So I spent a lot of time in bed with a cold soda can propped against my ear and throat, since cold and lying down eased up the pressure a bit. When I stood up or even sat on the couch, the blood started pounding and made it even worse. Therefore my bed got very well-used over the last two weeks, and not in the way I'd prefer. *sigh* Stupidly, there wasn't much I could do beyond lie there and try to sleep. I even found it hard to concentrate on reading, although I got a couple of books from the Oxfam bookstore - a Karen Robards romantic suspense, and something by Chuck Palahniuk that I haven't read yet - so that was something. The Karen Robards wasn't her best, but was still entertaining enough to actually take my mind off my ear for a couple of minutes at a time.
Happily it seems to be nearly better, although it's a bit itchy, and I sometimes wake myself up by scratching it in my sleep.
Not last Thursday, but the Thursday before that, I went to the doctor early in the morning (well, 10.40, which is early for me - I'm a night owl) and got antibiotics and eardrops. The doctors is at the beginning of town, so Mom and I walked to the chemist to fill the prescription, and then into town to go to Tesco and buy some groceries, and we stopped in the Oxfam bookshop, and that's where I met this incredibly interesting guy.
I can't explain what it was about him - all I can really say is that he was magnetic. He was average height, good-looking but not traffic-stopping, had average reddish-brown hair, average casual clothes, and was not my usual type. And yet he was anything but average. He was reading a cyberpunk novel, and there was something slightly cyberpunkish about him, although I'm damned if I know what it was. In some ways, he reminded me a little of Julian, although once again I can't pinpoint what it was. But the way he talked...oh man, that was amazing. He seemed incredibly intelligent - and you know what a turn-on intelligence is for me - and we talked about what seemed to be hundreds of things, although in reality it could only have been a handful. A couple of the books I was buying - not the romance, but the Palahniuk, and John Gribbin's "In Search of Schroedinger's Cat" caused him to say, "I didn't see that! If I'd seen it, I'd have had it." I actually surrendered the John Gribbin to him, since I'm a nice person, and when I went back today it wasn't there, so I guess he did buy it.
He even tried, unsuccessfully, to explain Schroedinger's Cat to my mom. Mom is a fairly practical person, though, and her response was to look a bit blank and say, "I'm pretty sure a live cat would create a fuss if you tried to lock it in a box, so you'd know by the noise and movement that it was alive."
:D
So yeah, I have a bit of a crush. Knowing my luck, he's probably gay, or at least taken, but he sure did give good conversation. I've been back to the shop a couple of times since then, but he's never been there. He told me he was a volunteer, so I'm gonna try again on Thursday morning, in the hopes that he always works the same hours. Even if he is gay or taken, I'd like to talk to him again, and see if I can work out why there's this magnetic pull between us (or at least on my side). Happily I was actually looking pretty good that day, despite my ear infection. It was a beautiful sunny morning, dry and warm, and I was wearing my white cotton halterneck sundress with the red flowers down the front, which is my favourite dress. It's really made for use on the hottest of hot summer days, because it's just a single thin layer of cotton (and quite diaphanous, so I have to remember to wear white or nude panties with it), reaches to my waist in the back, low cut over the boobs with a tie around the neck, ruching under the breasts to make your waist look smaller, and a huge billowy skirt. It was cream when I got it, but even though that was only in July, I've worn it so much that it's faded to white, and I can barely read the care label. Over the breasts and then in a wide stripe down the front are a profusion of flowers, mostly red, with occasional bits of pink and dark blue and green. It's a beautiful dress, and even though I can't wear a bra with it it suits me well - it skims over the bad parts and accentuates the good parts - so I should really try and get a photo of me in it before the weather gets cold for the winter. So I was wearing that, and a little dusky rose cardigan from Hobbs that I got in the seconds sale because it had a tiny hole at the back, and white sandals with flowers on them, and my hair was caught back loosely in a clip with curls hanging down, and I had on that magnet perfume that guys always react to. So I was looking and smelling good, and I think - I think - that he was attracted to me, although I could just be deluding myself.
