Silence is not golden, it's fucking boring

My trip home to see Mother for Easter was not too bad, we didn't have any disasters or anything, but it wasn't exactly fun either.

Whenever I speak to her on the phone, she normally complains incessantly about how noisy the neighbours/neighbours' children/railway line/nearby school is, are, or have been being. Any noise basically means that she can't rest, and therefore feels worse than even her usual level, and so she is obliged to spread some of that misery out to adjacent parts of the world. And this happens all the time apparently, it's like a non-stop noisy hell.

So when I got home on Saturday I was expecting there to be at least a pneumatic drill going off in next door's garden and some sort of monster truck derby happening in the street. I was surprised therefore to find no pneumatic drills and instead just complete, uninterrupted silence. Like serious silence too, you could practically hear it. I'm sure at one point my heartbeat was the loudest thing on the street.

"It's never normally like this!" says she. "You won't believe us now will you? They're normally screaming at each other next door! And coughing! You can hear them coughing all the time!"

Erm... coughing?

Anyway, it was very, VERY quiet. So that's good for Mum, I suppose. They don't do anything in that silence, they wouldn't want to break its pristine completeness. So instead you just end up sitting there. Reading. Or talking, but only very quietly, otherwise Mum says "You're being very loud Thomas!" (that's my Dad) and he is obliged to apologise.

And it's BORING. I need some damn stimulation! They even have the lights down quite low, so it's like you've wandered into one of those sensory deprivation tanks.

I was only there for 24 hours, but I'd gone pretty stir crazy by the end of it. No doubt the endless noise started up again as soon as I left, or so they'll tell me. Or perhaps no it won't, because it's never actually THAT noisy, but they've got nothing better to do than bang on about it all the time.

On the plus side, I did receive six Cadbury Creme Eggs in memory of the Baby Jesus (or something), so it wasn't all bad.

And I'm off to New Yoooooooooooooooork on Thursday, so it's not all bad.

Also, the General Election has been announced today, so I shall blog about that tomorrow if I get time. It's terribly exciting! Sort of.

Terrible blogger

I have turned into one of those bloggers I don't like who only updates their blog twice a month, making it a bit annoying to try to keep up to date with. It's my own fault really; once I leave it for too long, events either don't seem current enough to write about or they become irrelevant.

But anyway, in case you care here are a few things that have happened in my life recently.

Most excitingly for the geek in me, I have got a new phone to replace my Sony Ericsson C510. Yes I know I've only had my last phone for a year, but it's one of the few things that I treat myself to and spend any actual money on myself on.

So now I have a brand sparkling new HTC Tattoo, and so far I'm really pleased with it. It's my first touchscreen phone, and it has Wi Fi, which are the two things I really wanted. It seems really good, like a proper little computer in your pocket, and it's quite pretty too. The touchscreen is a bit annoying at times, as I knew in advance from the reviews, simply because it's on the small side and so it's easy to jab the wrong thing with your finger. I was texting my sister-in-law this morning and nearly wished her a Harrowing Birthday because of it. I'm getting used to it though, and the general interface and software is really nice.

The only thing that made my Sony Ericsson better was the awesome camera it had, that took some of the best photos I've ever taken. But I only really used the camera once a month or so, so I shall learn to live without it.

I've also been ill with a cold for the last week, which is quite annoying as I'd managed to go almost six months without catching anything. I've been proudly telling everyone that I haven't been ill for ages, so I suppose this is my payback for being smug. I'm hoping it will go away soon, not least because we go to New York in just ONE WEEK!

It's terribly exciting, even though I've been before. I was surprised to see that the temperature is in the high 60s out there at the moment, so it's really quite warm, which would be lovely compared to the horrible greyness we've had here lately. I think it might turn more rainy by next week, but I'm still vaguely hoping we'll get some early summer sun while we're there.

We'll be there for five nights, but I'm actually off work for a whole week and a half for it, which will be lovely. I'm sure I'll come back to a backlog of annoyances upon my return, but I'll worry about that when it happens.

Other than that, things have been more or less normal. My mother has been medium-crazy for the last little while, as opposed to her normal uber-mentalist state, so that's been quite pleasant. I did have her on the phone for 20 minutes today though in a stress because next door is apparently having their roof done, which will undoubtedly cause lots of noise and upset her. It hasn't caused much noise yet of course, she's just speculating and stressing in advance, but she likes doing that. If you haven't got anything proper to stress about, you may as well make something up - that seems to be her philosophy, and it gives her a reason to ring me up anyway. How nice for me.

That's all for now. I shall write more after the Easter weekend, which will involve a trip to see the mentalist mother and so will I'm sure provide lots more blogging material.

A random bunch of stuff all chucked into one blog post

I haven't blogged all that much over the last few weeks, because I feel like I haven't been doing much that was noteworthy.

Mum has kind of plateaued at a medium level of crazy for the moment, so I haven't even felt there was much to write about her either. She's still ill of course, and she's still subject to their bizarre gypsy curse and its associated mishaps (the thermostat is still kind of broken, and this week their kitchen sink decided to overflow), but she hasn't had anything major to bang on at me about for a while.

So this is just an odds and sods post really to distract me from my work for a little while.

We went to a friend's house last night for an Indian take away and to watch Slumdog Millionaire on Channel 4. I hadn't seen it before, but obviously I've heard quite a lot about it after it won lots of different awards. I have to say that I quite enjoyed it, but I didn't think it was amazing or anything. I often get that with 'big' films though, they end up rather over-hyped and then you can't help but be disappointed.

