A week in one post ....

Some weeks I am a really bad blogger - okay, so yes, some days are really boring and nothing happens... but a whole week...

So, casting my mind back.... Monday and Tuesday were boring......... it got more interesting on Wednesday when I had my weekly "talk about myself" session with my counsellor.... the week before we'd been talking about my apathy towards doing tasks of homework he'd assigned - and what would encourage me to do it........ I managed to make him blush by my response of "it's not like you are going to spank me if I don't do it.".... roll on a week and I find myself in a weird conversation about consent and acceptable behaviour in adult relationships........ I didn't get any home work... but I think he was off to research some of the things we'd been talking about!

Wednesday night, there was a full moon..... and my inner lunar phasing were-red panda (yeah, no, don't ask) was spectacularly affected by it and sleep disappeared right off the agenda.  Thursday night wasn't much better - not helped by the fact that Hugo turned feral in the middle of the night and attacked me as I was wandering towards the bathroom ..... it's a good job my clothes always cover my upper arms as I have four very long straight scratch lines down the inside of my left arm - which look just like I've been self harming with a razor.......  There's also a good scattering of claw marks across my chest as well......... the mantra of "I love my cat, no really, I do love my cat" was repeated several times.....

The end of the week was boring in comparison.  Yesterday I had a "day off" where I did nothing but read and relax which was desperately needed.  Today has been back to more typical things...... including a visit to mum's with my lap top to sort out some books she wanted for her Kindle....

Now I use Chrome and have a habit of opening several windows at once and flipping about.... I'd finished with what I was doing for mum and shut down the Amazon tab and headed upstairs for something.  As I got to the top of the top of the stairs a voice came from the kitchen...

Mum - "What does NSFW mean?"
Me - "not safe for.... mum, don't..... "

I couldn't get back downstairs fast enough............

Yeah, my Goodreads groups... NSFW pictures... my 75 year old mother .... *sigh*

That took some explaining........ particularly the ones from the BDSM group she found...... oh no, not what I was doing with them.... but what they were doing in the pictures..........

really there are some things that no matter how old you and your parents are you never, ever want to have to explain to them...........

Tonight I have been out for a family meal.......... at which she decided to tell my sister and her partner about what I have on my computer..........

I am very thankful tomorrow is a public holiday here - I need it to recover from today!

Saturday song.........

This tune has been played a few times on the radio station that I listen to and I really like it, so I thought I'd share....

Okay, going back to plotting a very silly story about a rabbit shifter lost to spring fever and ending up in a hutch and about to be castrated........ yeah, I know, don't ask....

The good, the bad and the highly amusing....

Three things for today.....

The good - I got home from my appointment with my counsellor in my usual rather over emotional post talk about myself state to find that the postal fairy had visited, sending me a parcel of chocolaty goodness from over the other side of the Atlantic .... that cheered me up immensely.

The bad - I opened the back door to let the dogs out into the run a while ago... there was a thunk as one of them hit the railings, then silence......which in itself is unusual as Gretchen can be quite a gobby little shite at times... five minutes later there was still silence, and the three girls were outside but Ivan had come in and was stressing slightly.  Five more minutes and I was starting to get suspicious...... when Kammi ran in covered in feathers....... not a good sign..... I legged it outside to find that Gretchen and Hope were taking raw feeding to the ultimate limits and were in the process of disemboweling a pigeon in the middle of the run.  Feathers everywhere!!  Gretchen wasn't keen to give up her prize - I can only assume it either crashed into the kitchen window and dropped in the run (it's happened before), or it was too slow in flying out the run when I opened the door to let the dogs out - but I got it away from her and tossed it down the bottom of the garden where I am sure either the fox or the badger will be grateful for a snack later. The feathers were bloody everywhere though and I shall now have to de-worm and de-flea all the dogs before bedtime!

The highly amusing - I hate spending post counselling evenings alone, so I pottered off to mum's for tea... after which we were sitting in the lounge talking and I had one of those impressive brain to mouth fails... it went something like this...

