News for Christmas

So what's new, you ask?

Not all that much. I've been having a fairly boring couple of weeks. New Years was spent quietly at home. I know we watched a movie, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was, although I think I quite enjoyed it. I have this habit of falling asleep in front of the TV at the moment - I fell asleep on Christmas Day while I was watching "Spirited Away", and I'm really annoyed because I can't remember what happened in it when I saw it once before, and if I want to watch I have to watch the whole thing again because the DVD remote is broken - and yet when I come to bed, I can't sleep, except occasionally in the middle of the day. More and more nights I'm not sleeping at all, which is not good when you have to get up at 7am.

I'm supposed to be serving jury duty this week and next, but I went in today and Monday and spent several hours there, only to find that most of the cases have been cancelled due to people - usually defendants - not showing up. I don't know if I'm more irritated at the people who didn't show up, or the council who didn't grit the roads, which ensured that most of the bus routes bypassed my town today and I was stuck taking cabs, which the court are not going to reimburse me for. It never fails to surprise me that it seems to be the richest towns that have the poorest public services. I know there's a REASON I pay £1800 a year in council tax, but I'm damned if I know what that reason is. It's evidently not so they can grit the roads or repair the paving stones or collect the garbage.

So I've been spending many hours sitting on my backside on an uncomfortable seat, playing Lunar Genesis on my DS, reading several books, doing a bajillion Japanese logic puzzles, and praying that my panties don't fall down, which they've been doing a lot lately. (I don't know if they're too big, or too small, or if the elastic just isn't very good, but a lot of them seem to be doing it.) Also trying not to fall asleep, not entirely successfully. Even the Poetic Edda and Janet Evanovich couldn't keep me awake.

Today I gave up on the "responsible" outfits that I usually wear to court for work, and wore the only thing in my closet that was warm enough - Nike sweatpants and a long red T-shirt, and Guess trainers, because they're the only things I have with good grip. (I swore to myself in autumn that I'd buy snowboots before the first snow hit, because I KNEW it was going to be a harsh winter, but then there was always something else that took all my money.) I have to say, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I'd be attending court in joggers and trainers. I am generally someone who errs on the side of formality in my clothing - while I like jeans and a sweater for shopping or lounging around the house, I'm much more comfortable dressing to the occasion. And to me, court calls for a responsible look. Even at college I'm likely to wear a dress and low heels, or a skirt and sweater if it's cold.

Probably this is due to the fact that at 25, I often look 16, and dressing like a 30-year-old is the only way I can get people to take me seriously. Whatever the reason, I feel more confident if I dress well, and after many years of benevolent - and sometimes less benevolent - irritation, Mom's finally accepted that I am the way I am. I do my own laundry, I buy clothes that are easy-iron or no-iron, and I have yet to embarrass myself by being overdressed.

Christmas was good. Very quiet. Mom and I spent the day lounging around the house, eating copious amounts of incredibly good food, opening even more copious amounts of presents, and napping. Boxing Day we were supposed to go to my brother's house, but my sister-in-law scratched her cornea and had to go to A & E, so we went there on the 27th instead. Luckily, by that time most of the pain had stopped, or so she claimed. This was the first Christmas without Debbie's father - he passed away last January, I think, or maybe it was late December - so it was all a little strange, but we had a nice time. Her mother was there, and two of her three kids, although Jay (her elder son; 21) and Olivia (his girlfriend) had plans that day. But I saw Craig (20) and Christie (23), which was nice.

[The following paragraphs were edited to remove personal information, since I now use proper names.]

Christie and I, particularly, have always got on well, although she's been suffering from an as-yet undiagnosed illness for awhile, so she isn't always feeling up to being sociable.

She did however make an effort to come down, which was much appreciated. I miss her when she's not there. And we generally had a nice day. We played Categories. In case you don't know that one, you each write down four categories on a piece of paper - we always play with animals, plants and countries, and then argue over the fourth one - and then a random letter is chosen, and you have to put down as many things as you can think of that start with that letter. animals include fish and birds and bugs, but not male-female or adult-child differences. Like, you could have cow but not calf. Plants include all fruits and veg, and we generally allow for both common and latin names - if you had S you could have snapdragon, but if you had A you could also have anthirrinum. Countries have to be individually governed and current, although that involves a lot of arguments.

We usually get ten minutes to write down as much as we can think of, although if it's an annoying letter it may only be five minutes. Then we go round the room from person to person, and we read out our lists, and any time someone gets an item that nobody else has, they get a point.

Craig usually wins, because he seems to know everything about everything. I always knew he was smart, but I didn't realise quite how smart until this year. It's a little disconcerting for me, because until my brain damage I was generally used to being the smartest person in a room, but now Craig outstrips me by leagues, and probably would even before the brain damage occurred and I lost a couple dozen IQ points. That said, I did manage to rack up an impressive 16 points on the S letter, and won that game. (Craig won the T game, and Christie won the M game.)

Theoretically my brother should win, because he's both a fisherman and a pharmacist, so he has a heads-up on the rest of us in the animals and plants categories. (Fish for animals, herbal supplements for plants.) Sometimes he does win, but they're an incredibly intelligent family. Debbie and her mum know fearsome amounts about gardening, Craig knows everything, and Christie either has bad games where she can't think of anything, or good games where she doubles anyone else's score, probably depending on whether she's high or low at the time.

Mom and I are smart, but our knowledge is more contextual. Mom is good at in-depth analyses of stuff, but ask her to recite lists of things, and she's lost. And me...there was a time when I knew every person in my class of 86 by their phone number, but that time has passed. Even back when I had an eidetic memory, I needed a visual or auditory focus for my knowledge. Ask me to recite the name and atomic number of every element on the periodic table, and I could have done it, because I could see it in my mind. But ask me to tell you all the elements on the table that begin with S? No way in hell, unless I went through the whole thing. Likewise, in my teens I could have sung you the complete lyrics to any song I'd ever heard, but if you gave me a line from a song and asked me to name the song and artist, I couldn't do it. I'm great when things are in context, not so great when they're randomly ordered. The educational psychologist I saw when I was a kid said my brain was like the Library of Congress: full of an awe-inspiring amount of information, but completely impossible to access unless you know exactly what you're looking for, and how to look systematically for it. There's a clear order to things, but you don't see the order unless you're familiar with the structure to start with, and to a casual observer it probably looks like a jumbled mess.

It's getting late, and I need to read a little and then get some sleep. I'll give you the rest of my updates soon.

Hope you're all enjoying the snow!