I thought it was a good story, but it was essentially an episode of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire with some padding. Yes it gave an apparently realistic and compelling portrayal of life in the slums of Mumbai, and it had a very authentic feel given its use of real people from the slums as actors. So it was good definitely, but parts of it were a bit predictable and I wasn't left thinking "wow that was a best thing I've ever seen".

I've also watched the first three episodes of the new season of Heroes recently. Almost immediately it managed to annoy me, and although it is refreshing to have some new characters I do feel like it has gone off the boil a bit. Why is Sylar STILL in it as one of the main villains? Why? Why would you do this? That's FOUR seasons now where he's been running around, talking with his mouth half closed and having practically limitless powers. It just seems a bit lazy not to have written him out.

I'm also fed up with the way Matt Parkman does a weird squinty head twitch every time he uses his powers. Surely he would be more effective if it weren't so obvious he was poking around in your head?

And of course Claire Bennet is still trying to live a normal life, but failing miserably to be at all discreet about her powers, and her Dad is interfering in the name of protecting her, and Hiro's powers don't work properly, and blah blah blah. You could be describing practically any season of the show.

So anyway, I'm sure I'll end up still watching it, but I'll frequently tut the whole way through, and let out an exasperated sigh at the end of each episode. It's such a shame, because the first two seasons were excellent.

Other than that, work is the same as usual: pretty dull and filled mostly with Facebook and Twitter. I've had quite a few days off due to the snow, which has been nice and has helped the weeks to flick by more quickly. I had someone ask me YET AGAIN the other day "wouldn't you rather be doing a job that uses your languages". ARRRRGH! Yes I probably would, but I'm just not, alright?? There aren't that many jobs 'using your languages' in Brighton, and if I learnt one thing from the job in the tour operators which I hated, it's that just using your languages isn't enough to make you like your job. You have to like the actual job in the first place - doing it in French or Italian makes very little difference.

So yes, I still have my vaguely-unfulfilled feeling from time to time, and would quite like to be doing something more challenging. But as I have no idea what that would be, this job is fine: it pays well (considering I have hardly any work to do), I like the bits of work that I DO do, the people are nice, and I get left alone and not stressed out. If a bit of boredom is the price I pay for that, it could be a lot worse.

Right, I've been banging on for ages now, so I'd better do some work/Twitter. We're meant to be going to Pop Kraft this weekend, so maybe that will give me an opportunity to take some photos and write about some actual events instead of general ramblings!

Wicked

I had a very nice Christmas and New Year, even if it has become a distant memory already now that I'm back at work. I apologise for not having managed to blog at all during that period, but I was too busy having my Mum flap at me about one thing or another and stuffing my face with food I didn't pay for.

Anyway, amongst the many Christmas gifts I got from Chris' Mum, I was very pleased to find two tickets to see the musical Wicked. I read the book ages ago, and occasionally say things like "yes we really must go to the theatre more often", so she actually did quite well to get us that as a present. She didn't do so well in picking Monday 4 January, our first day back at work, as the evening to book it for, but she's a bit dotty like that.

"You're not back at work then are you?", she said when we unwrapped them.

Er yes, of course we are. Everyone is! But her brain works in its own special little way sometimes.

It didn't matter too much really, as the show was at 7.30pm, and the theatre is right next to Victoria station, so it was perfectly possible to get up to London in time to see it. It did turn out to be hideously tiring though, running for a train at 5.30pm through freezing weather, and then sitting on it thinking "I bet my bed is all warm and cosy right now. I wonder what's on the telly?"

But anyway, the show was AMAZING. It was easily as good as I had hoped it would be, with a very talented cast and excellent sets and lighting and things. Our seats were right near the back, so when I saw the seating plan I thought we wouldn't be able to see very much, but the Apollo is quite a small theatre really so the view was fine.

I was surprised how different the story is compared to the book, particularly the second half of the show, but it didn't really matter. I think they'd changed it largely to make it more accessible to people who have only seen the Wizard of Oz film, and because there's simply too much in the book for a stage show.

Alexia Khadime was great as Elphaba, and has a spectacular voice. The Glinda character had almost as big a part, which I hadn't realised, and she was also really good and provided quite a bit of the humour. I think we had the standby Sarah Earnshaw rather than the main billed actress. I really liked her anyway, she was really funny.

It did make me want to go and see more shows, particularly Priscilla Queen of the Desert which is on at the moment (could I be any gayer?), but I don't think I'd go on a week night again. Standing in freezing Victoria at 10.30pm really wasn't very fun, and I had to drag myself out of bed this morning.

I don't think I'll blog very much more about Christmas and New Year, but in summary:

- I had a better than average Christmas, everyone seemed to get on, and I got very good presents.

- My Mum didn't come to our Boxing Day meal with my Horrible Grandad, but that was better really because it made it less stressy for me.

- And for New Year we went to The Jam in Brighton, to a club night organised by Dynamite Sal, which was BRILLIANT. I got trashed and felt dreadful the next day, but was at least conscious at midnight this year.

Oh yes, and my parents are still subject to their weird voodoo gypsy curse where everything goes wrong for them. Notably over the Christmas period, they enjoyed:

- a Christmas meal booking with me where the restaurant turned out not to be open for another hour after our booked time, and had no record of their booking, so we ended up in a Wetherspoons in Wanstead eating burgers.