I do hope I get to see him again.
[Like this, but pulled up a lot at the neck, so my breasts look firm and round and I don't show a lot of cleavage. My neck really hurt when I took this picture, so I let the halter out about four inches. Different cardi, too.]
Anyway, that was two Thursdays ago, and after that I went home and went to bed for a week, only getting up to bathe and occasionally watch TV in the evenings. Then for the rest of last week I was frantically trying to get any outstanding work out of the way so I could prepare for uni, which was supposed to start last Wednesday. Except on Wednesday I got an email from admissions saying that the course had been cancelled due to not enough people enrolled. So I don't know what the heck I'm going to do for the next nine months. Travel, maybe. I'm too sick to go right now, and I'm also too sick to work full-time, but maybe after Christmas I can pack my things and go visiting people in various countries of the world. I've always wanted to travel, but I never have the time or the money, and there's always something that I have to do at home, either work or uni or looking after Mom. Perhaps this would be a good time to get away, while I have a non-college year and Tony's still around to help look after Mom. (They're hoping to move to the south coast next Spring.)
If not travel, then I have to find something to keep me occupied, some sort of course that will give my weeks a schedule, even if it's just one day a week. I found several short courses that I want to do, things that run for a few weeks - Thai cooking, Chinese cooking, a really nice looking desserts class, a couple of courses on Christmas crafts and Christmas flower arrangements - but nothing that will continue for a whole semester, let alone a year. I suppose I really need to set my mind to it, and look around for something, because the fall semester is definitely under way, although there are a couple of things that don't start until the end of October. Problem is, I don't know what to do if I don't do Japanese. Spanish, maybe. Mom suggested Italian, but you can't really use Italian outside Italy, unless you're considering a career in music or the arts. Spanish would be more practical, particularly for someone who's considering living in California or Texas, and although I used to be fluent, I lost a lot of it when I lost my memory. If I get a good class, it should take me a year, maybe a year and a half to get back up to fluency. But I don't know what level I'm at right now - probably pre-GCSE - so I don't know exactly what course I would need.
I suppose I could look around at different universities for another Japanese course, but I really like my teacher and my uni. Perhaps they'll run the course in the spring semester, and then I'll only miss out on half a year.
But damn, I miss uni. And I REALLY miss Kurisu-san (that's my redheaded musician, the one I wrote about a couple times back in May). We talked once on msn, but since then he hasn't appeared on there - I dunno if he's blocking me, or if he just doesn't have internet access, or doesn't get online.
So I had a pretty crappy week with the ear, and the week since then has been split into crappy and nice. I went into town a couple of times and didn't manage to get any of the things I needed done. Ann Summers had a great sale, and I bought some really lovely underwear, but when I went back with Mom so she could buy me some corsets and negligees for Christmas, they'd just finished the sale the night before. What kind of store puts a sale on for only a week, honestly? It's the most ridiculous thing. And Jane Norman had done the same thing, and they had some lovely dresses in there that I was coveting. My friend Zia, who's been suffering from clinical depression for as long as I've known her (which is coming up nine years), was dumped by her boyfriend on Saturday and fell into a suicidal depression which worried me a great deal, and I went to visit her yesterday, all the way in Upton Park, after an already gruelling day of visiting my father and stepmother in Highgate. I'll write more about that day in my next note, since there's too much to write here. It was good to see her, but I'm very concerned - even scared - and she needs a great deal of support right now. On Sunday I went ice skating with B, one of my closest high school friends, and we usually have a great time, but neither of us could really get into it: the ice was cut up and nobbly, making it hard to skate (for some reason they didn't smooth it down every hour the way they usually do) and she'd been having man trouble, so she wanted to talk more than skate, and while we both would have benefited from the physical activity, the ice was just too cut up and crowded to get any decent exercise in.
