Safety Lights Are For Dudes

Crikey, norovirus is HORRIBLE, isn't it?

Saturday morning I was right as rain.
Saturday lunchtime I felt a bit queasy. Two minutes later I had to fight my way to the loo and ( cut for TMI )

.

The rest of Saturday and up to Sunday afternoon I couldn't even keep water down.
Sunday afternoon I managed a yogurt.
Sunday evening I managed a plain chicken breast, then got overconfident and tried to eat a funsize bag of skittles. Skittles caused puke-o-rama.
About 2am I managed a bagel. It stayed down but I felt awful.
About an hour ago a cheese spread sandwich. I still feel queasy.

On top of all that I am highly infectious so I can't have hugs, and won't be able to have hugs for two days after symptoms subside.

Guys, you all know how I love food and hugs.
This is the worst torture EVER.

- have finished course of antibiotics prescribed for secondary problem.
- primary problem still there, but at least I'm not suffering the side effects of the antibiotics any more.
- side effects of antibiotics completely wiped me out in terms of energy and brainpower for over a week, and I couldn't even booze :(
- all the other tests came back negative, so I'm booked in at the doctors on Wednesday next week. Will probably have to have more tests.
- we've ruled out cervical cancer, and all the various infections; it could still be all sorts of nasty things though. At this point I just want to be able to put a name to it.
- they still haven't come to pick up my Note 7 (they're meant to be coming today, but I'm not holding my breath).
- new phone, which seller swore blind was in Ireland, has actually been dispatched from Taiwan, if it's been dispatched at all, because they've given me a fake tracking number.
- I'm still in pain, still phoneless, and still pissed off.

On the plus side, I have mainlined two seasons of GotHam, one and a half of Lucifer, and caught up on iZombie; Ash Vs Evil Dead continues awesome, and there was new Supergirl last night. So, you know, it's not all bad. And on Friday I can finally have gin!

Hope you are all well, and sending extra big hugs to sassy_scot and her family.

Got some of my test results today. ( cut for potential TMI )

I'm still in in lots of pain, every day. But I'm also not dead. More updates as they come.

I just noticed I haven't posted an actual post for ages and it's all been linkspammy, probably because I've been spending most of my Expressing Myself spoons on drawing things and putting them on instagram, so I thought you'd all appreciate a little update

• Item: I am standing in the council elections. Again. The last 2 years I got exactly 103 votes. I am hoping for a modest increase to 104 this year, because Alisdair will be able to vote for me, living in my ward as he does now.


• Item: Mental and physical health things are more-or-less under control at the moment (she says, hoping not to jinx things).
  Mentally, I've had less than the usual hiding-under-the-duvet days since surviving The Februaries, and I'm managing to mostly stick to my exercise-away-the-mentals schedule. These things may or may not be related. I am now at the level of fitness where it is almost impossible for me to consume the number of calories I am burning, so the weight has started dropping off again. I may be able to fit into nice clothes by autumn conference, which will help with self esteem and things. We shall see.
  Physically I'm still having some debilitating pain days, but not so many, and managing to at least swim, even when I can't manage the weights because of a pain day. I am lucky that if necessary I can work from home, so it doesn't actually impact work. Speaking of which...


• Item: Job continues to be good, and interesting. Every day is a different thing. I approve of this. A lot of what I get to do is research things so that the boss can spend 5 minutes reading my summary email, rather than three hours googling. I now know lots about various things I never even considered knowing about before. Yay learnings!


• Item: Daughter appears to have developed some bits of executive function; she's by no means perfect, but is getting into the routine of wake - shower - breakfast -brush hair and teeth - get dressed - go to school in a morning, and come to mummy's office - do homework - go home - get changed - eat tea in an afternoon. It's only taken nearly two years...
  (Seriously, given how awful I can be with executive function, I am incredibly proud of her. At this point in my career at the same school I already had the school detention record under my belt; she's doing WAY better, and it's not entirely due to having a diagnosis).


• Item: Doggies continue adorable. As do boys. Mum and Dad are both good...

I think that's about it, really... Hope you lot are all good. I do try to remember birthdays and stuff but I'm pretty rubbish at that.

*big hugs for everybody*

(especially you, Duffett, I know you're out there)

I keep trying to give it up, but I keep drifting back to it.

My mental health has been SO much better the past couple of weeks of tw'oliday, and yet, despite myself, I couldn't stay away and the last couple of days I have drifted back to my usual level of tw'activity, and my usual level of screaming "Oh FUCK OFF" at various screens at various points during the day.

So I'm going to do a pros and cons list to try to decide whether I shouldn't just delete the whole boiling.