- water coming in round one of their bedroom windows and running down the wall.

- a thermostat that broke at 10pm on a Saturday night and proceeded to try to freeze them to death during the subsequent Sunday when no one was available to come and fix it.

What fun! So of course I had to hear about all that in detail. They really shouldn't have built their house on that Indian burial ground.

Wedding mission complete, disaster rating 6/10

I haven't had time to blog about the wedding until now, so I've had to set aside some time this evening (yes, in my *own time*) to do it.

Overall it went OK, and despite things with Mum being more difficult than average, there were no disasters, so I suppose I should just be grateful for that. It's done now anyway, so that's a relief, and I was able to enjoy a fair portion of it.

The coldy virus thing I had at the end of the week had abated enough by Saturday for it not to give me too much trouble, and so I set off on time in the car up to Tunbridge Wells. I got checked in at the hotel (quite nice for a Travelodge), and then went to meet Mum and Dad who had already arrived at the wedding venue. We were there good and early so Mum had time to rest before the ceremony, and so she could get installed in the room she was to be using for her rest periods.

Basically things went slightly downhill from there, and continued in that trend until Mum and Dad went home. It became apparent to me fairly quickly that Dave and Janine had made choices and organised things in a way that was somewhat incompatible with Mum's needs, and this made things more difficult than they otherwise might have been. I choose the word incompatible carefully, because after all why shouldn't they choose what they want first and foremost for their wedding? It's not unreasonable. It's just that it exacerbated an already difficult situation.

Take this room Mum was to rest in: we were told it was a dressing room, attached to the function suite, where she could be out of the way and rest quietly. In fact it was a small attic room up five flights of stairs, with no lift access, and with no furnishings other than a table and chair. Given that Mum can't walk that far, can't exert herself etc., this was not ideal. She ended up 'resting' with a blanket on the floor.

Janine arrived on time, by steam train which was quite novel, and looked very nice in her dress. The ceremony was nice, a fairly typical civil ceremony really, but the room was too hot which added to Mum's progressively crosser expression.

Then the plan was to get photos with Mum done quickly so she could go and rest again, while the main body of photos would take quite a bit longer. She had practically to be dragged across a lawn to where the photos would be (it was 'too far'), at which point the photographer's camera jammed. So after five minutes of hanging around, Mum complaining that she "can't stand like this for long", Janine barely able to mask her fury at Mum diverting attention towards herself, and the photographer getting stressed, photos with her had to be abandoned and NO official photos with Mum in were taken. Disaster! So off she went in a foul mood, basically delirious with fatigue, and Dad and I had to do our best to sort her out.

Thankfully, the camera became unjammed after that so Dave and Janine still got the rest of their photos done. I missed the bucks fizz of course because I was sorting Mum out, but managed to get back for most of the photos and the ones I needed to be in, and took quite a few nice ones myself.

Then there was the meal, which Mum didn't really attend any of, and the speeches which she was there for but which were 'too loud', and through which she sat looking like she was about to pass out while poor Dad looked confused and embarrassed. And then they went home by 7pm.

So it wasn't awful, but it wasn't great either. Thankfully I was able to relax after that. My Grandad pushed off at 8pm, around the time Chris arrived, and after that I was fine. We watched their first dance (well executed - Janine used to ballroom dance competitively), we had quite a few drinks, we chatted nicely with other guests, and we danced quite a bit ourselves. It was fun, and I think Dave and Janine enjoyed it, which is the main thing.

I'm glad that it is over as I found the build up and the thought of what could happen quite tense. I've already had Mum on the phone twice today though, in tears at one point, at how ill she now feels following the wedding, how it'll take her probably two months to recover from it (that's not an exaggeration), and how no-one understands. So that was thoroughly depressing and made me think "can't I get a minute's peace??". But she'll be OK I should think, and at least the day wasn't spoilt. I only give it a disaster rating of 6/10 from a personal point of view; hopefully Dave and Janine weren't aware of all the stress that went on and were able to enjoy their wedding undistracted.

How sad it is though that almost my entire blog post about my brother's wedding is about my mother. Chris will read this at some point and think "yes, because you let her rule your life, exactly like she wants you to", and he'll be right. Ho hum.

Ill-timed illness

As I suspected, I'm ill. My sore throat has turned into a proper stuffed up cold, and I feel really run down. It's so inconvenient! I have to be well on Saturday, I've got to drive myself to Tunbridge Wells and then be on my feet and sociable for pretty much the whole day. So I've taken today off work anyway, and I'm hoping if I just watch property programmes on TV and think happy thoughts then my body will heal itself before the weekend.

I've just checked back on where I'd got to on the 'Days healthy' counter I started after the last time I was ill. I didn't maintain it on every post because I couldn't be bothered, but if I had I would have reached the grand total of 91 days by today. That's not even a hundred! I thought it was going to be longer than that, but apparently not. So I managed to be more or less healthy for 3 months before succumbing to yet another virus. I suppose that's not too bad, I just hope I can get rid of it fairly quickly.

I have taken the executive decision not to inform Mum that I'm not well, because she'll only a) freak out that I won't be well enough to come to the wedding; and b) say "but I can't afford to catch a cold from you", in her usual it's-all-about-me way.

