Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

• I helped conduct five interviews this morning (which as my manager who's doing them with me pointed out is always weirdly draining -- there's something about having all these potential futures appear before you, where the decision you make affects people's lives so differently, depending on what you choose...even here when it's only for a ten-week placement like this).

• I had a really demanding meeting this afternoon that I had not been able to prepare for at all. It went okay but oof. Coulda been better!

• Then we went to go collect groceries, and V's shoes which have been repaired.

• Then I had counseling. Today we talked about what we ended up calling different "circles" of my life: work, Minneapolis, local stuff (by-election mostly), household, community care, self-care... Normally when one circle has felt like too much there's been a nicer one I can shift my focus to, but lately it feels like they've all been shitty. It helped to talk about this even if it wasn't anything I don't think about regularly.

• I walked into my bedroom where I do counseling (it's on the phone) and my first thought was oh yeah, I meant to change the bedding yesterday and then I didn't...I should do that. And it was mostly done by the time she called! And I did the rest right after.

• And on only the second time I went back upstairs after that I remembered to take the laundry down with me! And the washing machine was free so I chucked it right in. This is all like warp-speed, by my usual standards.

I didn't even have time to walk Teddy today. But we did get fancy takeout (yay, vegetable tempura!) re-scheduled from me fucking up the plan last night, and watched some TV and I managed to stay mostly awake until 9pm. That's good enough.

This afternoon, my phone got stuck in a boot loop. It was bad enough when I was looking at it with utter confusion, but when D finished work and I could ask him to have a look at it, he looked just as baffled. Uh-oh!

I missed it immediately: my day is so much easier to get through with podcasts or audiobooks to keep me company. I struggled more to eat lunch (leftover balsamic mushrooms, on toast) without the distraction. There was a nice "like in the old days" element of having to read my library book and being left to just Wonder if an email I was waiting for had arrived or not, but it was difficult when I didn't have anything to drown out ambient noise when I was trying to relax. I do understand why separate mp3 players are having a resurgence (though I'd want a podcast player as well as an audiobook player and that sounds Complicated).

When D and I went to walk Teddy, V was upstairs so I wanted to lock the door. I grabbed their keys instead of mine, probably because I'd done that yesterday when they and I had been the ones going out and D had been upstairs working. But this time, by the time we got back to our street, the Tesco van was in our driveway, earlier than the time slot we'd been given. Poor V had had to scramble and move stuff to open the kitchen door and the side gate, and pile all the groceries on the dining table. We got back in time to put everything away but they were clearly exhausted and I felt absolutely awful at having inadvertently locked them in the house (my keys were right near the door but they didn't know that so it didn't actually help) and made them deal with an extra hurdle because Tesco was so early and with no earning.

I slept very badly last night and had an early start, going with D to his latest dental hospital appointment, so by the time I finished work I was feeling really gross and thought I'd lie down for a bit. I ended up falling asleep and waking up only when D told me dinner was ready and he'd sent our apologies for queer club which had already begun by that point. Oops. But it was kind of a relief, not to have to go anywhere else today; I was feeling gross even despite rhe nap and being around people felt difficult.

After we ate, D said he suddenly had a craving for a root beer float, and I said that thinking about ice cream made me want ice cream all of a sudden. We couldn't get root beer on such short notice but we did drive to the Co-op and get Ben & Jerry's cookie dough ice cream. D had had a big day with another minor oral surgery so early in the morning, we'd been good and a treat seemed like a good idea. It'd been a while since we'd done something silly just because we can.

I went to lift club this morning and left it not feeling briefly euphoric as usual but instead nothing at all. I had seen cool people, I'd done the best exercise my body has available to it, and all this only got me up to about neutral.

I went to the RNCM, for the first time in at least five years but probably longer, to see a brass band with angelofthenorth. It was such a treat thar she'd sorted this all out for us. Great to have someone to talk with afterward: we had practically opposite rankings of the four pieces we'd heard which amused me. As she was listing hers, someone a few rows ahead who was also getting ready to leave overheard and said "I thought exactly the same!"

I told her that I didn't feel like I was thinking a lot about Minneapolis but looking at how poorly I'm functioning at everything, it's clearly taking up a lot of my usual abilities. Background radiation, she said, and yes that's it exactly.

This afternoon, V filled their pill boxes for the upcoming week had noticed that they didn't receive more of something that they thought they had. (They're so contentious but with so many prescriptions -- especially when they're low on spoons for an extended period (flare? new problem? just coincidence? no way to know!) -- it's easy for something like this to happen.) And of course it's one with hideous withdrawal symptoms. And of course it's the weekend.

