News - Week Starting 26th Oct

(This uninspiring titling of my notes is starting to become a habit. Sorry.)

It's been a strange week. A bit up and down - and no, pervs, not in *that* way. My hormones are all over the place, and I've spent much of my time lying in the bath, or lying in bed, or lying across the kitchen table, because my kidneys hurt and flat is the most comfortable position for me. Of course, there are times when I have to sit up straight - I went to class yesterday, and I had to sit in a straight-backed chair for two hours, and then wait for forty minutes at the bus stop on a slanted seat that I kept falling off - remind me never to wear a velvet jacket or skirt to class again; I slip off the seats too much - and that was pretty agonizing.

The other main downfall of the hormone surges, of course, is that I've eaten half the Halloween candy, and as soon as I finish here I have to go to Tesco and buy some more.

Class was good, though. I brought lollipops for everyone to eat, which was fun, and I'm really warming up to our teacher, as well as the other people in the class. About a third of the original class seems to have dropped out - either that or they've been ill for several weeks - and we're now down to about 15 of us, so we sit on two big tables and are very loud (and probably slightly obnoxious, but nobody seems to mind, although Magdalena - our teacher - doesn't always seem to get our humour). All in all, it's a great class. It seems wrong somehow that you should have so much fun LEARNING. Part of me wonders if I'm going to walk away from the class knowing anything at all, since half the time we seem to chat and laugh, but then at the same time I do feel like I'm learning quite a lot. It's a challenge, and I like that; it's been too long since I did something that used the learning part of my brain.

It's always a long night - class is only two hours, from 7-9pm, but with all the buses I usually leave the house at 5.40 and get home about 10.15 - IF the buses come. I'm supposed to take the 9.28 from Hatfield to Alby, and then the 9.56 from Alby town to home, but not once in four weeks has the 9.28 arrived. Which means I end up on the 9.45 (which is usually a few minutes early), panicking the whole time about whether I'll make the 9.56, or if I'll have to wait another hour - because the S3 (or is it S2?) only comes once an hour at that time of night - or take a cab, or walk. None of which are particularly nice options, because either way it means I don't get there before the Chinese takeaway closes.

Luckily, though, I've always managed to make the 9.56, although a couple of times that's only because I took my shoes off and ran for it. So my Tuesday nights have so far always had the same routine - class, buses home, pick up some chicken chow mein and a can of Lilt, go home, say hi to Mom, take a bath, and eat my noodles in bed while I read a good book. Wonderful.

Monday I went to Homebase and bought paint. I'm painting my bedroom pale pink. It hurts to paint it, a little - the peppermint green has seen me through a lot of good and bad times, and when the colour changes and I put away some of the decorations, and buy a bed, the whole character of the room is changed. And you all know how I hate change. I last painted the room back in summer of 2002, when we moved back into the house after living in Spain, and I've been holding off redecorating for several years because of all the memories.

When you keep things looking the same, you can remember better, and there's a lot of things that happened in that room that are worth remembering. Not all of them are particularly happy things, but all of them are events that helped to shape the person that I am today. Part of me is scared that when everything looks different, then I'll be different too, and I'll start to forget all the people I've known and loved in the last seven years. If they were all still part of my life, it would be easier, but some of those people are long gone. I suppose the issue isn't really the room at all, it's the fact that I miss them. I miss Richard, and Curt, and Sanjit, and everyone else who's no longer a big part of my life.

No matter how much I tell myself that change is healthy, change is a vital part of life, I still hate it, and probably will until I die. But I do it anyway, because it needs to be done. :)

So the green is going. And the mattress on the floor, where I've been sleeping since Richard was sharing the room with me that summer, is going too. My cardiologist said that I have to have a bed, so I'm getting a bed. After much deliberation between a couple of very different beds, I decided to go with the one that I wouldn't normally pick. Usually I go for natural woods that are simple and low to the ground, and admittedly those are the ones that I automatically gravitated towards this time. In fact, I had one all picked out, until I realised that it was an almost carbon copy of Curt's bed - or at least the one he had when I last saw it, a few years ago - which freaked me out a little.