Which is stupid anyway, because of COURSE I'm going to go to my brother's wedding, even if I have got a cold. I'll just dose myself up on paracetamol, gun through it with a fixed smile on my face, and then feel like crap the next day. It's not going to come to that anyway because I will be better by Saturday (happy thoughts happy thoughts).

Right, I'm off to eat hula hoops now and see if Sophie Allsop has managed to turn a run-down three bed apartment into a trendy cottage in the Lake District.

Rush rush rush

I haven't had much time for blogging since last week, which is unusual for me and now I feel I've got behind with it.

We had our Eurovision party at the weekend, which of course was another triumph. We had scoresheets, miniature flags, posters, and a lovely Eurocake:


I enjoyed the show, but was a bit disappointed that the winner was Norway. Their song was OK, not great, and the fact that it was the bookies' favourite and that it was such a complete runaway winner made it a bit boring. After a quarter of the votes were in you could tell no-one was going to catch them. And also, he had weird eyebrows.

I thought Jade did really well to finish fifth considering how poorly we've done in the last few years. She sang very well and was obviously much stronger than lots of the other contestants, so fifth is quite respectable. I didn't think that the jury voting really made that much difference though, there was still lots of unjustified awarding of 12 points to neighbouring countries by some of the Eastern and Scandinavian nations.

Sunday was a little bit of a write off, as I had drunk a combination of white wine, rosé wine, champagne, and Moscow Mules (careful Eurovision linkage there) so I had a bit of a headache. And then this week just seems to be flying by with no time to do anything.

Dave's wedding is this Saturday, and after a mini-meltdown last week (including the glib fiasco) Mum seems to have plateaued at "there's nothing I can do about it now, I'll just have to hope for the best". Which is better than insane stress attacks I suppose.

I wish I could look forward to it more, but I won't be able to relax until Mum and Dad head off home and Chris has arrived safely after his epic two hour bus and taxi journey from Brighton. Just to make things a bit more of a pain, I feel like I'm coming down with something today, which I could obviously do without. I've had a sore throat since yesterday and this morning I felt completely run down as soon as I got up. If I'm going to get a virus I'd rather get it now, deal with it on Thursday and Friday, and then hopefully be better on Saturday. I'll have to see how I go anyway.

I'll need to check back to my 'Days healthy' counter I started on here after Christmas to see how long I lasted before getting ill AGAIN. I don't think I did too badly, it must be at least a hundred days!

My next blog post may very well be after the wedding. Wish me luck!

Ingratitude

I'm really fed up with my Mum at the moment. Which is unusual, because I normally put up with a lot from her and don't complain all that much. But yesterday she accused me of being glib about her illness. Me! Glib!! After all the fucking sympathy I give her and the amount of crap I put up with.

Basically, she had a whole hoo ha paddy over the weekend about my brother's wedding. She suddenly found out that my Grandad was going to want a lift back with her and Dad, and Dad hadn't told him that that wasn't possible, and Mum refused point blank to give him a lift back because she "won't be able to deal with someone else in the car". So she had a massive go at Dad for not refusing to drive his own father home, and slagged him off to me saying he had no backbone. I told her not to talk to me like that about him, which brought her up short a bit because people don't answer her back often.

Anyway, in the end my brother had to do some phoning around, and has arranged a cab to take my Grandad home (85 fucking quid!), and so it was all sorted after three days of stress.

And is she pleased? No. She rings me up at work and bleats on about how she "could really do without the stress of it all". Yes but it's done now, I say, so don't worry about it any more. "No you're not listening, I feel really ill and worn out by it all now". "YES, but it's done now, so stop thinking about it and concentrate on feeling better. Just put it behind you."

And then I'm called glib. Glib is such a little word, it slips out so easily, but I've had TEN YEARS of fucking crap off of her, I've been her main source of support and sympathy, even more than my Dad or brother who "don't understand", and she dares to call ME glib? How much fucking more does she want?

So anyway, I'm pissed off with her now. The thing about her illness, the really fucking convenient thing, is that any kind of stress or disruption makes her feel ill. So that means essentially that everything has to happen exactly the way she wants it to, and you can't do or say anything that she doesn't like, because otherwise you're inconsiderately inflicting suffering on a disabled woman. Isn't that a bit fucking convenient for a woman who has always been demanding and has always insisted that everything is about her? And isn't it just the tiniest bit open to abuse? How easy it must be to say she's feeling ill if she doesn't like something. How tempting.

Fucking glib. It makes me sick.

Aren't weddings supposed to be fun?

Sigh, OK so here is the latest on my brother's wedding, that I couldn't be bothered to write about yesterday because it was too depressing.

Mum now has a borrowed dress and a hat to wear, which is good because she was freaking out about finding an outfit. So is she feeling any happier and maybe looking forward to her son getting married? No. She's now able to turn her attention instead to freaking out about how she's going to manage the day, and how long she'll be able to stay for, and how she'll get home afterwards. I think the root cause is most probably that she went to a dress shop at the weekend for an hour and then it took her two days to recover, so she's obviously now thinking how is she going to manage a whole wedding.

Dave isn't being particularly helpful, but I do understand why. He's feeling a bit pissed off I think that not only is Mum not doing anything to help for the wedding (because, admittedly, she can't), she is actually being a hindrance and creating more stress for him, by asking for constant reassurance and checking of things like where she can go for a rest during the day, where she can eat her meal, etc etc. She is quite good at making things about her, even when you think it is something that most certainly is not about her.