I was fully prepared to leave D to make dinner while I was on hold waiting for NHS 111, but I found out you can do this online now! So I spent a relatively painless few minutes typing things into the website and then D drove us both to the pharmacy. After a bunch more questions, which luckily I was prepared (enough) for, we emerged victorious with three days of meds, enough to get us to a weekday when this can be sorted out properly.

We had takeout for dinner.

And then I saw that ICE have executed someone else. My brain and body seem to have shut down at this news.

I'm very glad that V has their meds now. They were so stressed and miserable at the thought of having to go without them. They take them in the evening so I'm glad we could figure out a solution before the meds were even overdue.

Tomorrow will be a busy day being helpful to V's relative who's clearing out his mother's house. I'm looking forward to the physical labor for something I'm not emotionally invested in.

I hope I sleep.

angelofthenorth's new flat is really nice! I can see why she's so excited about it.

Moving is happening gently: she and Mr. Smith are still here for a couple more days, which is good; it'd be weird to lose them all at once!

After sleeping like shit, making it to the first transgym lift club in a month, then helping her move in and eating a whole pizza that I usually get two or three meals out of, I have been ready for bed ever since I ate dinner; it's still not even eight o'clock.

angelofthenorth and I had planned to go to yoga this morning, but after a disrupted night I slept through my alarm and woke up to a text from her saying that she was going to get the 10:33 bus.

It was 10:28 at that point.

I texted back an explanation and canceled my booking.

Poor thing texted me again an hour later saying the instructor hadn't turned up -- he was listed in the app but not on the staff rota.

There have been all kinds of computer problems: when we went to the gym yesterday she mentioned to the staff that she couldn't book on to the yoga session this Friday without being asked to pay (it should be included in her membership). The person anticipated this problem before she got done explaining it and said a lot of people had encountered the same thing and they couldn't do anything about it there. Really annoying how our city council handed over so many leisure centers and libraries to a CIC that grew out of another council managing theirs; it means the in-person staff can't ever do anything if there's a problem like this or an issue like accessibility.

And while I have an email timestamped 10:28 canceling my booking, it's nestled in my inbox next to one also timestamped 10:28 saying I'm a no-show and I'm going to be charged £3. For a thing that starts at 11! I'm hoping that's just another computer fail too; it seems ridiculously unfair otherwise. I can't be bothered chasing it up now so if it isn't resolved in a few days I'll yell at them but here's hoping that unfucking the computers fixes this for me too.

Thanks for the nice comments on the previous entry. They, along with just writing it out in the first place and D holding me tight (normally I am the big spoon but he did a great job at it last night!) helped me have an okay night.

D had asked me, after we turned the lights off, if there was anything I wanted to do today -- the family had no real plans beyond making the homemade vegan wellington for my birthday dinner that D's sister had suggested and I'd gotten excited about before I remembered quite how much work it was last year, oops. But D and I helped and it felt a lot less of a production this year.

Anyway, before that we had no plans and I thought it might be nice to get out of the house and see something of Birmingham. We didn't actually make it as far as the city centre but the local high street allowed D to browse charity shops while I got a long-overdue haircut (I went from the longest hair I've had in quite a while to the highest skin fade I've maybe ever had, so it feels like a dramatic difference!), and we went for a very nice birthday lunch.

My birthday present from D might still be trapped in DRM hell but he told me what it is, and The Feminist Art of Walking by his old pal Morag goes very nicely with the birthday present I've already gotten from angelofthenorth, of short walks/hikes around Greater Manchester. I also got a bookshop.org voucher from D's mum, which can be added to the one that comprised the other part of my birthday present from Miriam, so I have to decide what to get there too, which is so fun.

Weirdly, my birthday also marks a year since Gary died. It feels so long ago but also I can still conjure him so clearly in my memory, and there probably hasn't been a day all year that I haven't thought of him. I still miss him so much.

I've had a much better day, and I'm looking forward to being home tomorrow.

I was so tired after work I had a nap. Didn't notice D texting to say dinner is ready. He came upstairs to see how I was doing...and now is asleep himself.

I worked hard at work today, all day. My butt barely left my chair. I was pushing my brain to do a lot and it felt bad and stressful but at least I did enough work that I'm not too worried. I have two work trips this week, both about an hour away by train, but it eats into my time and energy so much to have to travel.

