When you admit you need help as you’re struggling but get shamed and invalidated. I’ll just go back to hiding inside my head. Reasons why I isolate myself.
Are you ok?
Hey, hope you’re not in danger or anything. Is everything alright? Hope today has been okay for you …
Went to the aquarium yesterday, and saw this dickhead:
how does he eat?
every time i get Minimum Sleep for Proper Function the DT collectively gets weird dreams
there must be a causation somewhere
YOU. YOU NEED TO START SLEEPING PROPERLY BECAUSE I DON’T WANT THESE WEIRD DREAMS ANYMORE.
sorry
you’re the designated sleeper. Nobody told you?
But what about after eight
I had a bunch of weird dreams last night. I thought it was from a lack of REM sleep the night before, but this makes sense!!
We need to get you some sleeping pills because I’m not going to relive the end of the world tonight thanks.
I already took one when I went to bed late last night. I intend to go to sleep pillless and normally tonight
Actually now that you mention it, I did have kind of an odd dream. It was in 3rd person.
As Gibson?
That’d be pretty fun tbh. Sleep all the time, get fed and brushed. A total dream lol
Soooo I just got woken up by a bloke shining a torch in my fucking face. There’s cops in my house. At 1am. AGAIN
Seriously… this new kid… Nothing but trouble. Wtf
[They were looking for him, and I guess nobody told this worker which bedroom is his]
Damn you almost need a sign on your door… “He’s that way —>”
I swear all the idiots need to go off to an island and live with each other if they want trouble so much
Funny you say that, because after realising he had the wrong room, he closed the door and then started opening all the vacant rooms, including my spare room. I opened my door and pointed and said “he’s down there dude”
WTF. How terrifying.
Yeah…
I just got my electricity bill and thought there was a mistake because it was so low - apparently I got a $90 credit for a long power outage. It’s nice to get a win.
Strange but relevant dream...
I dreamt that I was resting against someone I barely know (I met her at some environmental workshop many many years ago and never stayed in touch beyond seeing her fb posts, but she is gentle and soft spoken, so acted like some kind of vaguely familiar avatar)
We were seated on a shaded amphitheatre near a sunlit park, watching the breeze rustle the trees and far off-people ambling along the paths, kids playing on the grass, still water reflecting a blue sky, the hint of a guitar strummed in the distance… some tan-coloured bulldogs were also prowling outside the amphitheatre, but ornate wrought iron black gates around the periphery prevented them from coming in. They were quiet and observant.
After a while, the person asked me softly whether I’ve rested well and why, and I started going on about how I’m so tired, but it’s been hard to sleep on holiday because of the feeling that something always needs to be organised, and I’ve never felt like I had enough time to just allow myself to completely relax into the space. In saying that, I felt a pang of sadness knowing that it was sunny, so I had to be on a holiday.
“At this rate you’ll never have time,” the avatar said, “there’s always something that needs doing next, for as long as you’re alive.”
“But this time was a lot easier,” I replied, “maybe because you were there and I felt like you were in such a state of peace and calm yourself, that I had the permission to rest as well. Or maybe it’s this place, because it’s not real,” and I looked at the dogs warily as one sat itself a short distance from us behind the gate and started a quiet, low growl.
“Although it would be nice if those dogs weren’t here,” I added. “Are they yours? Normally I’d be on edge with these dogs around, but it was so comfortable and serene earlier that I felt transported to my childhood years. I would’ve loved it to continue.”
The avatar said nothing but smiled sweetly. It was too good to be true, I knew it. The growling started getting louder and was breaking my immersion; I had to show her that I wouldn’t be safe once I left her little sacred area, so I turned around and leaned over a step to reach my water bottle…
… and almost immediately, I felt the angry breath of a bulldog on my neck as its teeth sank into my jugular, its snarling abruptly loud, right next to my ear. My entire being went limp in surrender except to notice from the corner of my eye that the avatar was still smiling blissfully onto the Elysium beyond, as if I were invisible.
I could feel myself fading fast even as adrenaline coursed through my veins, so I summoned what energy I could to let out a weak yelp…
…which translated to real life, and I woke up.
I guess that was trying to tell me something…
There’s a lot to unpack there, wow! What a beautiful piece of writing though, nicely done!
Came here to say the same thing about how well written that was - time for you to write a short story I think! =)
Aw thanks you guys, I thought it was pretty disjointed word salad but I admittedly got caught up in a poetic mood halfway through. I do get very vivid dreams from time to time and they are so symbolic and emotionally affecting that writing them out tends to have interesting results
so many hugs, are you feeling better now?
Yes! Actually even though it was a really vivid dream with a bad ending, it’s helped my subconscious process some emotions (writing it all out helped a lot, too). It’s been a great day, actually, feeling like I’m shedding the post holiday blurgh and maybe coming to terms with the weather on a physical level. Next two days are more challenging, let’s see how I go
Seeing that sleep is today’s topic…
Out the front of my place there’s a part of the road that dips quickly outside my bedroom. Been getting worse recently.
