Bad day

[cosmolinguist]

It's been a rough day.

I woke up to a message from my friend L asking if I was available for a visit today, to provide distraction from the DWP triggering him and his husband. Luckily I had no other plans so I could say yes, arrange a time (expecting that I could leave in an hour or so) and get myself out of bed.

I got downstairs to delicious coffee (I'm so sad that angelofthenorth doesn't enjoy the fancy vanilla coffee she bought the other day! but it's so kind of her to make it for me; it's a welcome scent on these slow mornings) and made myself a quick breakfast.

But looking at my phone brought uncomfortable hints at really grim U.S. political news, and people expressing their gloom as a result. And in more local gloom, poor Miriam was struggling to get through an automated form she needed to complete urgently if she's going to get her new flat on the weekend when she can actually move in to it. She said, as she was rushing up and down stairs to fetch documentation it demanded, that the company was helping which I was glad to hear because I felt so powerless to help her. The unsuitability of the system for the people who had to use it was immediately apparent to us and even to the sympathetic staff member from the letting agency she had to call once or twice more before any kind of solution could be bodged.

Once it had been as sorted as it could be, I felt the increasing pressure to go and encouraged her to have a little treat of some kind before she tried to face the rest of her day, which included having to work. She said she needed more tea, grabbed the canister we keep the Yorkshire Gold in ("I need Yorkshire!" she said, her voice a clear indication of how dire this made the situation), only to pick up a teabag that tore and scattered its contents across all the other bags in the canister.

Her body just collapsed, and it may be the only time I've ever heard a person actually say "eff. em. ell." out loud.

I offered to make the tea.

But then I had to go. And I managed to lose my hat, I think on the bus. One of the actually useful Christmas presents I got from my mom is a hat/scarf/gloves set that's warm and cute and not too femme and it gives me my first pair of those gloves with the special fingertips where you can use your phone with it. But the hat is so warm (fleece lined!) I took it on the bus and later I was horrified that it wasn't on my head or in my pocket. I retraced my steps as best I could back to the bus and didn't see it, so can only assume it fell out of my pocket on the bus.

I was unreasonably upset by this. Present from my stupid parents! A good one! I have only had it for a few weeks! I was delighted to have a matching set but this is why I don't deserve matching things! And it actually is cold, the high today was like 37°F, so my ears did get pretty chilly! This sucks!

The Bee Network app didn't make it easy to report lost property, which surprised and annoyed me. I ended up just sending an email but I never get timely or indeed satisfactory results from doing that so far (I've complained so many times that I have the address saved in my phone's email app). Being reminded of all those times I've been ignored when a bus didn't stop for me or the audio announcements weren't working annoyed me (I've stopped telling them about the latter). Being unable to send the email because of that thing that saved my butt the other day annoyed me since this time the workaround that usually works didn't work and I had to try it about a million times and that just left me shaking with both anxiety and frustration...

Over a stupid hat. But also why can't I have nice things.

Eventually I did actually get to L and J's. They are also having an unreasonably horrible time, because of the DWP being shit and inaccessible and exacerbating the symptoms of everyone's illnesses and disabilities. Again all I could do is say "this sucks, you're doing everything right and they are doing everything wrong, this is unfair, this sucks." Apparently it does help, but not as much as I'd like to.

I got home in time to walk Teddy but by this point it was dark and the ground was still icy and slippery, and the fact that I didn't eat lunch was catching up with me. I was so tired I could hardly concentrate on D trying to tell me about the problems he had been having with his laptop while I'd been out... Again it just felt like more complicated problems making things bad for people I live that I couldn't do anything about.

I got through it and we got home, I heated up some leftovers but then I had stomach cramps and felt really horrible, which is weird because I never normally get stomachache. And it wasn't the food, it was just pizza I'd had a million times, including yesterday. I'd already been feeling kinda sick before I ate, which I chalked up to needing to eat. But it was worse after I ate! What bullshit. It went away, good, but it came back at bedtime!

It wasn't all bad; here's three good things:

1. angelofthenorth asked me how I feel about road trips and I love road trips and I'm excited to help her collect her stuff for her new flat next weekend.

2. D got his laptop working again, better than it was before! And we used it to do an online grocery order, it's nice to have that done.

3. Teddy got to visit our house! As we set off on our walk we went past our house, and he came right up to the door -- just like he did yesterday but unlike yesterday there were no children the size of him in our house so we could let him in. It was very fun watching him investigate -- he briefly tried to nibble a candle but V dissuaded him from eating the beeswax. He seemed to like our house and its people.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Oh what a day!

F2F with a dog is always good.

[otter]

What a hard day! You do deserve nice things. I said so.

[cosmolinguist]

:)

(I do of course. Everyone does. But a lot of us probably need friends to remind us of that sometimes too.)

[angelofthenorth]

I'm so sorry about the hat. If I can help trying to get it back? Because it suited you.

Much hugs and thanks for tea :)

[meepettemu]

Oof. What a complex day. It’s so hard when things just seem to stack on top of each other.

And I can’t tell how much irony is in there about the matching things but in case the answer is ‘none’, yes you deserve to have matching things, even if you lose everything. It’s not something one has to earn.

I’m sorry about the hat. That’s sad. And I’m glad there were good things too

[cosmolinguist]

Thanks for responding with such sincerity. You're so right that no one needs to "deserve" such things.

[meepettemu]

I couldn’t not.

[diffrentcolours]

I'm sorry it was so rough for you yesterday. If perspective helps, my laptop woes were entirely self inflicted; I was messing around trying to do a cool thing for no particular reason.

Also we should sit down together and sort your phone's email problem out.

[cosmolinguist]

my laptop woes were entirely self inflicted

Oh I know. But because I was struggling to follow the details, it just felt like more gloom to me.

we should sit down together and sort your phone's email problem out.

We should; I'm sure it didn't always happen every single time I try to send an email from my phone, but it does now.

[kaberett]

(yes you deserve nice and also matching things, AND the other thing you are providing L & J - which I did not manage to say on your post about this situation the other day - is just being a friendly body that isn't in a state of panic, which is so so so helpful to have when attempting to reregulate. It matters at least as much as the distracting pleasant words do and is almost certainly a chunk of why you're having more of a positive impact than you feel you "should" be.)

[cosmolinguist]

Thanks -- this is such a good point. I know my body always responds really quickly, and favorably, to an example set by any other body that's not overwhelmed with anxiety, when mine is. (This is why having a dog was so useful! So comforting.)

[silveradept]

Sometimes the best thing we can be is a body that acknowledges all of this shit isn't fair and is terrible. (And it makes my "I have to fix everything!" itch something fierce.)