So I pushed the changes, and now the one that I've picked is very different. It's metal, ivory-coloured with brass bedknobs, and very Victorian-looking, but not ugly. Perhaps if it were a dark colour it might look weird and gothic, but the ivory-colour makes it quite pretty and elegant. It'll go well in a pink room, and Mom bought me a new door handle - pale blue, with a crystal effect to it - and I'm going to buy some matching knobs to put on my furniture. And I've been saving pretty things for years, that I've got as Christmas and birthday presents and have never been able to put out because they didn't go with the decor before. I have an antique-effect oval mirror with enamel dragonflies at the top and bottom, and a butterfly jewellery box, and an incense burner with crystal beads, and at least fifty beautiful candles. I have photo frames with silk and beadwork, and crystal prisms to hang in my window, and silk pillowcases with lace. I have beautiful white Egyptian cotton bed linen with a broderie trim that makes me feel like a Victorian bride, and beige-and-raspberry silk bed linen with Japanese cherry blossom on that Mom gave me last birthday. I intend to paint the frame of my boring wood-effect long mirror in a pretty sky-blue colour, and possibly to paint the melamine dressing table and nightstand, which I've had since I was seven years old, to match.

It's been many years since I had a girly bedroom, and it's never been *this* girly. I had flowered wallpaper when I was seven or eight, but since I started choosing my own decorations when I was about ten, I've gone for things that are more androgynous. My room at the moment is a nice room, but if you didn't know who lived there you might not know whether it was a girl or a boy's room, aside from the clothes and jewellery and stuff. I have bright colours, splashy pillows, African and Native American masks on my walls. For a few years, though, I've been yearning for lace and ribbons, and my fear of losing my memories has held me back.

(Quite ironic, if you think about it.)

But I'm doing it. I'm making the leap. And it's going to look beautiful. I just hope that any friends I have staying over - guys, really - don't feel like they're going to break things. Guys always seemed to like the unisex look that I went for, and I'm a little bit worried about how my male friends will react to the change. It should be OK, though - they seem to have reacted positively to the changes in my person over the last few years (or at least most of them have). And even if they react badly...hell, it isn't really their business, anyway. It's *my* room. I don't know why I even worry about this stuff.

OK, what else? Class, room...hmm. I'm not sure what else there is to report for the last week. I came into town today to use the library and pick up work, and found that my last paycheck didn't go through, which was a pain in the ass. (Yes, Paul, that was a direct dig at you.) So I'm overdrawn at the bank again. Unfortunately I didn't find this out until AFTER I bought a couple of things, because I was relying on the paycheck being there. So now I have to go home, sort through bank statements, borrow money from the savings to put in the bank to cover the overdraft so I only get charged once, and then come back tomorrow or Friday to put the money in. I'm really pissed, because there should have been enough money to go to CeX and buy some games for my DS, and now there isn't. Bleh. I wanted to do some more Christmas shopping, too. And I wanted some more songs from iTunes.

Yesterday I finally caved into pressure from Kell, and agreed to model for him. We did a Halloween theme, so it was actually a lot of fun, and while my costume was skimpier than I'm used to wearing, I didn't have to do any nudes. (Thank God - I'm not comfortable enough with my body yet to get back to doing that. Although I probably will have to force myself to be, because I need the money.)

Unfortunately we finished late, so I didn't have a chance to change before I went to class, although I did manage to put on a slightly longer skirt and a cami under the jacket I was wearing. So I turned up to class in an ankle-length black velvet jacket, cut low to show plenty of cleavage, and held together at the bust by only two buttons, then flowing down to show the skirt underneath, along with smoky grey and black eyeshadow, eyeliner, mascara and blood-red lipstick, with red flowers in my hair and on my handbag. God only knows what the people in class must have thought - I tend to be pretty conservative in my clothing, and as for makeup I rarely wear more than face base and eyeshadow, with a little blush if I'm looking peaky that day. Certainly lipstick and mascara are things I wear maybe twice a year, and eyeliner not much more often.

Despite the embarrassment, it was actually quite fun, and I looked kind of neat. So I'll probably repeat it again on Saturday for the trick-or-treaters.

Ah yes. Candy. Don't forget to buy candy. Damn, I'd better check and see how much change I've got in my purse.

