okay, so what the hell do I wear to a sleepover with the Cubs? 

I know, it's that whole joke of having a wardrobe (or several) full of clothes and sitting there saying you have nothing to wear. Why do you own it if you don't or can't wear it? It's not always I can't, sometimes it is just an I can't *right now* or I can't *when I'm away from home and can't change*, or the fun one I can't *wear that in a semi-public place*. At home, I can sleep in whatever because the only person at risk of seeing me is the dog (who doesn't care, I know, she told me) or the delivery guy and that's with me wearing some form of dressing gown or coat over the top, and hiding behind the door. (Seriously, don't laugh, I'm not in the minority of people, most of us have done it even if we don't admit to it.)

When you're in a tent all by yourself then you are able to just wear whatever you want even if that is just your sleeping bag, but what you need to keep in mind is that if, in the middle of the night, one of the kids has an emergency or is sick or sad or whatever, the time it takes to respond is not just, let me wake up slightly and put a hoodie or something warm because it's cold outside of the tent and leg it across to where the kids are and becomes something about getting on a whole set of clothes. In the dark. Because I often lose things in the middle of the night because I kick them so they move, or I move and I have ended up waking up having somehow rolled so my head is where my feet were when I went to sleep so trying to sort myself out to be able to get dressed, particularly without getting too cold by getting out of my sleeping bag. 

Staying in a building can actually make it more difficult as well, because some of the buildings we stay in, all the leaders are in together and my Pack has a majority of male leaders. I'm not saying that as a bad thing, but it is something that needs to be taken into consideration when thinking about what to wear. All guys being in together and sleeping in their pants or pants and a t-shirt is one thing, but it's a bit different when it's a mixed room, or a room with people you don't know overly well or at all well. I've been on a couple of camps where I have shared a tent with someone else or have planned to share a tent with someone else, and honestly, for me it only really works in the sort of tents where there's a divider down the middle and either with older kids who are unlikely to have an issue overnight or with a significant plan of what to do if one of the kids wakes me up and needs me. 

This isn't even really a new thing. 

When I was in Scouts myself I went to a sleepover and was having an issue with pyjamas - I didn't know about the ADHD at the time, and I didn't know it was going to become a lifelong issue, which I guess I'm just assuming it will be at the moment because it's not got better since then - and I needed to get up in the middle of the night because of an asthma attack, and the only thing I could find to wear whilst being around my leader was my camp blanket. Thankfully she had known me enough years to know it was me and I'm a bit weird and the best thing to do is just ignore me and let me do whatever weird thing I am doing. 

Anyway I managed to find something to wear, took my giant fluffy hoodie with me not because I thought I would be cold, but because no one could say this thing is inappropriate (except if I want to wear it into the office, which I don't do) and thankfully, I didn't react to anything clothing wise, and whatever it was that did upset some my skin was calmed down by Doublebase before it got too bad.

Jesus Freaking Christ,

...I know I need the pressure of a deadline, but this one takes the biscuit. I'm in bed the night before returning to week after a... I was going to write blissful week of annual leave but I think that's wrong... we'll say complicated week of annual leave and I'm exhausted because of the lack of sleep from the last two days and everything I've done in between the two nights with little sleep (yes, it is possible to be exhausted after two bad nights of sleep, particularly for someone with insomnia and ADHD) and my feet somehow feel like blocks of ice despite the fact the electric blanket is on and I only took my slippers off thirty seconds before getting into bed, and there are a myriad of other reasons why my focus right now should be sleep, but I'm writing this blog, and why? 

Because my cognitive functions have chosen this moment to spit out a somewhat logical framework by which I can write one of the projects I have been trying to write for the last couple of years. The characters have been there, bit's of storyline have been there, there has been joy, passion and other emotions that have ebbed and flowed, but nothing has come out right, and AS SOON AS I SHOULD BE ASLEEP ahead of what will be another busy week, something in my head shouts coo-ey, have you thought about writing it like this? So. Bloody. Useful.