She's like that though. Take when she found out I was gay - one of the earliest things she said to me was "I don't think you've thought about how this affects me", and then she bought this stupid book called Stranger In The Family - How to cope when your son is gay. It was all about grief, and the mourning that a parent feels for the life they thought their child was going to have and now won't.

Fuck. Off. Mourning?? I wasn't bloody dead! Just because she chose to make lots of assumptions about my life, it's not my fault. I never promised to marry a nice girl and have lots of babies. And a parent's assumptions actually make their gay child's life rather more difficult, as you then feel like you're doing something wrong by not conforming to them.

Anyway, I'm getting off the point. Mum is getting stressy and demanding attention, and Dave is getting pissy and refusing to give it, so I end up getting my ear bent by both of them. I don't recall signing up to be family conciliator and I'm getting a bit fucked off with it lately. I want to go to my brother's wedding and enjoy it! But I won't really, I won't be able to relax until the evening probably, once Mum and Dad leave, which sounds AWFUL but it's true.

So there you are. And we've got about five and a half weeks to go. I'm sure someone will go into meltdown at some point before that. I'm slightly concerned that Dave will be short with Mum on the phone, she'll take offence (partly on purpose, as part of her attention-seeking tactics), and then Mum will say she won't go at all then if she's such a trouble and we'll have a whole family drama.

But whatever, fuck it, I can't fix everything for them. I'm getting exasperated, can you tell?

Six-day weekend

I had a lovely six-day weekend for Easter. Although it seemed like I did a lot of stuff and saw a lot of people, as always now that I'm back at work it feels like it went past too quickly.

We went up to London on Thursday to visit our families, which was nice enough. It was a bit boring at my parents' house as usual, but I was only there for one night. Mum is getting increasingly stressed about Dave's wedding now, but I think I'll have to save that for a separate blog post (and for when I can be bothered to think about it all. It's rather draining).

Then Friday I had a nice meal with Chris' family, and then another meal with his Dad on Saturday, before we scooted on up to Cambridge for a friend's 30th birthday party. It was for our friend who moved to Sweden about 18 months ago, he was over with his wife and kiddy to see all his friends for his birthday.

It was lovely to see them actually, as obviously we don't see them very often now. I think the last time was their wedding in August. It got me thinking about how we've pretty much lost a whole circle of friends since they moved away and since our other friend (from the same group) moved to Cambodia. They were our friends we used to go to the pub with, quite often actually, but now Chris and I hardly ever go to straight pubs because the circle of friends broke up a bit after they went. It's funny how that happens, but I'm not particularly surprised: they were the people who knew everyone in the group, so it was them that held it together. Once those people leave it's hard to maintain a relationship with the others you don't have a direct link with.

We do have some other new friends now of course, but I used to enjoy those nights in the pub playing silly drinking games.

So anyway, the 30th birthday party was spent drinking rather too much vodka and dancing by candlelight in his parents' garage. I felt a bit like a teenager again. It was good fun though.

And then the last couple of days of my long weekend I spent in Brighton, just loafing about really, and having a long walk up and down Devil's Dyke (see my rather nice photo in the previous post). I wish I could have been off for a bit longer, as Chris is off all week, but such is life when you are the wife of a teacher.

Right, I better get on with some work I suppose. Although it would be much more fun to start making the scoresheets for our annual Eurovision party, so maybe I'll do that instead. Only a month to go now! "It's myyyyy time, it's my time...."

Wedding stress - the slow build up

I just had a rather long conversation with Mum about Dave's wedding. It's getting closer now, and as we approach it she's getting progressively more stressed about how she's going to manage it, which parts she's going to be able to attend, and how only to attend bits of it without upsetting Dave and his fiancée too much (they're being a little uncompromising, I have to say).

Basically, she can't do all of it, not a whole day from 2pm until the evening including a dinner and lots of noise and socialising etc. But Dave wants her to do it all; or at least, in an ideal world she'd be doing everything, and he wants his wedding to be perfect, so he's pitching for the ideal world scenario.

Unstoppable object? Meet my friend the immovable wall.

Neither of them seem willing or able to compromise very easily, so I don't know how it's going to end up really. I've been trying to think up all sorts of different plans that might be doable by Mum and acceptable to Dave, and it isn't really working very well at the moment. I don't know why I'm feeling responsible for sorting it out of course, but that's just what I do. And when Dave's being intransigent, Mum ends up feeling like he doesn't really want her to go at all, and so it all goes on and you can see why I ended up on the phone for ages.

Hmm. So I'm not really looking forward to my brother's wedding right now. If we can come up with a plan then I'll be able to feel better about it. Or alternatively I could try to stop caring and let other people sort themselves out for a change.

Soul... ebbing... away...

I went home to London to visit my parents last weekend. As usual it was fine, and it's always nice to see them, and they made a particular point of saying how much they enjoy my visits home. It "gives them a lift" they said.

While that's a kind thing to say and I'm pleased I cheer them up, I couldn't help thinking that actually it may give them a lift, but I always come away rather depressed. It is a bit boring at their house, which isn't the end of the world, I'm sure lots of parents' houses are like that. But on top of that it's also rather soul-sucking.