I've been reading a lot of Poe for the last week, and I'm nearly finished with the book I bought last Wednesday, so today I bought the matching book - "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque". I've never read most of the stories in it, so I'm really looking forward to it. Although I may have to take a break for a little while; some of the stories in "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" really unsettled me. "The Fall of the House of Usher" was very haunting, and "The Masque of the Red Death" and "MS Found in a Bottle" gave me intense flashbacks to nightmares that I've had for my whole life. By far the worst for me, though, was "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar", which makes me shiver every time I think of it.

Interestingly, I mentioned the fact that a lot of my nightmares seem to have come out of Poe stories that I'd never read - I'd previously only read a few of his that I know of - and she told me that she thought she might have read him to me when I was a little girl. Certainly she said she remembered reading some of the poetry to me when I was learning to read. Which is something I never ever knew before, and brings up the question, WTF? Who on earth reads Poe to a two-and-three-year-old?

Well, apparently my mother does.

...I don't want to give you the impression that she's a bad mother or anything, she's just...I don't know. She has a lot more faith in me than I deserve. She's always had this assumption that I'm so much more mature and intelligent and capable than I actually am, and I've never wanted to disabuse her of that notion, so whenever she did something with me as a kid that probably wasn't age-appropriate - like buying me "Pretty Woman" for my sixth birthday, to teach me the facts of life - I just sort of sat and got on with it. Truly, I probably didn't realise until I was nine or ten that not everyone grew up the same way that I did. I always thought that the kids loved coming to my house because they liked me, but in hindsight I realise that probably a lot of it was due to the fact that they'd get an education that they never got at home. That said, my Mom was always overprotective when it came to letting me do things alone, and she was much more involved in my life than any of my friends' parents. She certainly wasn't neglectful or anything; in fact she was quite the opposite. But some of her ideas of what kids should and shouldn't be exposed to are...well, liberal, to say the least.

Which I suppose I should celebrate, since my upbringing has made me into a person who's generally happy, generally confident, and can cope with just about anything, despite the nightmares. Very little surprises me, even less shocks and horrifies me, and there are very few things in the world that I can't deal with. And if the price for that is a slight aloofness, a slight sense of distance from the rest of the world, and occasional accusations of being unemotional and too cerebral...well, it's not a high price at all.

It's not like I don't CARE, after all. I care. I'm just not controlled by my emotions.

Although that said, I had a pretty freak-out moment today. I found a child. I was in Wilkinson, buying masking tape and potato chips, and I came across a little boy sitting in one of the seldom-used aisles at the back of the shop, playing wiith the displays and eating a packet of custard creams. He couldn't have been more than three, and I'm guessing it was more like one-and-a-half or two. And I had no idea what the heck to do. He didn't seem to belong to anyone, and I searched up and down a couple of the aisles on either side, looking to see if his parent might have left him there while he / she was getting something one aisle over, but nobody was there. I couldn't walk away to find the security guard, because he was right at the other end of the (fairly big) shop, and the kid might have moved by then, or got snatched or something. If he'd been crying or seemed upset in any way, I'd have picked him up and taken him to security, but he was just sitting there happily, eating his cookies and playing by himself, and I thought that if I picked him up I might upset him. So I just stood there for ten minutes or so, waiting to see if a parent would appear, and none did. So I sat down next to him, and asked him if he knew where his Mummy or Daddy was, and at first he didn't want to talk, but then he said he didn't know. I asked if he was here with Mum, and he didn't know. And I asked if he was here with Dad, and he said no. And I asked if he was lost, and he said he didn't know. And I just kept thinking, what if I take him to information, and while I'm doing that his parent comes back to find him and thinks I'm trying to steal him?

I should mention here that I have NO idea of how to relate to children. I'm not a kiddie person. I like them well enough, and I can feed them and change a diaper and stuff, but aside from the physical needs I really don't know anything about how to take care of them. I especially don't know how to talk to them, and tend to treat them as very small adults. So I didn't know what else to ask, so I just sat there and played with him for a little longer.

I suppose if many more minutes had passed, I'd have had to take him to the information desk and see if he knew his name, and have them put out an announcement. Luckily a frantic mother showed up a couple of minutes later. Turned out that she'd turned around to pick something up, and in that half a minute the kid had toddled off, and she'd been searching the entire store for him for the last twenty minutes. God knows how he'd gotten all the way to the back corner by himself. And I felt kind of bad about that, because if I'd taken him in as soon as I found him then she'd have got him back sooner, but hell, I did the only thing I knew how to do. The whole episode scared the crap out of me much more effectively than anything Poe's written.