I need sleep. I need it, now, immediately, but I also know in the time it took me to walk from the bathroom to my bedroom that I lost parts of what I was thinking about possibly never to be seen again. I know that writing this blog is a distraction, but I committed myself to posting more and I'm determined to do it. And I know I need to be up at half past 8 in the morning because my car needs to be serviced, and it took me a while to get an appointment at the garage that I trusts so missing it is not an option. But I really want to write!! 

You might think I could just quickly scribble down notes and then that would prompt everything to come back to me in the morning or some time tomorrow *when I have more time* (jokes, I will not have more time tomorrow, tomorrow is going to be mental. And Tuesday is going to be even worse, presuming my car comes home from the garage fine tomorrow. (It not coming home tomorrow isn't really an option, but it is a possibility which is giving me anxiety and may be the reason I currently have a horrendous stomach ache.) Here's the problem. Memory prompts do not work well on me. I'm like the character from my beloved The Monsters of Gramercy Park: wake up in the night and scribble Ardilla on my hand, wake up in the morning and wonder why my nocturnal ponderings included Spanish squirrels. Imagine the kid from Paulie refusing to speak. 'Can you say but- ter- fly?' and all you get is a shaking head? As soon as I ask a question or start trying to recall something, it's like a little egg thief thing from Spyro grabs it, runs off and I'm having to choose between charging after it at high speed, use special flame throwing capacities (we'll say that's asking my mum... or Alexa...) or try and find another way to the same thing, because sometimes I just get frustrated because I can see what I mean, but I can't find the word and I can't draw to save my life so it's not coming out that way... The problem is, much like Spyro with me at the controls I end up banging my head into walls. Not going to lie though, liking the example where I am a dragon.

I don't want to spend some time, where I still don't sleep, writing something which turns out to be useless to me, but I also don't want to stay up all night trying to write it the way I want to write it, even just as a framework, because I already feel like I need match sticks to keep my eyes open. Sadly, the next time I have annual leave booked is also my birthday and I have plans to go and see Mr Big then (though whether that is on the day of my birthday or the day after is yet to be decided. Other than the fact the gig on my birthday is in Nottingham and that's a bit of a drive, I would be (am) really tempted to go to both since it is the final tour, and honestly, I'm not ready. I'm not sure I ever will be or would be ready for it to be their final tour, but I'm certainly not ready for it now. 

Is It Still A Sleepover If You Get No Sleep?,

You would think after the last couple of years that I would be used to not getting a lot of sleep when doing Scout camps, but hey, it's not something I apparently am getting used to.

I went into the sleepover last night already feeling tired, because I hadn't slept properly on Friday night after a busy day and then had a busy Saturday before it all started. 

We had planned to do the first sleepover for the pack (or at least the first in living memory) before Christmas and it be super Christmas-y themed, but I'm actually really glad that we didn't. For one thing, the run up to Christmas is always a busy period, and trying to fit something like a sleepover in can be absurdly difficult, but the more important reason to me is that not having Christmas to 'address' meant that we were pretty wide open for plans. 

Sometimes being completely wide open with plans makes me slightly panic because it feels like there's so much to choose from and I just can't decide, but not feeling like we're required to stick to something like Easter, Christmas or something like that gave us this brilliant opportunity to throw a bit of a mad combination together where the Cubs were practising skills that they have learnt this year, or just notch off a few different bits of Challenge badges or other badges that they have missed.

Some of it is little things, like getting a couple of them to make a cup of tea for a leader to wash their pots up and others are bigger and more abstract like leading a team, and realising it's not about just yelling at other people and stamping your feet. 

It's the sort of thing where we always learn a lesson - don't forget the extra speakers because if it's too quiet, they won't listen, and glass jugs break when dropped - though the important things were everyone (including the leaders) had fun, everyone was fed, everyone got SOME sleep and everyone wants to do it again at some point. 

When I got back to my own house though, I thought I felt pretty good on about four hours of sleep, even whilst I was putting away kit and throwing clothes into the washer, but then when I went out of the house to get on with my Sunday and I realised I was actually dog tired, and it makes me wonder how I've managed a few months where I've camped more weekends than I haven't and I've camped on three or four weekends back to back. It's not even as though that was so very long ago really, but hey, it's not stopping me, is it? 