I think it's the bickering really. Mum snipes and nitpicks at Dad a lot, and I know it's because she's feeling ill and depressed, but it's still quite horrible to watch. I pull her up on it from time to time when she gets really out of line, but Dad must have the patience of a saint because he hardly ever says anything. And he does so much for her! With rarely a thank you, and usually a critical comment about why whatever he's doing is wrong. I'm reading The Devil Wears Prada at the moment, and I couldn't help thinking of Miranda Priestly.

Take this entirely average example: Dad goes and gets for her the small glass of wine she'll often have with her dinner. Does she say thank you? No.

"Did you get the wine out of the fridge first?"

"No, I forgot."

"Well it'll be too cold then won't it, you know I can't drink it cold, it gives me a stomach ache." (does it? since when?)

And rather than let this conversation continue and put up with the subsequent complaints of stomach achiness, I ended up going and getting a bowl of warm water and sitting her wine glass in it until the chill had been taken off. How ridiculous is that?? Admittedly, no-one asked me to do it, and I partly did it for my own amusement at the lengths required to satisfy her, but it's still stupid and outrageous, and my main reason for doing it was "for a quiet life". That must be my Dad's mantra actually.

So anyway, by the time I left on Sunday afternoon, the nitpicking had really worn me out. Chris always tells me I go to far too many lengths to appease her, and I know he's right, but the alternative of trying to train her into better habits just seems like too much hassle. I just hope I don't get like that when I'm older. So does Chris actually - he's already warned me of the possible consequences if I turn into my mother. He'd never let me get to that point anyway. I can see it now:

"This wine is too cold."

"Well you'll have to let it warm up then won't you? Or get your own wine next time. Or just deal with it, I'm sure two degrees isn't going to kill you, it's not liquid nitrogen you know."

So at least I know I've got a behaviour policeman to look after me.

I haven't been writing on here very often lately. I think it's because I'm using Twitter more, so I'm doing lots of small updates rather than writing these longer ones. I'll try to be better.

(Days healthy - 19)

Wrong side of bed

I woke up in a really bad mood today. I don't think it's for any particular reason, I just woke up thinking "I can't be bothered with any of it today". I wonder why you just wake up like that sometimes? On this occasion it's probably related to work being consistently dull at the moment, and I knew I had a couple of annoying emails to deal with when I got in, and I hadn't had enough sleep. And then even getting to work involved sitting on a horrible bus with small seats that hurt my knees listening to annoying schoolchildren making too much noise.

Well anyway, I've cheered up a bit now. Someone sent me this link, described as the best complaint letter of all time, and that helped because I nearly wet myself.

I had quite a long phone conversation with Mum on Tuesday (probably another reason for my plummeting mood) in which she complained about how infrequently my brother calls home. To be honest, I'm not that surprised; it is depressing to call her. There's always something that's gone wrong or something that's stressing her out, and I can't remember the last time she said "yes I've had a nice day thanks". Plus Dave works a lot so doesn't have much time for calling her, and she'll never call him because she's "waiting to see how long it'll be before he calls". So no wonder she never speaks to him.

She's started to stress a bit about his wedding now, as May is creeping up quite quickly. She knows she won't be able to manage sitting in a room of 100 people eating a two hour meal, but that it's not going to be as easy for her to slip out as it was at our wedding. And when I talked to Dave about it, he said (rather unhelpfully) "I hope she's not going to be going in and out during the meal". Of course she's going to be doing that, if she's even there at all! It's surprising how little he understands, even after seven years of her being ill. It's because he thinks it's mostly in her head anyway, which partly it may well be because she makes herself feel ill with her anxiety and stress.

So anyway, I had to try to convey to him that we don't live in an ideal world where she's not ill and will happily sit at the top table for two hours or more and everyone will have a lovely time. It's just not going to happen, so they're going to have to find a compromise. I don't know why it's got anything to do with me at all really, but of course it does because I'm de facto mediator and everyone looks expectantly to me for bright ideas and to fix it all. I'd also quite like to enjoy the wedding myself though!

I better read that complaint letter again, I've depressed myself now...

Obama Inauguration Take #2

Apparently he had to do his swearing-in oath again! How sweet! I think he's only the third president who has had to re-do it.

I found out though that it wasn't his fault it went wrong (apart from the first bit where he talked over the Justice man). The Justice got the words wrong, and Obama noticed and hesitated because he knew it was wrong, and then the Justice repeated them STILL wrong, so Obama just said what he was told to, and that's why they have to do it again. You'd think he could read the words off his card correctly! And on international TV with a billion viewers, in front of your new president too... Tsk, he should be struck off or struck down or whatever it is you do with Justices. Put down? No, that's pets.

Oh yes, and having discussed the inauguration with Mum a bit, she informed me that she doesn't think Barack Obama is black enough to be called black because he has a white mother. I pointed out that in segregated America 50 years ago that probably wouldn't have made much difference, to which she sort of harrumphed. So take note, Mr President, my Mum thinks you are Not Black Enough. I'm sure he'll be distraught.

ADDITION:

Also, this is quite interesting as it points out that his second oath was taken without a Bible, and that he and no-one else present seemed to mind. Good! It would be stupid if you had to swear the oath on a Bible, what if you weren't Christian? We might have to wait another 50 years for a non-Christian to be elected of course, but it's still nice to know they could take the oath without a big hoo ha.

Trash TV and yummy dinner

I had a nice weekend featuring large quantities of low-brow television viewing and then a scrummy meal out at Momma Cherri's last night.