So yeah, it was a strange day. Strange week. I don't know what else is going on with Ryan's situation; Lauren isn't talking about it much. She and Chris have both had bad colds this week, and she's working so hard, and I think she's just lost the energy to fight. But she needs to fight, because the last thing that Social Services said was that if he was living with her, they weren't going to pay to support him. So basically they're saying that they're refusing to support a homeless minor. And I told her, you have to push them, and when that doesn't work, push harder. We do not live in a country where we let children go without home and food. You hear the liberals talking about all the starving homeless kids here, but most of it is bunk. The government isn't perfect - hell, it isn't even good - but they don't let kids live on the streets if their parents kick them out. They either go into the care of a family member, or they go into foster care, and either way the carer gets a government subsidy. And yet that's what they're saying to Lauren, apparently. "Either you support your brother, or he can go be homeless." So I can only assume that there's been some kind of misunderstanding, on either end. I'm not entirely sure what to do about it, to be honest. I haven't been invited to do anything about it, and on the one hand it's not really my business. Yes, this is what I do for a living, but Lori and Ryan aren't part of my work life, they're friends. And until she asks me to help, there isn't really much I can do. She's not even getting any support from her Dad - apparently he's been told that until the maintenance situation is sorted out in court, he's not allowed to give her any money, which is the biggest load of balls I've ever heard. If a parent wants to give money to a child to help them out with something, it's not anybody's business but theirs.

Then on the other hand, I worry.

*sigh*

This note has been overly long, I'm sure, and Tesco closes in a little under an hour, so I'd better leave you guys there. I don't want y'all to think that things are bad right now - they're really not. Aside from worrying about Lauren and worrying about Ryan and worrying about Mom and worrying about money, things are going pretty well. Class is great, the autumn is great, and hopefully tonight we'll get out the Halloween decorations. Normally we'd have had them up weeks ago, but we've all been busy and tired. I need to go to the gym tomorrow, and hopefully that'll give me a bit more energy. :)

I also need a date. It's been a while since I had one of those, and Chris - Chris Kennedy - has ordered me to take some time for fun.

Enjoy your Halloween! And give out treats - it's only once a year, after all. :)

News - Week Starting 19th Oct

So sue me, I can't think of a better title than that. :P

School is going well. I still haven't bought any jeans to wear (and won't until I get rid of some of the fat off my belly - what's the point of buying jeans that I'll only be able to wear - hopefully - for a month or two?) but I'm dressing a bit more sharply. Less skirtage, more bling. Sneakers and a hoodie yesterday, although that wasn't my choice; I have blisters on my toes and it's too cold to wear suede or velvet and not cold enough to wear my long wool coat or my parka.

The weather is being crazy here. October isn't supposed to be this cold, but last year it snowed before Halloween - we usually don't get snow here until late December, or even January or February - and this year looks like it may well do the same. So my nice little autumn clothes are all useless, because I'm stuck in boots and sweatshirts. Bleh.

But anyway, yeah. Class is good. Hard, but good. We learned - allegedly - a lot of vocabulary last night, but I can't remember any of it yet, since I haven't had a chance to revise.

The campus is really great. Did I say that last week? Probably. And the guys are cute. (Sorry Lindsay, I guess we'll have to agree to differ on that point. I actually *like* the dodgy ones, LOL.) I love uni, and I love autumn, and I'm really having a great time. Everything is so full of life at the moment; there's so much promise in the air, and I'm really feeling exuberant about the season. (You can probably tell this by the overusage of semicolons. Normal people overuse exclamation points when they're excited, I overuse semicolons and hyphens.)

The nostalgia comes and goes. Yesterday I kept seeing people I thought I knew, and even though it never turned out to be them, the almost-sight of them brought me back. While I was waiting for the bus (the third bus of six that I took yesterday, I'm sorry to say) I saw a girl who looked so much like Sanjit that I had to do a double-take, and a triple, and a quadruple. She didn't have Sanjit's lovely curves, but the face was perfect. And then on the bus home from Hatfield, there was a guy whose body was the perfect double for Richard's. He even SMELLED like Richard, which is funny, because after six years I wouldn't have thought that I remembered what Richard smelled like, but it turns out that I do.