Mum - Do you know what ATM stands for
Me - Yeah, sure, arse to mouth
Mum - what?
Me - Arse to mouth, where you put something in one first then the other.  Normally dick or fingers. You get it a lot in porn and erotica.
Mum - Really? Are you sure?
Me - yes, definitely
Mum - (vaguely) okay
Me - why (yeah, still wasn't really concentrating)
*sound of rustling papers*
Mum - it doesn't fit
Me - sorry what? (at this point my brain finally catches up with my mouth)
Mum - ATM, definition... that was the crossword clue
Me - oh, erm, I think you want cash point for that one.........
Mum - Oooh, of course *sound of scribbling* So, the other definition
Me - is that the time, really, I need to go home.........

Therapeutic baking for relief from idiots.........

I think everyone probably has coping strategies to deal with when they need to calm down......... I resort to two .... serious knitting that I have to concentrate on to the extent where I must block out everything else or I go very wrong (for this I have a nice lace weight shawl I've been knitting forever)........ or baking........ 

Tonight there has been baking..... I was meant to be baking a cake for a colleague's 30th birthday anyway...... but I was pissed off so I might have got carried away so rather than a nice simple cake colleague now has a triple layer chocolate cake with vanilla butter cream and giant buttons....=>

I do usually default to cakes when I need to calm down (or cookies, or flapjack...)... but by the time it's made I am (a) calm and (b) not wanting to eat any of the sweet cakey goodness but seriously jonesing for something with lots of garlic and chilli.

Anyway, the reason for today's excessive baking was caused by a relatively new colleague who came to work with a streaming cold and then got huffy because they were told to stay far far away from my part of the office...... apparently "it's only a cold" and I was "being stupid".........

Now I don't usually go into tonnes of detail with anyone I am not close friends with about the fact that my immune system is compromised and what might be "only a cold" to them could end up with me being seriously ill but I'm afraid I let rip after being calmly informed that their cold apparently was terrible, they were really poorly but that even if I got it then it wouldn't be any worse for me than it would for them ....... they got rather more than they bargained for ...... a description of what it's like when your body basically decides to reject itself, your immune system goes on overdrive and starts attacking you and what life is like when you have to take antibiotics on long term basis...........they even a glimpse of the horrible lower leg where the lymphatic system doesn't work anymore (which is usually covered up with a floor length skirt)..... despite all this they didn't get it at all....... and eventually wondered off muttering about how over dramatic I was being.......  My team leader told me after she thought I'd been remarkably restrained and would be sending an e-mail to the colleague's team leader asking him to "have words".......... 

I hate being different to look at.  I hate that my body doesn't work properly.  I hate that I don't get to have a day without some form of pain or another.  I hate having to explain about these things to idiots who don't even try to understand.  Gah... stupid people...... I may go bake some more.......

Ouch - but it wasn't actually my fault this time........

I know I am quite, erm, well, very maybe, accident prone.  But sometimes it's isn't actually down to my own actions.  This week I've come to the conclusion that my critters also should come with some sort of warning........ probably a health warning......... maybe something along the lines of "spending time with these animals can have severe affects on your mental and physical health"

Let us roll back to, erm, Wednesday morning.......... when I was stumbling around the park at stupid o'clock ... now I had Kammi and Gretchen on their leads and had let Ivan and Hope off to hurtle around and get rid of some of their excess energy (I only ever let two off at once, and well, Gretchen never goes off lead as she'd be off at high speed and I'd never see her again.... and that's after extensive training... she will re-call in doors, just not outside ... little swine)..... Anyway, I called them back to put them on their leads before we got to the road and they headed straight to me, in Hope's case a little too straight and a lot too fast... She'd obviously forgotten where the brakes were..... and ploughed straight into my right knee, head first.. and she's got a very hard head!

I managed to get us home safely, by which time it was starting to swell a bit so I took some pain killers, slathered on some arnica cream and hobbled off to work..... during the day my knee got quite a lot more colourful and developed a great double clicking noise when I walked.......  That evening I iced it and by the next morning the swelling had gone down and the clicking stopped...... but something wasn't quite right and it kept locking up and getting quite painful to walk on.... I was seriously considering perhaps I should go get it looked at when, at about 5 am yesterday morning as I was reclining on the sofa having persuaded the dogs it really was too early to go out, Kammi went to jump on me and as I twisted to avoid her landing somewhere sensitive I twisted my right knee......... and almost screamed........ as something went "clunk" very loudly........ I lay there for a while psyching myself into getting up and when I eventually did, discovered that actually it was all a lot better....I talked to my dad about it (he's an osteopath) and he had me do some poking and prodding of the area..... upshot is, it looks like I might perhaps have been walking around with a partially dislocated kneecap for most of the week......