There seem to be quite a lot of trashy programmes on at the moment, and I'm throwing myself whole-heartedly into them, as there really isn't much of an alternative. So we watched Total Wipeout, based on the American show Wipeout where enthusiastic contestants run round impossible assault courses, bouncing off things, falling over, and suffering minor injuries; then there was Your Country Needs You, the odd new format for choosing our Eurovision song, but which seems fairly harmless (although Andrew Lloyd Webber is looking increasinly like Emperor Palpatine); and finally Dancing On Ice has returned for another series of graceless ineptitude, tight trousers on the one or two good looking males, and minor to medium-seriousness celebrity wounding. So that was fun anyway.

Last night we went to Momma Cherri's and had another yummy meal, we've been a few times now. I got my meat fix for the month by having chicken wings, chicken drumsticks, AND barbecue ribs (Chris averted his gaze while I made a big sticky mess of myself), and he had much more sophisticated Vegetarian Combo Platter. It's always really nice in there, but I'm disappointed we haven't seen the real Momma Cherri yet. She may be fictional for all I know, like Aunt Bessie.

That's all really. Work is very very dull and I'm having trouble filling the days, but that's nothing new. Oh and Mum and Dad's Indian Burial Curse has returned - their central heating failed for a day and made a loud clanking noise, only to suddenly rectify itself as soon as an engineer arrived and leave no trace of any problem. So now Mum is feeling radiators in an OCD manner every half hour to see if it's still working and ringing me up about it when it all gets too much.

Oh Christmas tree

Christmas has been a mixed bag so far. Mum has got flu, so is feeling even worse than usual, and I'm terrified I'm going to catch it off her and be ill for New Year. I had to make a considerable effort to ignore it and still give her a hug etc while she coughed in my face. I felt a bit like Princess Di hugging those lepers on TV.

Christmas Day was nice as I spent it up at Chris' and we had a nice lunch, and then we saw some friends in the evening. Mum did say in quite an accusatory tone what a boring day they'd had without me, but I thought that had been the point, so she didn't have to make any effort! So fuck it, I'm not taking responsibility for whether they have a nice Christmas, not when she TOLD me not to come home.

Then today was my annual hell of lunch with my horrible grandad. He was fairly well behaved for a change, but Mum came this year and shouldn't have because she felt ill straight away and the food took too long and then was wrong and then I had to wolf mine and drive her home before anyone else had even finished eating. So now I'm sat on my own while she rests. Still, at least it got me out of the lunch quicker, so it's not all bad, and hurrah for mobile Facebook and blogging.

Cursed

I really think that my parents' house must be built on an Indian burial ground; they have a ridiculous amount of bad luck. Obviously they don't live in America or anything, but maybe some Indians made a special trip over in order to bury their dead in East London or something.

Aside from the fact that Mum got ill several years ago and has remained officially disabled since then, and that Dad got made redundant from his job earlier this year (which in some ways was actually a good thing), they have myriad things that go wrong, things that break, things that cost money.

Take last Friday. It wasn't Friday the 13th or anything, God knows what else would have happened had it been, but still:

• Mum got ill with flu. Not a big deal, but worse for her than some other people because she's ill generally anyway, and so could do without additional viruses. Also, she hardly leaves the house, so where did she get flu from? Anyway.
• Dad didn't get paid. Some mess up at the bank and at his employer apparently, but no-one noticed until Mum checked their account to pay the start of the month bills and found there was no money in it.
• OK those two things aren't too bad, annoyances but not disasters, for some people the money thing would be a big problem, but they've got savings. But then what else happened? Dad was driving home from work, stationary at some lights, and someone crashed into the back of him! "Oh sorry, I didn't see you". What??

So obviously Mum gets stressed at the drop of a hat anyway, she stresses if she can't find the right pair of glasses (she has about 4 for different types of looking at things), so the combination of feeling ill, having no money, and the car being smashed up at the back sent her into a tailspin. They can sort it out obviously, most of it's fixed now - Mum's feeling a bit better, the bank gave Dad his money yesterday, and the car is going to the garage today to be fixed on the other guy's insurance. But still, quite a bad day I think you'll agree!

And it's not just last Friday, it's every other week with them. They have new radiators put in, and they start leaking within a week and the carpets are all soaked. Their hi fi reaches the end of its one year warranty, and the CD player and radio both pack up on it at the same time. The cat got a mouth tumour and had to have an expensive operation. Dad had someone make an insurance claim against him for a car accident on a road he's never been on. The list goes on, and those are all fairly recent!

So anyway, I think they need to be exorcised or something. And of course I'm the one who gets Mum in a flap needing calming down on the phone whenever any of it happens. I might have to start hiding horseshoes and lucky rabbits feet around their house, just to try to even out the bad karma.

Christmas, hair, and internet telepathy

I'm starting really to look forward to Christmas this year now, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Christmas would appear to be in full swing already in all the shops and on the TV, so I feel like I may as well start to get into it. I flicked onto 4Music the other day and they were already playing Christmas hits on loop, and it's not even the end of November! I think I'm going to get quite tired of hearing Mistletoe and Wine and that stupid Slade song they play ad infinitum every year by the time we actually get to Christmas.