I'm back at the gym, although not heavily. The cardiologist gave me the OK, and that's enough for me, but Mom worries - I guess it's a mom thing - so I've promised to go easy. This means no 3-hour sessions, at least not for awhile. But any exercise is better than none, and it was nice to sit in the sauna and soak up the warmth; I've been cold for weeks. I met a guy in the sauna the other day, actually. It was a very strange encounter. You ever meet a person and you just know instinctively, Oh my Lord, I know this person. Not know as in, we've met before. KNOW, deep down. I'm not necessarily talking on a spiritual level...or maybe I am, I don't know. It's not something I can explain - it's not something I can even analyse properly, although not for lack of trying. But I saw him, and I thought he was cute, and the longer we sat there - even without talking much - the more and more I felt like I knew him well. He wasn't even my type, really. I guess he was good-looking, but he had the type of looks that aren't particularly striking or memorable. And yet I know I won't forget his face.

The best description I can give, really, is that he looked gentle. Sweet. Kind. And very smart. OK, so sweet and kind and smart IS my type, but I usually go for sweet and kind and smart when it comes wrapped up in pretty paper. What can I say, I haven't entirely grown up yet. :P

I forgot to ask his name, but I have this strange feeling that it might be David. Just one of those things that I know without knowing, I guess.

It wasn't until I got home and was thinking about him before I went to sleep that I remembered that sometimes I wake up with the name David on my lips, and I've never figured out why, because I don't know many Davids. David Clapworthy and David Airey from high school. David Fruin, my Mom's old friend. David Wolfe, from a book that I like. I can't think of any others, offhand.

Hum.

If any of you tell me I'm romanticizing again, I'll shoot you, because I'm really trying hard not to.

OK, I'm just about done with news. Nothing from Social Services. Nothing major health-wise to tell you. It's been a really good week, but I have a backache now from sitting at the computer for too long, so I'm going to go home. I have a chicken sandwich from Greggs, and Edgar Allen Poe's "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" from Waterstones, and I downloaded a couple of different versions of Pachelbel's Canon in D Major from iTunes, as well as "La Marais" from Jean-Philippe Rameau's "Pieces de Clavecin en Concerts" and a couple of Halloween songs (as a nod to the season), and I've ordered Poe's complete poems from Amazon, so I'm a very happy bunny. (Payday yesterday, can you tell?) So I'm going home to eat chicken and listen to music and take a bath and read Poe.

Enjoy your day, and week. :)

(G - I know you read these, so I'm adding a note here for you because for some reason I can't send notes to you or write on your wall, I have no idea why. Happy birthday! I tried to send you early birthday love last week, but your wall wouldn't accept my post, and then yesterday I couldn't get here because of class and a hospital appointment, and when I finally got here today I STILL couldn't get your wall to work, argh! Hope you had a great day, and here's a hug and a kiss from me, with lots of love being sent your way.)

Aha!

Heart problem solved. But anyone with a medical background, please read and then tell me if it makes any sense, because I've never heard of anything like this and I don't understand it AT ALL.

Apparently I have allergies. Not quite sure what I'm allergic to, but it's something in my house. When something that I'm allergic to enters my personal space (LOL - such a funny term), my bronchioles and alveoli get inflamed. Inflamed alveoli means that I can't get enough oxygen to my bloodstream, and I get nauseous and light-headed. Apparently this (the poor oxygenation, not the nausea and lightheadedness) normally results in cyanosis and eventual tissue damage if it isn't sorted out (kind of like in emphysema, I guess?) but for some reason my heart's compensating by beating faster so I get the oxygen I need.

This is the medical explanation. And I guess it makes sense. I know that my blood is poorly oxygenated, from seeing the colour when I have blood tests, and tests on my oxygen levels in arterial blood (I think) confirmed it. I know that I don't get tachycardic episodes when I'm walking outside, or when I'm at the gym - only at home. I know that when I stay at Phil and Jackie's house, I always feel a whole lot healthier.