People fang it up and down that road and gets pretty busy at around 5am (for some reason the last few months has been crazy for a residential street). When it’s a tradie with unsecured metal shit in the tray / trailer it makes an immense noise bouncing around so 5am is my new wake up time.
I think people are realising it’s a short cut to avoid the nearby junction.
Once that first clang hits, it’s game over. Counted 11 clangs today before 8am.
I wonder about this with Google Maps and Waze. They can find drivers shortcuts, but make residential roads so busy because the were never intended for that amount of traffic
I’m in the process of writing up a care agreement for my mother’s future (short version: Mum gives me house now, I take care of everything the house equity would have provided). It’s a lot like drafting a pre-nup, except instead of dividing up a house you haven’t bought yet and deciding custody of children that haven’t been born it’s all “what happens if Mum gets dementia” or “what happens if I get sick and need support too” type issues. Combined with reading lots of sobering stories about what can go wrong in caregiving and these sorts of agreements it’s a bit confronting. I have just signed myself up for a fairly expensive trauma/illness insurance policy, which also has a sobering list of all sorts of terrible things that could befall me in the future.
The whole process has also made me realise something - our society’s approach to aging is horribly broken. So many of the problems that happen with elderly people relate to a combination of abhorrence of the idea of aging leading to people not wanting to think/talk about options and a devaluing of carers so the job often gets foisted on vulnerable people who are often ill equipped to do the job and often exploited horribly. Add in our reverence for individual choice to be respected (which means people can lose capacity to make good decisions and no one has the power to do anything about it - refer to “scams”)
Just the way we generally talk about aging is illustrative - “when I get that way, just take me out and shoot me” is often the extent of planning for the future we do, and is often used to shut down conversations trying to do anything more. One problem with that sort of concept is it treats “getting old” as a one-time event that just happens, as if everything is fine one day, and the next you reach a point where you become valueless. That concept prevents people from taking a gradual approach to winding down as they get older. It’s no wonder elderly people often fight the slightest loss of independence, we set things up as an all-or-nothing situation, like walking off a cliff instead of a gentle downhill stroll.
The other problem with that is that no one actually has the power to “just” do anything - whether that be stopping you driving, “putting” you in a home, or shooting you. The only option people have to make decisions for you is if they can have you declared incompetent, both reinforcing the walking off a cliff feeling for older people and putting their family in the impossible position of being expected to look after them (both by society and earlier promises) without actually allowing the family any legal right to actually do so.
With the agreement I’m working on I hope to set things up to allow for a more dignified and gradual withdrawal from responsibility for Mum, allowing her to pass over the responsibilities that are getting harder to manage without losing choices of how she wants to live and what she wants to do. Hopefully I will be able to set myself up to eventually do the same in future.
Sounds like you are already doing all the right things but there’s a book called ‘letting go’ by Charlie Corke that talks about death planning. Read it a while back but I remember it had some really good practical advice and was not too heavy to read.
Edit. And hugs. This is tough stuff
Even better the library has that as an e-book, I have downloaded it now. I’m currently re-reading “Avoiding the aging parent trap” by Brian Herd which is by a lawyer specialising in elder law that has a lot of good information in it.
I think researching and planning is my go-to coping strategy, having a good plan in place always makes me feel better. The hard bit will be all the family discussions around it. I always worry about what reaction I’m going to get and fret about what could go wrong, but so far all the talks we have had have gone well so I probably shouldn’t worry so much.
Oh I 100% understand (both about the research-as-coping-mechanism) and fear around discussions. You can only try (and understand it might take a few goes)
I ordered a heater from Kmart on May 30, and someone went and lost it. Kmart sent me an email the same day that they’d sent it, but the tracking never updated and when I contacted couriers please they said they’d never received it. When I checked on the Kmart page their tracking had changed from “fully shipped” to “we’re trying to find items for your order”. I contacted Kmart and they just refunded me stating it had been lost in transit.
Booooo
Also the other kid stole my water jug I keep in my fridge and now I don’t have cold water :(
Maybe look into getting yourself a little bar fridge? 2nd hand on marketplace you could get one for maybe 70 bucks delivered?
Save a lot of headaches.
Next payday I reckon I will. I found a small fridge + freezer that I think should fit in my cupboard for 60 bucks. 3.5 energy efficiency, so I figured if it fits it’d be a good investment for when I move out too. But I needed a tape measure to confirm it would fit which I forgot to buy
You could try my emergency measuring method - find a sheet of A4 paper, measure how many lengths of paper the cupboard is, then Google the size of the paper and multiply it by the number of lenghts. You can fold the sheet into 1/4s or 1/8ths etc. to get a more accurate measurement.
