Thanks For The Open Network

... Lovely neighbours!
Yes, I'm being rather naughty, but some social contact and blog venting is needed.
This will be a quick one, and I hope everyone I haven't had time to catch up with is doing OK.
The flat is fine, but my mood is a little unstable. I was close to tears in Tesco earlier - I want to adopt a rat who needs a new home, but I can't afford a cage, and that inability to help him and continue experiencing the little spark of happiness as he licked my fingers was a little too much in my emotional state. I don't really know why I'm feeling like this, but the looming placement could have something to do with it, coupled with the little mantra of "I must not get ill -I Must Not Get Ill - IMUSTNOTGETILL".

The upheaval of moving, even if it was undeniably for the better, has probably just caught up with me, and Boyfriend has just gone back to Leeds after spending most of the Easter break curled up on the beanbags with me.

I am very very very poor - after paying for the flat and the electric, I have £135 per calender month to pay for my food, travel, mobile phone and everything else. Hence the lack of Internet. I'm quite concerned about managing this over placement - my travel expenses will be around £200 for the eight week period, and I can't claim anything back until afterwards, so I think I will be living on beans on toast until July. God knows how I'll cope when I have to pay for heating in the winter, but hopefully Boyfriend will have a job by then.

I have applied for the Access to Learning Fund at my university, and I'm awaiting a decision on my Disability Living Allowance application as well, so things have the potential to get better soon.

My wishes/hopes/dreams at the moment;
- For someone on Freecycle to reply for my [begging] advert for a rat cage
- To complete eight weeks in the acute setting without getting admitted to the ward
- To hold a £50 note at some point within the next year

Funerals can be FUN!

My Nan's funeral was hilarious.
The priest was Welsh, and my Nan hates welsh people [something to do with a long ago camping trip and an obnoxious welsh shepherd, apparently].
He kept calling her by my Mum's name, and then went off on a huge rant about sinners, Jesus and the Gaza strip.
We had requested a simple reading, only one hymn [all things bright and beautiful], and minimal religious bullshit, but we got several other hymns and plenty of bible bashing.
My Nan would have had a coughing fit.
I was rather rude to the poor old bloke afterwards [apparently, he was asleep when the funeral director found him, and they had to wake him to do the service]. I refused to shake his hand, and told him quite bluntly to get the names right next time.
I then demolished a bottle of wine and hid in the conservatory for most of the buffet-come-mourning afterwards.
To be honest, I'm glad that it was funny. Otherwise I would have completely broken down. I thought my little brother was crying, but he was just laughing and trying to smother it. It was better, really. She would have liked it, I think.

I got home last night, and did something quite strange. I got drunk with my housemates, and actually, they aren't so bad. I'm just perpetually grumpy at the moment.

Late night paranoia and plotting revenge...

If I am accused of stealing coffee or failing to empty the tumble-dryer filter one more time I am going to hurt someone, most probably myself.
I've been here the longest.
I showed you how to clean that sodding filter, remember?
And the reason I was being quiet was because a) I'm ill b) I'm being considerate and c) it was 11pm.
I was not "sneaking" around, I was showing some f*cking consideration for people who may have been sleeping. Turn off you f*cking Akon crap and try doing the same?

At the same time, this may just be my paranoia. Or maybe I just hate you and your annoying habits.

Maybe, just maybe, I'll stop cleaning, and I'll start playing music loud with my door open? I'll pop in and distract you whenever you sit down to eat, and I'll make extra sure that I have an annoying little brat so that you can get woken up nice and early too.

I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, I know, but I've put on nearly 10 pounds, I'm pissed off and these ignorant, insufferably mind numbingly boring individuals are not helping.

I'm feeling a bit better

I got up to visit the bog [ain't I lady-like?], and thought I heard something coming through the letterbox, so I headed downstairs. My foot hadn't even touched the first step before mature student housemate appeared, peering up and grinning like an amused overweight vulture.

"Oops. I made a mess. He he he he he."

Turns out the noise was not the letterbox but the aluminium mop handle knocking into the fridge, as he cleaned up the vast number of muddy footprints covering the route between the back and front doors.

Now, why that struck him as exceptionally funny, or made him think that my ill, dressing gown clad self would find it hilarious, is totally beyond me.

I do have , honest sense of humour, honest. But seriously, is what he does funny? Am I just a bitter twisted girl? To be honest, I enjoy dry bitter humour, and think Nemi is a goddess, but living with his alien sense of comedy is driving me up the wall.