But somehow, it just seems weird to me. I don't know why, maybe because I've never heard of anything like this before. Maybe because the episodes come on SO suddenly - sixty or ninety seconds between the nausea and the start of the heart racing. Or maybe I'm just being paranoid.

The problem is that we don't know what exactly I'm allergic to. It's obviously not general street pollution, because I don't get sick when I'm outside. It's probably not animals, because I don't seem to have a problem when I'm at Tony and Debbie's. I don't think it's general dust, because, well, dust is everywhere, although I admit that my house is more dusty than most; Mom and I don't have the energy to clean as well as we should, nor the money to hire a cleaner. (Although I'm seriously thinking of getting someone to come in for a couple of hours a week, even if it means cutting back on expenses elsewhere, or taking some extra modelling jobs.)

So I have my orders. No being around cigarette smoke. If someone smokes in the house, all the doors and windows have to be opened for ten minutes. (Mom is actually being really good about this; I think the whole heart thing really freaked her out.) Change my bed every three to four days, and only use cotton bedding. (I do use cotton anyway, but all that constant laundry is going to be a pain in the butt, especially with the amount of washing Lauren has to do.) Buy a new bed and mattress as soon as I can (money!) and when I do, get the old mattress taken away by the council, and launder my duvet and pillows at 90 degrees. Buy an anti-mite spray for the furniture. (We can't find one. It appears that everyone's stopped making them.) Hoover my bedroom at least once a week, preferably more often, and dust as often as I can. Luckily I don't have carpet in my room, so that helps a lot.

Aside from this, we're just monitoring everything else. I do have some weakness in the heart valves, but she said that unless it gets markably worse, surgery will probably cause more problems than it solves.

So despite all the pain-in-the-ass stuff, I'm happy to have answers. My cardiologist is really nice, and actually listens to me, which is a relief. With most of the doctors I see, they listen to me for the first five minutes, until they ask if I have any other medical conditions, and then as soon as I say "ME" or "fibromyalgia" I see something change in their eyes - it's just like a shutter drops down, and they stop listening. So I'm sending many thanks heavenward for a doctor who doesn't write me off as a hypochondriac, or worse, someone with Munchausen's.

All in all, it wasn't a bad week. I started uni, and I'm not sure how much I like the classes yet, but time will tell. I love the campus, though. It really tickles me that after spending SO much time checking out universities when I was at City & Islington, after having high hopes for Brunel's wonderful reputation, for Royal Holloway's beautiful campus, for Queen Mary's incredible medical labs, for Sussex's laid-back atmosphere, and NONE of them feeling right to me...the one university that feels good, that feels like home, is University of Hertfordshire. Weirdness.

So if I ever decide to do a degree course, I imagine it'll be right here.

Of course, that could be something to do with the people. I love the people on this campus. One thing I did notice, though, is that I don't dress right. I dress like an American college girl from the fifties and sixties, and sometimes like an American college girl from the nineties, but I don't dress English. English college girls do not wear A-line skirts and heels and V-neck sweaters and little preppy twinsets. They don't wear pretty cropped velvet jackets and knee-length suede jackets. They certainly don't wear tartan miniskirts and angora sweaters and penny loafers and hats, the way I think of college girls as being. Some of them wear gym clothes, and the more fashion-conscious ones wear skinny jeans and boots and funky jackets with slogans on and lots and lots of big, big jewellery.

I'm not sure how much I can look like an English girl. I don't wear big fake bling, I wear little delicate silver things decorated with opals or carnelians or amethysts or peridot. I certainly can't wear skinny jeans, and I don't care enough about designers to wear those, even if I could afford them. And I will NOT wear my gym clothes for hanging out; I don't have the money to keep replacing them. BUT...I suppose I can try and find some jeans that look right. Ones with loose legs, not skinny ones, but still closer to normal fashion than the skirts and sweater-sets that I wear now. Jeans and a sweater would be OK. What I really, really want is one of those Diane von Furstenburg wrap dresses, but I suppose that would be too old-fashioned.

Or maybe I should just forget the whole thing. Guys seem to like me the way I am; they consider me to be some exotic creature that's just wandered onto their campus from a completely different world, and that's attractive, apparently. It's funny, because it's the first time in my life I've been considered exotic; most of the time I'm your average girl-next-door.