Pro: very fast personal news feed.
Con: random attacks from eggs
Pro: get news there that doesn't appear anywhere else
Con: news there is relentlessly depressing, shows the world to be a savage and horrible place, and makes me wonder if there is any point in carrying on
Pro: able to quickly message people who don't respond to texts or emails
Con: even people you love can say things that will upset you all day (recent Lib Dem AWS "discussions" have proven that to the Nth degree)

I liked twitter when it was just you'd say something and maybe it would make people laugh and there'd be fun. Twitter hasn't felt like fun for a long time. There are probably things I could do to make it more fun, but I don't know if I'd end up throwing out the baby with the bathwater... but then if I leave altogether I'm going to be doing that anyway, aren't I?

I dunno. I don't miss faceache since leaving it all those yeas ago. What do you guys think?

(this post brought to you by an utter failure to stop hiding under the duvet and clean the damn house before visitors arrive. YAY for anxiety-caused-procrastination! YAY for the fact that procrastination makes the anxiety worse! YAY for vicious circles!)

So today I discovered that, having been going downhill as a service for a while, Delicious have started to add adverts into RSS feeds. Like the lovely Mr Ducker, I consider this a dealbreaker, and have therefore moved over to pinboard and deleted my Delicious account.

There may be a couple of feed burps and some formatting problems and such as a result of this over the next few days. Andrew's wonderful "feed links to your blog and autopost them" app works with pinboard as well as Delicious, so links should still come through, but I don't know if they will behave the same with regard to link text and comment text and such. I guess we'll just have to find out! Anyway, if something looks odd, don't feel shy to let me know and discuss among yourselves in the comments as to whether things look the same sort of odd for everybody :)

Item: I'm currently taking a tw'oliday from twitter - there's so much horrific news at the moment, and it's hurting and affecting people I know and love, and it hurts being bombarded by it several times a day, so I'm taking a break. It won't be forever, probably just a couple of weeks. Just to build up my resilience.

Item: I have been incredibly impressed by hp-for-business customer support the last couple of days. Not only did the lady sort out the recalcitrant printer that had proved resistant to both mine and Alisdair's best efforts, but she rang me back today to check that things were still OK and it was still working (it was).

Item: I've taken to instagram like a duck to water. I'm pretty active (user name is jennierigg) and I'm mostly posting pictures of my doggies. The accounts I am following fall into four categories: 1, People I actually know; 2, accounts which post pictures of cute doggies; 3, accounts which post pictures of hot guys with beards; and 4, artists I admire - mostly tattoo and comicbook, but not exclusively. Oh, and there's also the amazing collision of 2 and 3 that is Hot Dudes With Dogs.
If you want to be bombarded with pictures of my doggies, occasional gym updates and photos of food, and comments on your photos do feel free to follow me there.

Item: Mental health has been... Not bad but not great. I have been quite low through the end of January, and the nightmares have been about 3 times a week. However, touch wood, things seem to be picking up. I'm slightly anxious about getting a Case Of The Februaries, but also hoping that the Februaries just came early and I got them out of the way in January. I did write up the nightmare I had the other day, and writing it out helped. I then gave it a cheesy happy ending. If there's demand I might post it.
A thing that's helping mental health a LOT is that I'm getting in a reasonable amount of reading time recently. Current OMG WOW SHE'S AMAZING author is Tananarive Due. Thoroughly recced to all of you.

Item: Physical health is pretty good. I'm not doing much cycling because the canal path is still buggered after the floods in late December - although matgb is on about taking me road cycling soon, despite my nerves - but I'm doing really well at the gym and in the pool, and getting some decent walks in every so often. I've got pretty impressive muscles at the mo.

Item: A week today I am going to go for the first appointment for my next tattoo. I has the excite! This has been ages in gestation; Matt has been sending me rough sketches by email, and it's going to be amazing. He's a genuinely awesome artist too. Really exciting. So that's probably going to go on Instagram; it'll also affect my swimming a little bit, because I'll have to not swim for a week after having it done. Boo. Shall have to do treadmill or something equally dreadful for cardio. :(
Hmm. Maybe rowing machine? Rowing machine is not that dreadful...

Item: Daughter continues fabulous. She's really settled in at the old Alma Mater, and has chosen her GCSE options this month
*pauses to pass smelling salts to those who remember her being born and are now feeling faint with age*
Doggies are also great, and very snuggly. And I'm coping OK with having all my boys under one roof, even if it is a bit crowded and a bit rubbish not having my own room any more.

Item: Job continues pretty good - I honestly think if I'd have still been in my old job I would have had a total breakdown two or three times in the last few months. So yeah, I'm really glad of Job. The work itself is fun, the pay is better than any job I have ever had before, and I'm not overburdened. It's pretty cool. I'm still getting used to not having to scrimp for every penny, and trying not to splurge every payday, which is harder than it looks. But I'm getting there...