As if that wasn't enough excitement, Hugo decided yesterday that he needed attention, and leapt towards me for a cuddle, as I was sitting on the edge of the bath about to get in the shower...... he missed, kind of, his claws didn't, and as I wobbled dangerously close to falling backwards over the edge of the bath tub he caught me from bust downwards, straight across one nipple, my stomach, including just inside my belly button, and down my right thigh, with just about every claw he has in his possession........ So, I now have, to add to the currently greenish yellow coloured kneecap, an impressive set of scratches, which have bruised in places all down my front...........

There's also a huge bruise on my arm....... but I haven't got a clue how that happened........ I think I probably did something straight forward...... like walking into the door.......

Kitten's are the answer........

Some days, when even chocolate and comfort reading isn't cutting it, kitten pictures are the answer

even pictures of ugly kittens........... these are some of my two monster's relations.....

Hugo still likes to play with his balls in the bath tub
on a hot day
no not those type of balls.... ping pong balls

Check those wrinkles!

The time any sphynx owner is happiest
when their cats are asleep!

No, honest, we weren't
we are far to young to do anything naughty

Back to school ..... apparently....

Hmmm, well it's been a week since I properly updated on life in the mad house with added critters, so what has been happening.....

Well to be honest not a lot......... I had a minor melt down towards the beginning of last week brought on by a combination of feeling very lonely post visitors leaving, having a busy time of it at work whilst feeling completely unappreciated (particularly discovering that my team leader had taken all the credit for all of the work done to deal with files when people in the team had left/gone on maternity leave - which is utter bollocks but I can't really evidence this and anyway it's too late now), then a mutual friend of myself and the ex told me all about how she'd met up with the ex who had told her all about how she'd had to take her wife's bank cards from her as she couldn't manage her money - which triggered some major flashbacks as this was how the abuse started with me - and all of this finally led to me having a complete tears & tissues session with my counsellor..... after all that I wanted to crawl into a hole and hide for a couple of months.

I think the whole thing in the counsellor was to do with the fact we've been working on making me like myself enough to take care of myself........ it's started with small things that I want to do (or in some cases should have done months if not years ago) and some things he suggested I do....... but we've been at this a couple of months now and I've started trying to do bits and pieces, and with all the negatives, I just couldn't see the point.  And the problems with negatives, you find one, and sure enough before long if you think carefully you can find loads more....... and suddenly everything gets very negative and you start to wonder what the hell the point is and why you are bothering.

I am still going to keep working on stuff, I have no intention of giving up, but at times it all gets a bit bleak.  For this reason I am back to weekly "talk about myself" sessions until I can work myself out of the current trip through the darker parts of my mind.

One of the other things my counsellor wants me to think about is ways to get out and meet more people - I was telling him how much I loved going to the recent UK meet - and he has suggested that I might want to do an evening class ..... "suggest" is such a misleading word for the directions I was given.......

I've been told that perhaps basic home electric maintenance and welding would perhaps not be a good idea (though certain European friends did say it would be fine, if I set the UK alight the channel would save them!).... I considered the Furniture Making for Women course - but really, me and hammers, perhaps not... I am not allowed to do anything which is work related (which I think also rules out accountancy or book keeping... which would probably send me to sleep anyway).  Someone suggested that I take a course in witchcraft - but I can't find one locally.... And that leaves me with potentially a language course - probably German or Spanish (I studied French, Latin and Ancient Greek at school). Oh I don't know... I am leaning towards learning German and making my online friends in that neck of the wood help me... a lot!

I need to put a list of possible courses I've researched (complete with times, venues, start dates, prices etc) together for Wednesday............ There is temptation to find the something really frivolous - like the cake decorating ...... or nail technology..... is quite high.  I considered a writing course....... but I have an idea that the course tutor may not appreciate my tendency for everything I write to disintegrate to smut in the end.


In other news, summer is apparently over and it is the season for ducks......... and for the invasion of every damn spider in the universe into my house which makes the nightly spider hunting of the felines into a huge production of epic proportions which I do not appreciate (mind you, not keen on the spider that likes to hang over my bed waving two of it's legs at me either....)