I dunno, I just want to fit in, but I've never really fit in anywhere. Even the places that I've been comfortable and made friends, like at C & I, I was never really the same as them.

*shrugs*

Anyway, it's been a good couple of weeks, aside from this terrible tiredness that I just can't shake. That, and the autumn is working its magic on me, as ever, and making me yearn for someone to love me. The rest of the year I don't care much either way about relationships - if I have one that feels right, then great, and if I'm single, that's fine too. But from October through until just after Christmas, I have dreams, and memories, and longings. Just about everything memorable that's happened in my romantic life (even the things that weren't really romantic at all) have happened during the October-January period. Julian and I saw the most of each other in the autumn. Curt and I started hanging out in autumn. I became aware of James Painting in October, when he sat beside me and stroked my foot at a party - and why I remember that I don't know; it was just very memorable for some reason. Perhaps because nobody had really caressed me in that way before. Richard and I became a couple in November. Cam and I first met in June, but then I didn't hear anything from him until October, when he called me and we met up. I went to visit Oli for the first time in October. PJ and I first started talking in autumn, I believe - I can't remember exactly, but I do remember talking to him about the wonderful crispness in the air, and how nice is it to put on boots and a jacket and take a walk and breathe that coldness into your lungs.

September through December is my favourite time of the year. Halloween is my actual favourite bit, but the whole of the autumn and early winter fills me with joy, and a little nostalgia too. I look back on all these experiences with happiness, but also with yearning. I miss these people, even the ones I didn't know very well, or who I haven't seen in a long time. I long for someone to hold me, to love me, the way these people made me feel loved, whether it was for an hour or several years. I'm not entirely sure how to go about finding someone, though. I've never known how to find a guy; they just fall into my lap sometimes, but I've never learned how to actively pursue, how to catch someone's interest. Any romantic interests that I've managed in the past have been entirely instinctive.

Maybe someone gives classes for this sort of thing? :D

News - September

I owe you guys a news update, but it'll have to be a fairly short one, because I'm hungry and tired and want to go home.

I haven't been well recently, as you may know. I've been in and out of hospital, having all sorts of tests - ultrasounds on various parts of my body, a whole bunch of scans, trace ECGs, six rounds of blood tests in the last two months, blah blah blah...and nobody seems to have a diagnosis yet. Could be anything. Could be nothing. I feel like hell, so maybe it's not nothing, but then sometimes I feel like hell for no apparent reason. Sorry, I'm not being particularly coherent. I'm just so tired. I can't sleep properly at night, and I've had a cold that kept me in bed for ten days - and with the amount of illness I've had in my life, it lost its novelty a long time ago, and these days something has to be REALLY bad to keep me in bed - and now my immune system has gone into overdrive and the ME is three times as bad as it normally is, and half the time I'm screeching (internally) in pain. And my GP's response? To REDUCE my medications.

Mom isn't any better than I am. She screwed up her back a couple months ago, lifting something she shouldn't have been lifting, and now the doctors are telling her that her spinal cord's gone so thin in places that if she continues the way she's been going, it'll snap and she'll be a paraplegic for the rest of her life. So she can't lift anything more than ten pounds, and she can't bend, and for most people this wouldn't be all that much of a problem, because most people aren't as stubborn as my mother. Most people, their doctor tells them this and they listen, and they wait for someone else to do the things that need doing. But my mom, if she wants a big box picked up, or the furniture moved, or the grocery shopping done, she waits for a couple hours or so, and then if you forget, or are busy doing something else, she does it herself against all medical advice. So I have to be completely vigilant, and do whatever she asks me to, WHENever she asks me to, and not wait for the boys to help, or she'll do it anyway. She needs an operation on it, but God knows when that will be. Most likely it'll put next summer's America plans on hold, though.

God, I'm so tired. I'm so tired of being in pain, and tired of lifting heavy things that I shouldn't be lifting, and tired of taking on badly-paid work just to pay all the stupid bills, and tired of being everything, all the time. A person should have some sort of support network, and not rely on one person for everything they need, physically and emotionally.