Thinking About Cars,

I can't remember if I've written before that I was thinking about getting a new (to me) car which I think would suit me better with all of the climbing and camping I like to do, and am hoping to do more of, as well as the paddle boarding that I've been doing, because it would better accommodate my board and the rest of the stuff I bring with me. 

Sadly I made the decision not to change my car, because I looked at the cost of insuring the car that I want to get instead of my current car, and honestly, the price was astronomical. The cost of insuring it for one year was something like a quarter of the sale price of the car and more than double the cost of the insurance of my current car. When I first decided not to have the new(er) car I was really disappointed and thought about it in terms of being 'stuck' with my current car, but for one thing I know that is really ungrateful because I'm lucky to have a good, steady and reliable car that doesn't cost me much in tax and fuel, even if the insurance is ridiculous.

I've been told by other people before that you will always miss your first car, and I think that's definitely going to be true of mine when she has to go, because as much as I want a bigger one and the car I have isn't what I would have chosen had I really sat and thought about it, it was only when I was speaking to someone else about learning to drive and about first cars that I realised the one I have is actually pretty great.

For a first car, it was a bit expensive, but not really especially not given the fact there was only thirty odd thousand miles on it, it had a full service history and it was little, which was what I wanted. It also was only up the road, which was a good thing, though it wasn't me that drove it home the first time. I did have to take it back for a couple of little issues and the fact it was so close was a blessing at those times. It's sturdy, which is good since someone intentionally reversed into me in a car park, and thankfully it did no damage, and I've scrapped it into a bush more than once, because country lanes are not my friend, but the damage to it has always been pretty minimal. I love the body of the car, because closing the door doesn't sound like slamming a lunch box shut, but at the same time, I always knew it was likely to get a little bit banged up, because it was my first car and I was sure I was going to prang it off of something. I'm actually quite proud of myself because I've been a lot better with it than I thought.

As much as my car being a Kia means it's solidly built and it's pretty ace, there are things I want in a new car, such as heated seats and cruise control, which I think having driven for a few years without you are likely to start to want to get, but there is something almost like a rite of passage of driving a slightly crap car for the first couple of years you spend driving. I guess it's partly because of the risk of bumping into things and also whilst you live up to the saying of, you've passed your test, so now you can learn to drive. I'm likely to keep hold of this car for another couple of years whilst I save more towards buying a newer car and also whilst I wait for my insurance price to go down a bit, but honestly, I'm dreading that the car will develop some sort of fatal fault before I am actually ready to replace it.

I guess this is the reason I wish I had learnt to drive before I moved to London though, instead of waiting until I moved back. As much as I'm at the age where people enjoy cheaper car insurance (given I could have been driving for about thirteen years by now) I've only actually been driving for two years, and in that time had a no fault accident because someone chose to hit my car. (And it was a choice.) I realise you can't go back and change these things, and there is no sense regretting things you can't change, but man, I kick myself daily about this one. 

It's Not About Money,

 There has been a lot of coverage recently of the Post Office scandal and it honestly took me back to a conversation I had with a friend a few years ago when we were talking about Windrush, other scandals and what it should look like. Neither of us work in the area now, nor have we ever, but we were discussing what compensation should look like. 

Whilst the two situations are wholly different, the impact that it has had on people's lives has been similar in that people have lost their livelihoods, their savings, their freedom, their retirement and some of them have lost their lives before ever seeing justice, some at their own hands, because they couldn't take what a situation which was completely outside of themselves and their control.