No need for any emergency measurements (that’s a good idea though). I can’t do very much for a couple of weeks anyways
Remember to leave a 5 cm gap around the fridge sides AND TOP to ensure that the heat exchange element gets enough air circulation to work properly. 10 cm is even better. Cutting a generous hole in the base of the cabinet and fitting a small fan to blow air through the hole will help the fridge work better too. Otherwise you’ll spend a lot of time defrosting the fridge and a lot of energy running it. Ikea has paper tape measures for free that are good for a limited number of uses, and you can write on them with a biro - eg width measurement and height measurement of cupboard.
Thanks TW. I meant wardrobe, not cupboard (I basically call everything a cupboard). Unfortunately it’s built into the walls so cutting anything is off the table, but I’ll remember to keep it back from the wall.
gumtree and facebook freebies have a lot of fridges.
Gotta pay for transport though and our guy is too young to have a licence.
Well technically I do have a license, just not a full one and I can’t tow anything. I do know someone with a trailer who’d be down to help, but he’s away on holidays for a few weeks
If you can cope with an estimate instead of precise dimensions, you can use your phone camera to measure distances. It’s built into iOS, and there are apps for Android.
I wouldn’t trust it to the millimeter, but it’s ok as a rough estimate to within a couple of centimeters.
Good night everyone and special hugs for Melbs an Melbcat
Thanks
I’m utterly fucked. Brain not work good. Body feels weird.
I know it’ll get better over the next couple of days but damn, fucking with your circadian rhythm is intense.
Yeah, I think I’m on the verge of the sickness.
finally slept alright last night. So yep, it was covid messing with me.
How’s the brain fog?
not 100% gone, but enough to come back to work and roll my eyes at everyone. So thats a start!
Trigger warning - potential burglary
I swear the shithole area where I live is doing my head in. Yesterday I’m pretty sure two guys were looking for packages to steal and/or casing myself and my neighbours.
They made a beeline with one guy walking and the other crawling behind him in a distinctive coloured car I’ve never seen before, the walking guy coming onto the porch and moving every single one of my bins to check behind, going around to my neighbours to presumably do the same, even looking in a nearby hedge. On the way out the driver then got out of the car and openly leaned down to look closely through a neighbour’s side window. Then leaving in the car with the first guy walking behind.
I didn’t bother calling the cops because they almost never come and even if they did the sus dudes would be long gone by the time they showed. They usually are. Also I’ve got the security cam footage of that saved on my phone but it’s a pain in the arse or impossible to send anything more than a minute long so I’d probably have to go pull it off the recorder box. But I might report it tomorrow in case they come back or have hit someone else. If the cops even care.
And before you incredulously ask how come I’m so blase about this and didn’t immediately call the cops - please just don’t. Don’t blame or judge. It’s pure exhaustion. It happens all the fucking time.
Over the years I’ve had different and even the same people repetitively trying to break in while I was home, and once physically chased a woman out of my flat when I stupidly forgot to lock the door. She was later arrested having snuck in and stolen the house keys of the old man a few doors down. I’m not even getting into everything that’s happened here. The cops generally don’t care.
So like. Yeah. Fuck this place. I’m just hoping I don’t get broken into or assaulted before I can leave.
Oof. I’m sorry Melbs. I know the feeling all too well. I gave up with cops after they disregarded my call when a worker at my last place was being threatened by a kid who was holding a chair over her head and threatening to kill her, plus a number of other times either I or the workers had been assaulted. They can maybe 1 in 10 times they were needed, and always 7-8 hours after it had happened
Oof. I’m sorry dude. The cops are stretched thin and it seems if you’re in a certain area or ‘class’ you’re not a priority.
No judgement here, cops were absolutely useless at the old old place when we were being harassed by the neighbours’ brats and their arsehole mates. Until they got the call out by another neighbour after they had the house to themselves one long weekend and ran absolutely riot.
They treated me better with the robbery saga over Christmas/January but ultimately did/were able to do fuck all.No judgement, have also found police to be useless tbh. Hope you can move asap.
Feeling a fair bit better. The sun is out and its a gorgeous day. I went for a drive to get a coffee and it was amazing. I just wanted to keep driving! I really REALLY missing my old car. I’d give just about anything for one last trip in it. I’d love to be standing on the dock at Cowes with a doughnut and the wind in my hair, or sitting at bar in Falls Creek with a alpine cider in my hand. Or the beach of tidal river with some fish and chips.
I heard from the family member who brought my car the other week. They love it, but financially looking to sell it cause it makes more sense for the business to expense a new one. I know I could buy it back, but it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t suit the family, and its just spending money delaying the purchase of its ultimate replacement: but the replacement is still years away and I’m just stuck with the dadmobile SUV. Sigh. I shouldnt complain, especially after the events of that piece of shit mazda last year. but I can still be sad.