Not everything in my life right now is a tragedy, but much of it is exhausting. Lauren's younger brother is now living with us - has been for a month or more, I think - as his Mom and stepdad smacked him around and kicked him out of the house. It's nice having him around, and he's a really sweet boy, but there's that constant worry about what's going to happen to him. He can't or won't go home - I think that even if his Mom decides she wants him back, he won't go, because the stepfather has a history of violence with all three of the older kids - and he really doesn't want to go into care. Understandable, because he's in his last year of school, and only has one more year until he's allowed to live on his own. But for this year, it's worrying. Lauren is trying to get legal guardianship of him, but hell, she's only 19, and is barely managing to support herself, let alone her brother. So they've been onto Social Services, who are being long-winded and as yet unhelpful, although we have had a social worker over to the house to see if it's suitable for him to live in. (Yes, I've stopped walking around in my underwear, LOL.)

The main issue, aside from whether they'll allow a 19-year-old to have legal custody of a 15-year-old, is the money. Lauren works at Wilkinson. She doesn't earn a whole lot of money. Her boyfriend Chris seems to live with us more often than not, and he's a mechanic, but he doesn't have a vast amount of money either. The two of them together do not make enough money to support three people. Dad lives in London and keeps telling Lauren to "handle things". Grandma would take Ryan in, but she lives on a pension, in a one-bedroom flat. So unless Social Services are willing to pay Lauren to be his guardian, he'll have to go into care. Dad pays maintenance to Mom, and has now asked the courts to change the order so that the money goes to Lauren, but it all takes time.

I hope he doesn't have to go into care, and I hope that the three of them don't have to move out of the house into a new place. Sometimes Social Services will only pay for housing if they find the place for you, and other times they'll pay for it anywhere. If I had the money, or a better job, or if I didn't have to look after Mom, I'd take him in myself. He's a sweet boy, and he doesn't deserve all the shit he's gone through recently. (Yeah, I know, nobody deserves stuff like that.) But I'm barely staying afloat as it is. Hell, when I'm this sick, I have trouble looking after myself, let alone Mom. There's no way I can take care of a kid as well, and neither can Mom.

If they decide to give Lauren the money for his rent and food, things will be OK. The five of us - Mom, Lauren, Chris, Ryan and me - have somehow, in the last month, turned into a slightly-odd but nonetheless affectionate family. And while it's a bit crowded having five of us in a three-bedroom house, we manage. If Social Services will pay his rent and food - and it's not unreasonable to hope that they will; they would have to pay his foster parents if he went into care - then Lauren can stop working quite as much as she is right now, and maybe start smiling again. I can only hope.

I wish the SBD were here. I miss him. I haven't seen him around. He hasn't been thinking of me recently, either. I can always hear when I'm on his mind. Although next week I'm going to try to get to Batchwood, if I'm not feeling too fat, and perhaps he'll be there.

The last two weeks, I've lost my joie de vivre, and I'm hoping that this week will help get it back. I hardly ever get sick this early in the autumn - usually I'm fine through to November - and I really want to feel a little better before I've missed the autumn for another year. I've already missed the pickling season, which is one of my favourite parts of the year. My last mango chutney turned out terrible - I put way too much vinegar in it - and I haven't had the chance to make another. At the beginning of the autumn I was taking long walks in the evenings, but I haven't managed to do that since mid-September. However, college finally starts tomorrow, and I'm excited about that. As excited as I manage to get about anything at the moment, anyway. Although I'm praying that it doesn't rain - an hour and a half's commute either way, in the rain, will not be fun.

Payday tomorrow as well, and although the bank will eat up most of it (especially since I wasn't able to work for two of the weeks this month) it's always nice to get paid.

So there's still hope. I'm hoping that Social Services will come through for us, and not throw a 15-year-old boy to the wolves. I'm hoping that my doctors will give me the medications I need. I'm hoping that my cold will clear up enough for me to go back to the gym, because exercise is one of the best pain relievers around. I'm hoping that Mom's back clears up enough that I don't have to be on constant alert. I'm hoping that the weather stays clear - aside from today, when it rained, the last two weeks have been gloriously autumnal. I'm hoping that my classes are interesting, and I meet some good people. Who knows, maybe one of them will be a rich businessman who has to travel to Japan for work, and he'll fall in love with me and take me away from all my problems.

Anyone who says money doesn't buy happiness has never tried to live without it.