We discussed what monetary compensation should look like and we both agreed that financially people should be put back into the position they were in prior to it happening, which is the generally accepted position, but we discussed how that should be 'in real terms'. When we talk about something using the phrase 'real terms' it's often talking about real terms pay cuts, where pay cuts are below the rate of inflation, so although you receive more money, you get less (for want of a better word) stuff for that money and so you didn't really get a pay rise. Even though it can be difficult to prove the position people were previously in, or it can be difficult to put a number on what that looks like, if someone was getting ready to buy a house (which is a really bad example in some ways, but not in others) then they should be returned to the position where they are able to buy a house. Now, obviously it is unlikely that they would be able to buy the same house that they had been looking at, but if for example they were looking at a three bedroom house in a 'nice' area, then we're not compensating them if after any form of payout they're having to look at buying a one bedroom flat in a tower block or something similar. In effect, we should be looking to put them back to where they were or better. 

As much as I don't like the idea of the Americanisation of the UK, and the fact that people will sue each other over anything these days, when we talk about compensation we can only talk about money, and that is rubbish because more often than not, what people have lost is not money. 

A different friend was in an accident, and the impact of that accident has undoubtedly shortened his life. It has changed his appearance, his ability to cope, even his personality to an extent, and whilst he 'got a payout' we had a discussion once where he said he would give all of the money back to have a body that works, a normal life span, and not to be exceptionally close to a panic attack every time there's a dicey moment in the car (which with the way people drive, happens a lot). The money that he was given, the money he was deemed to be owed, won't extend his life, nor does it remove all of the difficulties he has, and it hasn't allowed him to course correct and get back to the life he had planned and was working towards, but nothing really can. The money does mean he can do things like paying for cleaners so he doesn't have to struggle with it, and he can pay for taxis so he doesn't have to drive. To some degree he could choose to spend that money pampering himself, like trips to Bali every year or something, which might not be the life he planned, but it's a pretty good life.

It seems to me that what is being discussed for these former Post Masters and Mistresses is one fixed figure, as though the experiences of everyone is one fixed thing. There is some acknowledgement that that isn't true, because there's one figure for those who weren't convicted and a higher figure for those who were, but again this suggests that the experiences of each, and what each lost is either one or the other. There's something impersonal about it, and that doesn't feel right. Whilst anything more wouldn't be quick, the whole thing hasn't been quick. It's been going on for so long, and it's been such a long fight that I think it would be better if these payments were more of an interim whilst a better assessment was made so that those who were impacted even more significantly are able to receive a sum that 'makes them whole' as though anything ever can, but without having to wait for all of the sums to be done. They should be able to get their lives back on track from now. By rights, they should have been able to do this a lot of years ago. 

I Stopped Posting, But Didn't Stop Writing,

I've managed to stick to the whole thing of writing every day, but I haven't been posting because life got busy and I couldn't write in a coherent way I was happy to post and I always didn't want to restrict myself from writing about the things that I wanted to write about which I couldn't post about because they're not just about me and my life. 

So I've spent the last nearly a week off of work - on planned leave - and as much as I had a list as long as my arm of things I wanted to do, I haven't done a lot of it, and I honestly have to say that I'm kind of glad. As much as it means those things are still sat there waiting to be done, I've given myself time to rest, sleep and deal with how tired I have been feeling. 

It made me realise that I was struggling to get enough sleep and it is also making me really glad that I am going to be going to see the ADHD clinic soon, because the hope is that I can be prescribed some medication that will make things easier, but I also know that there are no magic pills that make life easy and that 'fix' every 'problem' I have. 

Anyway, as short and sweet as this was, I'm going to try and get back to posting every day without punishing myself if I can't. 

Why Don't You Just, (It Puts The Lotion on The Basketcase,)

There is a quest I really hate when it comes to me saying I'm having a bad day and someone trying to make a suggestion. I'm not sure if it's the question itself that annoys me or if it's the inclusion of the word 'just'. Using the word 'just' in this sort of context makes things seem little or simple, and the problem with that is it can really minimise what is happening for another person. Whilst de-escalating someone from catastrophising is a good thing, making something that seems huge to them seem small can actually really undermine what you're trying to do because you make the person feel small or you make them feel stupid or, and I would argue that this is the worst one, you make them feel misunderstood. I will admit, I also hate being made to feel like I'm being melodramatic about a small thing when it's really upsetting me, but then again a big thing to remember is that it's not just that seemingly tiny moment; it's everything that has gone into that tiny moment. 