After work, I was aware that angelofthenorth had to take her cat to the vet and when D left too, to drive them, I figured I should make dinner. It was very basic but ready not long after they got back, so that worked out. And while I'd been working on that and waiting for things to defrost/the time to put the burgers in the oven after the fries got a head start, I made a Tesco order for tomorrow, which was sorely needed.

And then I ate dinner. And then, after dithering for a while, I did get myself to go to the gym. D kindly drove me there too, which got me through what felt like the most difficult part of the process. I happily pushed myself a little on the rowing machine and most of the weights and I even did some extra core exercises at the end, just like in lift club on Saturday mornings. The trainer for those classes would've been proud, I figured.

And then I came home and showered and now I'm in bed! I have some clean laundry I really should put away, and some more dirty laundry I should put in the basket to take downstairs, but that might not happen tonight. It feels like it's been such a busy day, one thing after another.

I enjoyed the sunset function last night -- after some faffing I managed to get the right amount of light to start from (fairly bright?) and a sound I like (crickets! I really miss crickets, they sound like summer to me and remind me of being a kid).

I fell asleep before the thing went totally dark, which to be fair could be because of the melatonin I treated myself to last night...but I haven't had great success with them lately.

Maybe it was just how tired I was, after a busy day at work, straight in to counseling, then eating dinner, then off to the local queer club where I'd agreed to turn up early and help set up, and by the time we left, about half past 9, I was so tired that I was yawning uncontrollably on the short ride home (and very glad that D had driven me, so that I didn't have to walk or try to get the bus home.

Today felt similarly intense: work, then an important and positive but also exhausting and anxiety-inducing conversation about U.S. politics, then I made dinner, and by the time I'd eaten my parents were ready to talk. I've missed them like three Sundays in a row so couldn't dodge it too much longer.

And that was a mental and emotional marathon of a conversation too: my grandma's house will be sold in two weeks, the upshot of which is my mom's horrible sister was saying horrible things about my mom at an extended-family event and when my mom asked if I wanted my share of the money from the house sale I said "Absolutely not," and she said "I knew you'd say that, but you're going to have some anyway, and I want you to use some of it to get yourself something nice..." Well okay then, I'll be a tax haven or whatever for my parents this one time.

And they talked about politics at me a bit (which again we don't disagree on but I'm so spoiled by my little bubble where people seek consent and check in during these heavy conversations that this drives me up a wall now).

And then we got on to their computer needing to be replaced because support for Windows 10 is ending and they thought they could just take their PC to Best Buy and get the Quicken transferred to a new laptop... I was trying to disabuse them of this notion gently when their iPad battery died because they believe you must always let it discharge completely and they never use the iPad while it's plugged in.

I'd wanted to go to the gym this evening, and suddenly it was bedtime. And my head was too full of things.

And actually I had to rearrange my bedroom a little for the alarm clock. I don't have a bedside table next to the bed; my room has a lot of fitted closets and drawers so there's only really one place for the bed to go and it means the door -- which is at a weird angle to the rest of the room because of the way the whole upstairs is, and the fact that almost every door up here opens the opposite way to the way that'd make the best use of space -- leaves no room on this side of the bed.

Mostly I've gotten around this by using a floor lamp as a bedside lamp, and shoving a piece of wood between the mattress and the bed frame which I use for bedside stuff: glasses, water, phone. But the piece-of-wood shelf is too low for the alarm clock: not much of the light would actually end up in my line of sight which would defeat the whole purpose of the thing. Also it wasn't easy to get plugged in.

Last night I balanced the clock on some good thick books, and I don't know if the light would have woken me up so I set it to make a normal sound. Then I woke up 45 minutes before my alarm went off this morning and leaned over to look at the clock to see when it would start lighting up, like a little kid. So I don't know any more yet about how or if that will work.

So tonight I've bodged a slightly better solution for clock placement next to my bed (and just as I'm writing this do I realize there's a better way to rearrange the things that need to be plugged in because the lamp has a long cord...always so much to think about!). And I hope the nice cricket sounds and dimming orange light do their magic!

I do wonder how well this supplementary daylight works on someone whose eyes are as bad as mine.

But I really should put my phone down now.

I took yesterday off work, probably inadvisably so close to big deadlines but it gave me a chance to meet someone and do ridiculous things I'd need a filter that I don't have any more to describe here in more detail. The tl;dr is that my brain and body feel much better and I slept for eleven hours last night.

Now to get back to work and catch up quick...