Which reminds me, I need new ice skates, mine are just a tiny bit too small and give me foot cramps. It will hurt to see them go, because I've had them since I was about 13, and they've seen me through a lot. I've always kept them in really good condition, so I should be able to sell them on ebay, which will help with the price of new ones. But it'll still be a big expense - figure skates are really dear over here, and for a good beginners pair I could pay anywhere from £60 to £130, although I doubt I'd find them any cheaper than that unless I bought second-hand. If I'm lucky I can sell mine for maybe £30, and then either buy a pair of £60 ones, or get them for Christmas.
*sigh* Yet another major expense. I still haven't bought that coat - although I did go and try the blue one on again, and it looked kind of weird - and I really need to, because the weather's rapidly getting cold. We're supposed to have a freezing snap in the next week, same as last year, which is really a bugger - I hate it when it gets cold and snowy before Halloween. Halloween should be warm enough to go trick-or-treating and not be covered up in winter coats. I love winter and snow, love wearing my coats and boots and hats with matching scarves and gloves, but not until late November. Coat and hat weather should start at Thanksgiving.
And of course, I need a haircut - argh! I got paid today, or maybe it's tomorrow, and nearly every penny is already accounted for. I bought a couple of books today - Charlaine Harris' "Grave Secret" (in hardback, which was expensive, but they didn't have it in paperback) from Waterstones, and a Mills & Boon book and Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter" from the charity shop. And I got some bubble bath from The Body Shop, because I've developed allergies to so many of the branded ones, and a couple of groceries, and a sandwich and a cup of hot chocolate from Costa - seven freakin' quid for a hot chocolate and a sandwich! I'm not going in there again - and Ne-Yo's first two CDs (which I'd been wanting for a couple years, and I never managed to find them for less than £15 each, and today HMV had them 2 for £10 - and that was it. I spent £10 on the CDs, £16 in The Body Shop on bubble bath and a Christmas present, £7 on lunch, £18 on books (which I can't do again for several months now, although when Grave Secret comes out in paperback I can sell the hardback) and about £10 on groceries - about £60, and the rest of this month's money goes on bills. I can just about pay my bills, but I'm flat broke as far as anything else goes.
Friends ask me how it is that I have so many problems with money when I don't actually spend a lot on myself - my girlfriends spend as much on beauty products and pampering in a month as I spend on everything else - and when I did the mental math today, I found out why: taking into account my base salary (although not any extra jobs I pick up) and my carer's allowance and Mom's attendance allowance and statutory sick pay, I am running a household on an average of £8500 a year. For the record, that's about $15,000. I don't know if it's possible to support a family on $15,000 a year in America, but over here it's a huge struggle. B is a nurse, and you know how poorly nurses get paid, and she still makes £18,000 a year - more than twice what Mom and I make combined, when Mom's not working.
So. Fucking. Tired.
I get that there are plenty of carers out there, and it's not easy for any of us - but most carers get some sort of support, from family or doctors or community support workers, and most carers aren't sick themselves. In a world that works the way it's supposed to, if I listened to my doctor, I should be the one HAVING a carer who comes in to look after me - not being one myself.
But I am, and I don't have anyone who can look after me - except Mom - and the government won't help, so I just kind of have to get on with it. It's especially hard when I've just had an infection, though, because with an auto-immune disorder like fibromyalgia / ME, every time I get any sort of infection it takes a couple of weeks, even a month, for my immune system to calm down. (At least somewhat - it never calms down to a normal state.)
A couple of people, including my brother, have said that I should try and come off the medications and find more natural ways of dealing with it, but the natural ways don't generally work for me. I've tried so many things, and the only natural things that really help are massage and a hot climate, neither of which I can afford. As things are, when the doctor put me on a lower dose of tramadol - and I was on the lower dosage for more than two years, so I know my body had time to get used to it - I was in so much pain I could barely concentrate on anything. I was lucky to get three or four hours of sleep a night, before I was awakened in agony. And even now that the dosages have been put back up to the right place, if I miss a pill it often causes so much pain that I black out.