Item: LibDemmery... I'm not even going there. Everything is hanging on York at the moment. We'll see.

So, yeah, that got longer than I expected. Um. Sorry. But you're all now updated on everything. I think...

Let me know if you'd like to see my nightmare.

So I'm registering on a website (I'm not going to tell you which one) and it asks me to pick a question for security for in case I forget my password. And all the usual ones are either public knowledge and therefore googlealbe, or debatable and therefore I would forget which answer I had put. But I don't have to pick from the usual ones. I can make up my own.

Problem is, all that's coming into my head is "What was your mother's maiden name?" which EVERYONE knows (or can easily find out) or "what was your first pet's name?" (it depends - Shadow was in the house when I was born, but was she technically MY pet or my brothers'? And then there was Minstrel the rabbit, but he didn't last very long. It could be Sheba... Of course my first pet that I bought for myself with my own money and when living in my own house was Byron mayherestinpeace... you can see how I tie myself in knots with these things, right?)

Then inspiration struck.

So my Top Sekrit Security Question on this website is "Upon whose grave did you swear to Charlotte that you were not a spy?"

Those who know me may well be able to guess, which is why I'm not telling you which website, although it might take a couple of goes. The people who were in the room when it happened will know. But anyone trying identity theft will just find the question confusing... (please, no guessing games in the comments, though ;)).

I have mentioned this a couple of times on twitter*, but I guess several of you don't know: last Thursday I had what in olden times might have been termed a nervous breakfdown. I am under various Doctor's Orders, one of which is to do NOTHING at all stressful until a week today. This includes all Lib Demmery - she specified that.

Last night I was a bit naughty and posted a couple more sets of answers to fed party election questions because I figured it would stress me out not doing them more than it would doing them, especially given that one set came from someone I consider a friend, and I would guilt trip myself about it endlessly.

So if you ask me to do something, please don't be offended if I say no. Aside from anything else, this was another Doctor's Order: I have to learn to say no. I have to learn how much I can feasibly take on, and how to say no to the bits I can't feasibly take on.

In happier news one of the things I thought it would be good to do to recuperate would be to see friends I haven't seen in a while, and as many of them are in That London, and my PPC is going down for English Council on Saturday, and we have a Two Together Railcard**, I am coming down to London Not For English Council. I would quite like to do things like have lunch and beer and things (not necessarily at the same time).

Places I remember fondly include The Kensington Crepery (Kensington), The Museum Tavern (opposite the British museum), The World's End and The Mango Rooms and The Cuban (Camden), that pub near Euston station that has lots of real ale and a CHEESE menu, and The Crobar in Soho. I am not averse to being introduced to new places either.

Could you guys maybe email me if you're free on that Saturday and I'll set up an email circle so you can discuss it? I don't want to be doing too much organising (stress) but I do want to see peoples :) And obvs once a decision is made I will happily stick things on google calendar and send out invites and things.

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* because twitter is the only thing I have the spoons to deal with at the moment - it's surfable, it's easy to walk away from if things get fraught, and it contains lots of links to intersting things. My linkspam has been posting on here every morning because that's automated, thanks to the lovely andrewducker.

** initially we bought it to save money on getting to York conference***, but it lasts for a year, and so we're finding it useful for all sorts of other things where we must of necessity travel together :)

*** I believe it saved us £3 on that trip. But, you know, YORKSHIRE.

"I think we should train the dogs to make breakfast"
"A fine idea in theory, but I fear it would not work in practise. Spike would go into the kitchen, get the butter dish to butter the toast, and hide under the dining table eating it. Roxy would spin round in small circles making Wookiee noises while the toast burnt."
"But that means one of us has to get out of bed..."

I have been thinking about this on and off all week, and sleeplessness is making me blog about it now. Sorry it's not the cheeriest subject for a Saturday morning...

One of the consequences of my past is that I never feel 100% safe and secure. Even in a blissful post-coital embrace with a lover, even if I trust that person with my life, there is a part of me fretting about my safety. And not only do I never feel truly safe, but I have different things that increase my meagre sense of safety to most people. So where most people feel safer at night if they have locked the doors, I feel less safe if my escape route is impeded. I understand that locking the doores at night keeps burglars out, but I don't like it. I HAVE to know where the keys are, and I don't like having interior doors shut at all, at any time.

I feel safer sleeping on the side of the bed nearest the door. If I go to a new place I have to plan how I would get out, and am anxious and jittery until I have. I need to know where the train station is and that I can get to it at all times, wherever I am; and I always need to have a travel pass, or enough money to buy a ticket to get away if I need to.