GG - "Oh, Right. Um.... Any post?"
Mature Student - "He he he.... Oh, post? No, nothing for you. He he he."
GG - Oh, ok. [Heads back to bed].
M/S - You can come downstairs...
GG - [What, and put up with your humour?] "No, just wanted to check if there was post."

He can't understand why, at 2pm, GG thought there may have been post. GG has to explain that she thought she heard the letterbox banging, which he denies happening, so GG has to explain why she said she thought she heard it, but is aware now that she was mistaken. He flatly denies making any noise at all. GG returns to bed to write this. At this moment he is repeatedly running the hoover up and down the wall outside my room, despite the fact it isn't his turn to clean.

Snuffle Splutter Snuffle

I have an awful cold, courtesy of my wonderful housemates, so apologies if this is rather boring, and peppered with references to coughing up lime green slime.
I want to move house.
I have sent a text to my Connexions PA begging for help in finding somewhere suitable, and I'm prowling the Internet for a job delivering leaflets. I plan to be sneaky, sign up to several companies, then whack out 3 or 4 leaflets at each house - therefore greatly increasing my earnings. This is also clever, as it means I can pace the streets without people worrying about me, my weight or my mind.
Getting back to the point, I need to move house.
Not only does delightful mature student think it is vastly amusing that they have passed on their plague, he still seems peeved that I said I felt ill, and did not want a conversation. I mean, surely I can snuffle my way downstairs and rest my head on the table while I wait for the kettle to boil without being subject to his abysmal sense of humour? Seriously, it is like having your soul sucked out through a too-small orifice by a half-hearted anteater.
Second housemate has a child. Yes, a small noisy creature, which of course hates me, and decided that early this morning, when I had finally got to sleep, that the best option was to cry. Loudly.
It stays over most weekends, which was most certainly not what I signed up for when I moved in. If I wanted sleepless nights and screaming children, I would have had my own and got a nice cosy council flat, right?
Also, if he uses my facecloth to wipe his kids arse again, I am going to literally hit the roof.
I am quite annoyed at the moment. I'm like this when I'm (physically) ill, I get grumpy because I feel like shite and every time I try to do something, my nose starts running. Particularly if I'm up to my elbows in washing up.
I've done nothing to my Insight project over the holiday's, but I've had a bit more on my mind, what with Nan being ill and then dying, Boyfriend getting himself kicked out the other night, and desperately needing to move.
I think they've got the point that I don't want to talk right now, they haven't knocked on my door since I went down stairs and made the point that "it's half ten, can you at least turn the music down if you insist on listening to that shit?!". They've tried talking, but I once again pointed out that I'm ill, I don't want to talk to you, I just want to go back to bed.
I need some sleep but I can't breathe properly, I'm so stuffed up, and lying down makes it worse. I've got my eye on a little flat in Hornchurch, but I don't want to call the estate agents if all I'm capable of saying is "Uggg".
Well, I hope you are all feeling better than me, and that you avoid the Winter Lurgie...
GG
xxx

Racing thoughts, anyone?

Nan has decided she is dying, and would like discuss all the details, if only she could remember her words well enough to explain. "The chemist isn't boiling properly". GG, looking puzzled, "Oh, do you mean the kettle, Nan?". "Yes, the chemist, there's something wrong with it".

She was much more "with it" when I visited yesterday, seemed brighter but still quite confused. Apparently she threatened to hit my mum when I snuck out for a fag though, and between stifling giggles I had this big flashing DEMENTIA sign illuminating my tired brain with all the colours of the rainbow.

The second-to-last thing I want to do is go back to Bleakness-On-Sea and live in the ghost town of bungalows again. They haven't got a pub.
The last thing I want to do is leave Nan on her own.

I'm not even sure that I could look after her. It would just be until we could sell her house and get her into residential care, but with the current housing market, plus having to take a gap from uni, and then find a new place to live afterwards.... Fuck it. Mainly, I don't want to watch her deteriorate.

I've been restricting less this week, and I haven't purged in about a month. I say restricting less, I think it just seems like that because now I have a mini-binge once a day instead of thinly spreading out the calories.

I can't think straight.
GG

It's December!!! WTF!?!

Where has this year gone?
At least most of the Christmas shopping is done now, I just need to work out what to buy for my step dad. Oh, and whether to make my own Christmas cards, or just buy them?
I'm tormenting myself over whether or not to look at some cheap studio flats, or just stay put until Boyfriend comes home in May. I think that's a better idea...
I have to talk to the council tax office again today, but the chances of me handling this calmly and rationally are pretty low. Cue GG effing and blinding down the phone at a quivering call centre employee.