Shit, I wish I were in the US where you have proper drugs for stuff like this.
Ugh, enough whining. My whines always go the same way - money, not having any money, not having any money because I'm too sick to work full-time, health. Enough already! Truth was, parts of my week were good, if a little depressing. My father and stepmother are moving next week, so that's kind of sad - I can't imagine London without my PaPa, and I'm really going to miss their house. That was the place I came home from college to. I fell in love for the second (and seemingly permanent) time when I was in my bathroom there, when I was seventeen, when Curt texted me to ask me to the Valentines Dance. Come to think of it, I fell in love for the first time in that house, too, when I fell for Michael three days after my birthday, the night that PaPa and Jackie took me to see Saturday Night Fever. Was that my fifteenth birthday or my sixteenth? I can't quite remember, although I think it must have been my fifteenth.
So yeah, there are a lot of good memories in that house. I'll miss the Curt-memories more than anything, I think, because most of our early good times were when I was living there. We were kids when I fell for him, so innocent and naive, never imagining that life could work out to be anything less than wonderful. We never worried about getting together as a couple, because we thought we had all the time in the world. Zia's first suicide attempt the following summer was the first thing to change that, the first layer of that frost that gradually built up and iced over his heart, and he's been building walls for one reason or another ever since. But the fall and the winter before that? We were happy children, and he was experiencing the freedom of college for the first time (he went to a rather restrictive private school), and I was experiencing true love for the first time, and we were so full of joy.
I think I'll miss those memories as much as I'll miss anything. I'll still see my dad and stepmother, of course. I may even see them as much as I see them now; for all that they've only been twenty miles away from me while they were living in London, I haven't been to see them as much as I should have. Between the rape and PaPa's stroke, I didn't spend much time in London, and what time I did spend was always escorted: I'd visit PaPa or Curt, and they'd be with me most if not all of the time, and they'd pick me up and / or drop me off at home, and I'd spend very little alone time. If I went into work, I'd only have to change trains quickly at Blackfriars, and that was the only part of the city I'd see until I was in Dagenham. But when PaPa had his stroke, I was going to the city once a week, sometimes more, and I started having a lot of nightmares. So after he was out of the hospital, my visits got less and less frequent. And the worst thing was that I could never tell him why I wasn't visiting, because I never told him about the rape.
*sigh*
I seem to be doing a lot of sighing at the moment. *rolls eyes*
But it was nice to see them, and Lucy - my youngest sister - was there for lunch, which was also good. Now that Amy (my middle-down sister) has gone to uni, Lucy is sort of coming into her own, discovering her own likes and dislikes instead of following in the older one's footsteps. Over the summer she discovered a love for science and psychology - and this is a girl who was raised to sneer at modern things like science and technology, and put all her energy into Latin and Greek and Classic Literature and History, you know all those good upper-class English girl things - and it was really nice to see her animated about something. Amy is reading Classics at Oxford, becoming a mini version of her mother, and it's really nice to see Lu breaking out of the box a bit. She was even talking about going to uni in the States rather than at Oxford, which must have appalled her mother. Whether she does so all the way, or ends up at Oxford doing History and Latin, remains to be seen. She was always the more stubborn of the two though, always knew her own mind well, so perhaps she'll fight for what she wants. That would be a sight to see.
OK, this blog has got FAR too long - I try to keep them to a length that won't bore the pants off too many readers, but I've failed miserably this time - so I shall let you go. I need to get some sleep soon anyway, it's getting late (or early) and I need food and then sleepies.
Hope y'all have been well while I was away, and I'll try and catch up with reading your blogs soon!
Update: What the snacks? They denied this post because apparently it has my email on it...I read the whole thing, and NOWHERE does it give any email addresses.
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