When you've had a relationship where the person you love IS the danger, even if it is only one of many relationships, it really screws with your head. And there's always a part of you wondering if it WAS your fault, and if you could make THIS lover treat you the same way.

Intellectually, of course, I know it wasn't my fault. He was just a violent person. I also know that were anybody to try to treat me that way now
1, I am physically strong enough (and have done enough self defence classes) to make sure it wouldn't be me came off worst
2, it would only happen once, then I would end the relationship.
... but that's still not enough for the creeping sense of "what if" to go away. It worms around in my heart, and makes me doubt myself and other people. In this context, allowing myself to love ANYBODY at all is counterintuitive.

I am lucky enough to have more than one person to love. There are people I would trust with not only my own life, but my daughter's. They have proved to me on countless occasions that I could feel safe with them, if only my treacherous heart would allow me to do so. They understand, and they are patient and kind, and do what they can to help when I don't feel safe at all. Allowing myself to love them is my small act of rebellion against the forcible indoctrination that if you open your heart to someone it only leads to physical and emotional pain. I WILL NOT allow myself to believe that is true in all cases, and so I prove to myself it's not by loving people as hard as I can.

This can be a bit intense if you're on the recieving end of it. All I can say is that I am grateful, hugely grateful, for the people willing to be subjected to my love.

You know who you are. Thank you.

There are some people whose emails I always want to read - parents, partners, daughter, close friends. There are some people whose emails it is important for me to read - my PPCs, my treasurer, my council group leader, stuff from work, or from region. Maybe 1% of the email I get falls into both of those categories; 95% of the email I get does not fall into either one.

I use gmail labels extensively, and this has worked very well for me. So, while I was in Devon, I put the vacation responder on. I'd seen other people do it. How hard could it be?

The reaction of most people not covered by the two categories above (hereinafter referred to as "those on the list") was astounding to me. Huge numbers of them seemed to take the vacation responder as a reason to send me MORE email. Whereas the people on the list, they generally sent me less email. So the overall effect of vacation responder was to increase the amount of crap and decrease the amount of nice and/or useful email.

Now perhaps I shouldn't have said "Don't worry, I'll be checking my email when I get back" but "if you email me during this time it will be automatically deleted and you'll have to send it again when I come back so don't bother". Perhaps I should have used the vacation responder in conjunction with actually turning email notifications off - but then I would have missed the ones I actually wanted, or were important for me to get.

Or perhaps I should just delete my entire email address and start again from scratch...

The thing is, I now have an inbox full of shite I don't want, have undoubtedly missed some stuff I *did* want, and am intensely annoyed, and thus I want to do something about it. I'll certainly not be using the vacation responder in the way it's currently set up again, but in general, there are decisions to be made. And this is where you come in:



Do feel free to repond on twitter as well as in comments ;)

So I have been feeling a bit sorry for myself this week. Those of you who follow me on twitter might have noticed that I have been afflicted with a mystery spotty disease, which it's looking increasingly likely is shingles*. And there have been a couple of other health-related things which... yeah, I'm not going to go into those. But some of you know why they are upsetting. I never realised how much my self-esteem was wrapped up in my appearance, despite being the kind of feminist who doesn't wear make-up etc., until I suddenly have a face like a half-chewed pizza... Anyway, rather than wallow, I thought I would count my blessings:

• I have a roof over my head, food to eat, and all that jazz. More than many people have.


• I have an amazing daughter, and doggie-nurses who snuggle me when I'm feeling bad.


• My boys. Some of you live with me, some of you don't**. You're all amazing. You're all utterly different to each other, but you're all such good people. I am incredibly grateful and privileged to know each one of you.


• I have the best friends in the world***. By tweet, by text message, by phone call... You have all been there for me this week. Thank you. I wish I could repay you all for the worth you are to me, but there's not enough gold in the world.


• Gin.

I'm sure I have more blessings to count, but right now? Right now that last one is looking like the best one I've got. Hopefully my next blog post will be less maudlin.

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* the doctor said he didn't think it to be shingles because it was too widespread, and he'd lean towards an allergic reaction, but for various reasons (including my dad the human biology teacher turning up at my house, taking one look at me, and saying "well that's CLEARLY shingles!", and the fact that I have had further outbreaks when I have been nowhere but home...) I think it probably is.

** One of you is kind of half and half right now...*cough* Anyway...

*** if you're thinking "oh she probably doesn't mean ME..." I probably do. Y'all have probably heard of micro-aggressions. There should be a similar term for micro-acts-of-kindness. There are some of you who have said something that you probably think of as a throwaway comment, but which has literally shown me that life is worth living this week. That's very valuable indeed.