Yesterday I felt like I was close to ripping my own skin because I couldn't stop scratching where a particularly irritating label kept prickling at my skin. I was at home, I was trying to focus and I was trying to work, but every time I moved in a certain way this label took another swipe at my skin to the point where I felt sick, because I was just too overstimulated. I chopped the label out of the t-shirt but still felt like I could feel it, because it wasn't just about the label; it was everything else that added to the overwhelm I was feeling. Ridiculously, I have owned that shirt for a lot of years. It has irritated me before and I've considered chopping the label out before but I didn't because it has the washing instructions on it and I might need them, but yesterday I decided to do it anyway because that was one of the problems I could solve. And because I don't own a tumble dryer anyway so it's not like I'm going to accidentally put it in one because I forgot that it won't go in one. (Saying this, I don't look at the labels even when I have access to a tumble dryer - I effectively risk assess on what I am happy to risk in the dryer. Do I care if it gets destroyed? Yes. Am I sure it can be dried? No. Guess it's not going in. Do I care? No. *Fling in.* Neeeeext. That kind of thing.)

I've been told, why don't you just wear something you don't react to? Funny that. Maybe because I wanted to feel like there was something not quite scratching at my skin all day to the point that it makes me want to scream. Sound reasonable? No. Well that's because the answer is I have no idea what sets it off. I don't know if I have a reaction of my skin feeling like it's on fire because of something physical (other than wool. Proper wool and I are not friends) like maybe detergent, even when I use fairy or sensitive or safe for babies kinds of detergent, or if it's something mental and the way it comes out is the compulsive need to scratch an itch that is more mental than physical. 

Yesterday I went into the office in a t-shirt that is so soft I don't think I have ever had any sort of issue with it, other than being cold in it when it was one of the only things I could wear and my favourite sweater, which I've worn a lot of times before and been fine in. Was it something I ate? I don't think so. Or drank? I don't think so, but who the hell knows? 

Sometimes saying 'why don't you just...' makes it feel like it's my fault. It's like, you're feeling stressed out, overwhelmed, upset and generally a bit s**t because you were not prepared enough. Ridiculously, I had a change of clothes in a bag ready to go into the car (though I can't remember whether they made it to the car or not) in case something like this happened, but honestly, I can't make any guarantee that whatever I changed into wouldn't have been just as bad because I was wearing some of my favourite clothes which are my favourite because they are comfortable and not just because I like the colour or the design. To some degree it's the fit and to a bigger degree, it's been that I have been comfortable in them before. Even my snow boots. Ninety nine percent of the time they are fine, but on very odd occasions they pinch on one toe. 

I know people are trying to help, I appreciate people are trying to help, but sometimes, it really doesn't help because saying 'just wear something you don't react to' is not a simple problem to solve.

(The brackets were added after the original title, and the reason I had to add it is because it's the second thing today that made me laugh more than expected. It's not a term I generally use, other than in the colloquial sense of a barely-functioning or non-functional person and only ever towards myself, and partly because it launches me into something else I wanted to say. Is lotion (Brits, read moisturiser) one of the biggest hoaxes going? I've always been told I itch because I have dry skin. I really don't think I do, and if I did, moisturiser or 'lotion' would make it better, surely, but the vast majority of the time, I put the stuff on and it doesn't make anything worse (as in, I'm not having a reaction to the cream) but it doesn't make things any better, which makes me think it's either got to be some form of allergy or intolerance that I am yet to figure out, or it is all in my head. Or, lotion, moisturiser, body cream, whatever, does nothing, and Christ only knows why I have so many bottles of it in the bathroom and why it is forever included in any holiday gift sets other than to make the present look better than just a couple of bottles of things like body spray and body wash.)

Doing That Thing I Hate,

Yeah, I know that could be a very, very long list of things but I really do hate writing about not writing, but sometimes that is what it comes to. 

I wanted to write this, because even though I have been writing every day it hasn't been a blog, but I have managed to publish a blog every day and that's been feeling pretty good. Even though I haven't necessarily been publicising them every day - even when I have had photos prepared to post with them since I HATE wordy Insta stories! - because there has been a lot going on. Which I'm not going to talk about. 