I'm Not Eccentric, I'm Too Poor

I have spent this evening once again avoiding revision. My biology exam is tomorrow morning, and it appears I am totally ignorant of the working of the human body. Maybe it's because my own body is so frustratingly confusing. How the f*ck have I gained 5lbs? I blame the indulgence of a whole bottle of rose, and quite possibly the roast dinner I was forced to eat on Sunday. Bastards.

Moving swiftly on, I've been shedding weight in another way. I decided to collect together all of the paperwork, final demand letters and correspondence which has made me want to slit my wrists in the past year, and dispose of it. I've had to keep a few necessities, until the council tax have stopped trying to take the clothes off my back, but other than that I'm throwing it all out. I hate being scared of the post, of the debts, of the bailiffs.

This is one way which mental illness breaks you. It steals your dignity, your self respect, puts you in situations which you couldn't deal with normally, let alone when getting dressed is the equivalent of climbing Everest. For example, have you seen the size and complexity of the average housing benefit form? I couldn't fill one of those out when I was well, let alone navigate it since I've been on the brink of f*cked. I am living on the breadline, because I can't fill out the forms, gather all the evidence, sit for hours in the waiting room surrounded by screaming children and their oblivious teenage mothers.

I've been spending a fortune on medications, and burying my head in the sand when it comes to my bills. Bills have a nasty habit of becoming final demand letters, and court orders. I guess that since July I've been spending at least £20 a month on prescriptions for various medications, and it doesn't sound like much, but that is basically all I have left after I've paid for rent and food. I've been keeping my receipts, and trying to get a HC1 form [for help with prescription costs] for months, but to be honest that was pretty low on my priority list. I've got the form, and now it turns out that my carefully hoarded receipts are worthless. You need a special receipt, signed and stamped by the pharmacist, which you can only get on request and at the time of collecting your prescription. Therefore, the NHS handily avoids paying out to any of us who don't know the complete ins-and-outs of the system. Once again.

I've never been in debt before. I've always paid everything up front, been extra careful so I had a bit of money behind me. I had quite a tidy sum when I moved out of my Nan's, from working and saving EMA payments. That paid for the deposit on my house and the first months rent, leaving me a little bit just in case. Becoming ill again and getting fired soon used up that. Then my lovely ex-housemates leaving all the bills to me, plus the house in a state, resulted in me losing a lot of money. Would I have let myself be walked all over if I was well? No. I would have done something about it. At the time, I couldn't do anything about it. The direct debits just kept going out, and the rent money stopped coming in.

The problem is, you see, that when I was well-ish, I thought I could do everything. I could, most of the time. i handled all the money, because I soon discovered that they were both pretty much incapable. When the bills arrived, they stuck them under the sofa. No joke.

I take everything upon myself, because depending on others generally means that nothing will get done. At least if you do it yourself then you know who to blame. I'm ashamed of the financial mess I've got myself in. I can't even show my Connexions PA most of it because I don't want to admit that, deep breath, "I can't manage".

I found a ridiculously cheap one bedroom flat to let today, and realised with a bit of belt-tightening, I could afford it. Think about that - no more living with strangers, sharing the bathroom with unknown men, and having to make polite conversation when all you can think about is the kitchen knife he is holding. Back to the good old days of, shock horror, having your friends over a couple of nights a week, getting back to having a social life even when you have absolutely no money, even just having Boyfriend over for more than one night. Leaving the washing up on the side until the morning. Eating somewhere other than in bed, because nobody is watching anymore. Hogging the bathroom, dyeing your hair, waxing your legs, whatever reason, just because you can. Only having safe foods in the house, rather than staring longingly at the block of cheese or packet of Jaffa Cakes that your inconsiderate housemate left on the side.

The downside? I'd be in even more of a mess. I can't remember to buy loo roll, let alone pay the gas bill. By the time Boyfriend gets back from uni in May and moves in with me, I'll be living in a bare flat hugging my eviction notice.

All I can think of is me and Boyfriend snuggled up on the beanbags in our humble little flat, ignoring the threadbare carpets and dodgy shower, and just having our own space. Oh, and the added bonus of having some money for once, seeing as this little apartment is £20 a month LESS than my little room. I know I'd have bills on top, but I don't pay council tax 'cos I'm a student, and who needs heating anyway? Being cold just means I'll burn off more calories.