My second reason is that I'll be doing something a bit different this year, and spending Christmas day with Chris for the first time. For the last few years I've stayed over at his Mum's house on Christmas Eve, had presents with him and his family first thing in the morning, and then gone back to my own parents' for the rest of the day. That was fine, I quite like it because I've always spent Christmas day with them, but Mum doesn't really like Christmas that much and gets very worn out with it quite quickly. Last year we ended up sitting with the lights off (because of her eyes) and no music on (because of the noise), and I felt like sticking a fork in my neck just to make sure I hadn't suffered brain death without noticing.

This year Mum has already announced she doesn't want to do Christmas, or at least she wants to do a very reduced version. There will be no decorations, no tree, we will not be having a roast turkey dinner, and we will be getting one present each only up to the value of £20. She's hoping this will mean she'll still be feeling well enough by Boxing Day to do lunch with my horrible grandad, as she missed it last year and doesn't want to miss another. I'm always very supportive, and said yes of course that's fine with me.

Then Chris and I discussed what we want to do over Christmas, particularly as this is our first year as a married couple, and decided maybe it would be nice to spend it together at his Mum's house. I was a bit unsure how Mum would react to that, so had to gear myself up to asking if that would be OK with her. Chris did his usual thing of placing me firmly between the two of them, by saying "don't ask her if it's OK, tell her it's what you want to do", so once again I had to do my balancing act of trying to keep both of them happy. In the end though, it went surprisingly smoothly, as when I spoke to Mum about it she said "oh well I was going to ask you if you wanted to do that anyway, I know you must get bored here, and as we're not doing Christmas properly anyway...". So I was really surprised! But pleased, and now Chris and I can have a nice day together and I'll see Mum and Dad on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day instead. Hooray!

This post is quite long already, so I won't dwell too much on the other (hopefully intriguing) parts of the subject line. The first is the fact that I have new hair. I'm still not quite sure about it, I've had quite a few nice comments, but sometimes I think it looks a bit odd. Chris cut it for me (he did very well actually), based on a picture I found on the internet and some 'how to cut hair' videos I watched on Expert Village. This is what I was going for:


And this is what it now looks like:


My eyes are doing that weird thing where one is bigger than the other in the picture, don't look at that bit. I think it looks a bit better in real life than it does in the picture too. It's not too far off, I think considering it was cut at home it's come out quite well. And it means I get to have spikey hair while still disguising my huge forehead a bit. It's a shame my hair isn't really long enough in some places yet. God I do have the most humongous forehead actually, it's about three times the size of his. I should install solar panels on it.

Anyway, also I have become rather addicted to Twittervision UK. It's a combination of Twitter and Google Maps, and it lets you watch what people are twittering all over the UK. I find it really compulsive to watch, it's just little snatches of conversations and people's idle musings, and it feels a bit like you're reading their thoughts. It's quite voyeuristic. There's a worldwide version too, but I found that less interesting because it kept jumping to tweets in Japanese and Portuguese that I couldn't read. So anyway, between Facebook, writing this post, and Twittervision, I have to say my productivity really has taken a tumble this morning. I suppose I better take a look at my emails...

Ten, nine, eight...

OK we're not quite that close, but not far off. It is now 7.45pm the night before my wedding. I can't BELIEVE it's tomorrow. Where the hell did it come from?? You plan something for ages and then suddenly WHAM it's right there. I've a feeling it's going to flash past so fast.

Mum is down, she got here, which is great. She didn't think she was going to for a while, and she was hot and flustered and exhausted by the time she arrived, but could be worse. Dad had rubbed her up the wrong way in the morning, but to be honest anything he had done was likely to do that. He doesn't help himself though, he does do some stupid things sometimes (for example, trying to force her hat box into the cupboard in the hotel by turning it upside down and pushing it hard, when she's already said "Is my hat still alright?" ten times in half an hour). Anyway, so she's here, their room wasn't ready for 20 minutes after their arrival, which is annoying because I was told 2.30 so they arrived at 2.40, but eventually we got them in. They've been bumped up to a sea view too, which is great. It's a bit hot in there, no air conditioning in the rooms, only downstairs, but it's a nice room.

So anyway, that's one big hurdle out of the way, and she's so pleased to have made it. I'd got as far as having mild chest pains during the morning, I was that worried about it (another of my phantom pleurisy episodes, for those who've known me long enough to remember the last lot). I feel better now though.

Bit scared, can't believe it's tomorrow, but looking forward to it, and I know I'll miss not sleeping in the same bed as Chris tonight.

A much better day

OK, today has been a much better day than yesterday, and I'm feeling a lot more positive. I have done LOADS of wedding stuff, and it is starting to feel like it is all coming together. And so far, nothing I've done today has gone wrong or unearthed a problem. I have:

• checked my suit jacket fits OK - it does
• got the car ready for going up to Heathrow (washed and full of petrol)
• polished my smart shoes
• been into the music shop to check our booking is OK for Friday - it is
• called New York to check they still have our reserveration - they do, and I had a lovely chat with a man in the hotel about the best way to get there from the airport
• called San Francisco to check they also still have our reservation - they do
• tidied up the flat a bit and cleaned it lots in preparation for our house guests - including the horrible black mould that has been accumulating on the bedroom window for four years and that has resulted in us never opening the blind in there a) so we don't see how horrible it is, and b) so it doesn't try to ensnare and eat us

I have also spoken to Mum, and she is feeling quite a bit better today, and certainly sounded better. Her pills have kicked in that help stop her getting too anxious, thank GOD for prescription medication.

So all in all I have had a Productive and Good Day.