Today was my first day in the office this year and it was A LOT to say the least. It meant getting up a lot earlier than I am comfortable with, trying to leave the house with what I needed for the day (and failing not because of forgetting anything, but just not being able to anticipate everything I was going to want or need) spending too long driving and that not being hugely pleasant, realising in the middle of the day something was itching and I wasn't sure if it was my skin or something that just felt itchy in my mind, or in my soul or whatever, and so even though I took my laptop with me to the office (I don't mean the work one, though I obviously did take that one) with the vague intention of writing something on my lunch break, I didn't even take it out of my bag whilst I was there. I was trying to think what I could write whilst I was on the way home and honestly, it was honestly the least inspired I have felt for the whole of this year. I felt empty; devoid of all thoughts and opinions, and let's face it, that's not like me at all. 

What changed was the closer I got to home, once I had collected the pooch from my parents, the more I felt I was getting my groove back. That's not to say I walked into the house and felt like I could write a novel in five days, or crack out a poem in under twenty minutes, but I felt a bit more like my normal self. I'm still overwhelmed and I still feel like there's an army of ants crawling across my skin, but there's a bit more "Charlie Flavoured Normality", not to be confused with the regular kind, mixed in there. I've sent the pooch to bed early (and yes, I feel very guilty for that, got into bed with a thermos-type tumbler of tea (I don't have anything against mugs, I just don't like drinking cold tea and it's too cold at the moment for me to drink hot tea, because I forget about it), my pjs on and my electric blanket keeping me warm, and I'm writing from my bed. It's not the best idea in terms of sleep, but it does mean I will get this published before midnight and I think that will soothe some of my ruffled up feathers as well.

I even thought about outlining the plot of another novel (yes, I know, finish those you are currently writing before getting distracted by any more!) before I realised it was a bit like a film that I love, without the intention of being, so decided not to bother. 

Language,

No, this is not going to be one of my lengthy diatribes about how the English language fails us on a daily basis, making it more difficult than it should be to express a point of view for no obvious reasons, but something of an apology, but also not. 

I've oscillated between swearing and not swearing on this blog, and it can be tedious trying to keep up with the should I, shouldn't I argument of it. I tend to try and either switch words out for something else that makes it obvious what the intended word was, or remove letters and put in *s in their place, but sometimes, I don't want to do that. And for anyone who has met me in person, particularly lately, I am a bit of a Sweary Mary. 

Over Christmas, this has been a point of contention. One of my parents says (or yells) Stop f***ing swearing, and I say no. It's either an instruction or sometimes a question (can you stop, will you stop) and the answer is still no. It was a topic of conversation that an elderly relative doesn't like it when I swear, but they let the men in the family swear like sailors (and blames it on a lifestyle - I can't help but roll my eyes). I was told they think 'it's not lady like' to which I replied, 'have they met me?' The times where I act like a lady are few and far between and I will also add that one of my favourite memes (and occasionally sayings when people get on my nerves about it too much) is 'I do not spit profanity, I enunciate it, like a f***ing lady.' 

Firstly, I'm not actually sitting (or standing or lying or anything else) calculating what I'm going to say and then peppering it with swear words for good measure - what comes out of my mouth is the way I have thought it. I'm mostly not offended by swear words though there are some I try and use more sparingly, though lately with more limited success. I try and be a little more contained around aforementioned relative but that's less to not offend their (quite frankly ridiculous) sensibilities and more because I do not have the energy for the argument, nor do I fancy the headache from the nagging. The excuse that they don't want to hear it often gets trotted out, but I don't want to hear a lot of the things that they say either because of the nature of what it is, however arguing on that one is also always my fault. (And sadly - I'm not sad about it - I'm not very good at just saying nothing and lettig it all go.) 

But the more important thing for me is this. Language is a personal thing. There are plenty of things which make me uncomfortable about the way that people use language - particularly when it changes so fast I have no idea what the young people I work with are talking about - but that's life. As long as people aren't swearing at each other, being racist or sexist or anything else of that ilk, trying to police the way that other people express themselves really p*sses me off. I've been in a situation where people have tried to tell me that I shouldn't swear because they don't like it, and a lot of the time, I want to response by just saying, I don't care. I'm not generally a person who wants to make other people uncomfortable, but that doesn't mean I will willingly let other people police my behaviour when it's not actually harming people. 

(When I'm in charge of children, I obviously behave differently, though sometimes that means walking away, and making sure people know if I'm walking away, not to follow me, unless they want to deal with an angry me, which is likely to include me swearing. The children just know not to follow me and are looked after by someone else whilst I work whatever it is that's winding me up out of my system.) 

I'm Not Actually As Disorganised As I Look,

 It would be very easy to walk into my house, you know, if you were invited, and think, jees, you have no organisational structure to your life at all, and honestly, you would be forgiven, at least to some degree, for thinking that. I am a bit scatterbrained. I forget things a lot, I get confused a lot and inevitably I walk out of the house with the feeling that I'm going without something literally every time I go anywhere, and sometimes, it's a whole list. Most of the time, that is okay, because for most things you can replace them pretty easily where you're going. I regularly get to camps early because I know I will need to drive off and find something that I have realised I have forgotten. I'm also good at remembering things other people will have forgotten and other people do that for me and generally, we all muddle along pretty well. There will always be a time when you forget mugs, well, there was that time I forgot mugs anyway, there will always be someone who forgets a chair. There will always be multiple people who forget chairs.

Organisation is something I try to achieve but unfortunately there is no one linear way to do things, so inevitably things go missing not because they're stored illogically or in the 'wrong place' but because I can't remember what I thought the right place was when I actually stored it. You know the old joke of keeping something so safe even I don't know where it is, that's me, a hundred percent. I was recently looking for the other book by Dr Richard Shepherd 'Unnatural Causes' whilst reading 'The Seven Ages of Death' - ridiculously I started reading this because I had to wait for Christmas to get the next Bridgerton book, and this was the next "logical" choice - and I was somewhat obsessed with the idea that it was on one of the bookshelves, effectively filed with other books which were the sort that aren't best sellers, but almost like current W H Smith most recommended or something, which would have put it in the same place as 'The Hate You Give' and Hibo Wardere's 'Cut'. I kept looking in the same place, partly because when I last thought I had lost a book, that was where it turned up. Annoyingly, I could see the previous missing title - my beloved 'Before I Go To Sleep' by S J Watson, but I could not find 'Unnatural Causes'. I'm pretty impressed though because I knew I had it. Like, I KNEW. There have been multiple occasions over my life where I have ended up with two copies of the same book because I forgot I had it already, so I impressed myself knowing I had it, even though I was irritated as fluff that I didn't know where it was.

This isn't just some lengthy thing so I can go on about all of the wonderful books that are taking up the shelves of my library guest room merge storage area, but just simply trying to explain that I was looking in a very logical place for it, not just for one reason - it was one of those books that was highly recommended at the time - but also because it was a place I had previously located something which had been missing. It turned out that the damn thing was in the equally logical position of being the opposite side of the room in a stack which sits atop the books which are properly shelved - I refuse to believe I have too many books, I just don't have a proper way to store them - with the likes of Adam Kay's 'This Is Going to Hurt'. Why? Because I sorted the books on that side of the room by genre, or at least started to, and so there is a whole section on crime fiction, there is a whole bit on serial killers, there's all the war time stories like 'Bread, Jam and a Borrowed Pram', everything animal related, Jojo Moyes has her own section, there's the LGBTQIA+ fiction stack and there is the pile of medical books. There's a few different nurses' stories, there's a prison doctor's story, and there is one of the most recent books that ripped my heart out, 'When Breath Becomes Air'. 

Somehow, despite the fact that there was some emotional turmoil deciding where 'When Breath Becomes Air' should live because I was torn between putting it with 'The Fault In Our Stars' to have a little epic books that made me cry hysterically section, having it with the other medical books where it ended or putting it on one of these gorgeous house shaped shelves that are above the guest bed, because that's where some of my very favourite books are. A few NaNo novels live up there - yes, including the proof copy of mine - 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' is up there, there's a few Jodi Picoult's and the only reason Jojo Moyes didn't end up there is because she's written too many books for me to put them all up there and I can't bare to separate them. 

Okay, that did turn into a bit of a tangent. 

The point is, even when I am very deliberate and very specific with trying to be organised, it doesn't always work, particularly when it comes to issues with object permanence; if I can't see it, it doesn't exist, but it becomes an, if I can't see it, I can't find it, because who knows what system I filed it by. So many things come into this and it's also one of those 'if I put it down it is lost' situations which is why I need to figure out what I'm doing with something when I'm looking at it, or I need to do a task when I pick it up, because if I put it down, God only knows when I will find it again to sort it, and some things just don't work like that, do they? 

In A World Full of the Word Yes, I'm Here to Scream,

 I cannot emphasise enough how entranced with Fall Out Boy I am at the moment, and I love the song that they performed with Elton John, so much I quoted it for a blog title. And honestly, it's applicable both in its current form and with the next word. (No.) 

On my list of bad habits there are two significant entries. I get super into things, like baking, chocolate making, climbing and all sorts of other things, and I am obsessed for an indeterminate period of time, and then I kind of stop having time for it. It's not that I go off it as such, but just that it stops being the centre of my life. It's not always because I've found something else to do, but almost like the motivation has left me. I've also got a bad habit of buying everything I think I will ever need for sad hobby very early on and being a bit all the gear and not much idea. 

Tonight, after logging off of work I decided that I was finally going to get around to starting making something I've been thinking about for literally years. It's going to be a bit of a long process, but right now, I don't care, I just wanted to start. A few years ago I saw an awesome chocolate mold that was shaped like Christmas trees and I thought I could make something which is effectively a riff on a walnut whip, without the walnuts and with some special Christmas-y ingredients. It took me a while to find the mold again on eBay when I eventually decided to do them and this last year, I forgot that I had the mold until too late in the day to make them for Christmas 2023. If I don't at least have a go at making them, not using the word crack because I don't want to curse them when they come out of the fridge, I don't know if I'll do it this year. 

I wanted to make them with tempered chocolate, but tempering chocolate is a process which requires more patience than I actually have, so I gave up in the middle. I wasn't convinced the thermometer was working right, I wasn't convinced I had guessed the amounts of chocolate right (God only knows where I have put my scales) and I wasn't convinced that I could keep a bowl of tempered chocolate at the right temperature once it was done for long enough for me to fill the bottom of the molds and then brush enough chocolate for a shell up the sides. Honestly, I think it might need to be done in layers next time, because there is going to be quite a tough piece of chocolate at what will form the top of the whip from where it all dribbled down inside. (Though this won't necessarily be a bad thing, because I was thinking about blow torching the top ever so gently and quickly so I could stick a star in the top, though now I think that that might be a little too delicate, so I might just melt some white chocolate in a piping bag and pipe a messy star not the top. I'm also debating icing sugar snow over the top as well, but that's going to have to wait for me to see how they look when they come out. I've also considered putting tiny coloured hundreds and thousands into the melted chocolate before putting it into the mold but I'm not sure it will work out properly.)

I've also considered where I can make them as tea cakes and also considered whether I can make green chocolate, but the easiest chocolate to colour is white chocolate, and white chocolate is probably going to be way too sweet for the other ingredients I want to put into the middle of them.

Anyway, tangent, I would normally be considering something like getting a chocolate tempering machine, but for one thing, I'm well aware of the fact I will likely get bored pretty quickly, but also, they're really expensive and I'm not sure that tempering chocolate is ultimately worth it. Yes, it makes it shiny, yes, it makes it stronger, but it's so much effort...

But I'm proud of myself for not doing my ultra impulsive thing of just going for getting something that will just take up space in my house. Even if doing the tempering without a machine makes me want to scream. I think I just need more practice. (And more chocolate).