Congratulations to them both

Sissy and Pingu got engaged on the 18th November. They've been dating for just under three years and been living here for about the same length of time LOL.

He spend £1,620 on a third of a carat diamond set in platinum! And he was forced to propose sooner than he'd planned because she found out about the ring and spoiled the surprise. In a way it was probably for the best as he was trying to come up with all manner of expensive gimmicks for 'popping the question' - like hiring the whole London Eye for £500, or setting something up at the London Aquarium. I wouldn't have put it past him to hire a sky-writing plane or something even more outrageous!

Anyway, he eventually did the whole 'one knee' thing in his Mum's kitchen and they celebrated by going for a drink in the pub where they first met. It was meaningful for them and I guess at the end of the day that's all that counts :o)


I admit that part of me was/is a tiny bit jealous... probably because at heart I'm a total softie and closet romantic (although if you tell anyone I may have to kill you!), plus I doubt I'll ever get married as I'm too set in my ways... and also petrified of meeting new people. Not exactly conducive to finding someone LOL!

I just hope that this sign of commitment on Pingu's part will convince Sissy that he's not going to run off with someone else now. Fingers crossed she will calm down and stop being so paranoid about him finding someone better than her.

Why is Thursday such a bad day with kids?!

As long as I've been working with kids they have always either been naughty, rude, moody, grumpy, whiny or miserable (mainly) on Thursdays! Just what it is about Thursday that should influence kids in such a negative way I have no idea.

G has been dreadful today... he wet himself, screamed in another girl's face, snatched a toy away from her and has done nothing but moan, whine and have temper flare ups all day! The sooner he goes home the better, as it sounds like he needs to go to bed!

Sissy and Pingu are due back anytime... can't say I'm looking forward to the increase in noise, but there we go.

Yay! Doorbell... bye G... come back later when you are in a better mood!

Yay!

Sissy and Pingu are away from the house until tomorrow afternoon! I know I shouldn't feel like doing the happy dance, but I do. The house feels so much lighter when they are gone (or should that be when he is gone).

At the moment he has a chest infection and a cough that always has him bringing stuff up from his lungs when he finishes. I know he can't help it, but just hearing him bringing up phlegm makes me want to throw up! He did it when he came in early today and I had just made myself a ham sandwich - as I went to bite it he finished coughing... I thought I was going to heave and I couldn't even start my sandwich until he had left the house. Had I been eating when he had finished coughing I just know that I would have been physically sick!! I'm determined to not get another cold, so am using Vicks First Defence nasal spray... weird stuff (and a bit stinging if you inhale it too deeply, which of course I did on my first attempt). It's a thin gel stuff that you spray up your nose - it traps the cold virus, then renders it inactivate and you either blow your nose to get rid of it or sniff up and swallow it... sounds gross, but it works, and if it lessens the length of the cold (or better yet, stops it in its tracks as the box says it can do) it will be worth it.

The weather has taken a turn for the worst here... the temperature is plummeting and the sky is turning a leaden grey colour, which is bad. I heard on the news last week that the north of the country is going to have snow from today, and that is could spread south until we might get it nearer the weekend. My right wrist has been aching for two days (my left upper arm, too), always a sign of bad/cold weather... and I'm hoping that it is not an omen of weather to come!

Our boiler has stopped working!! (Plus a right old moan-fest!)

Meaning we have no central heating and no hot water!

I never knew this house could be so cold... my bedroom is recording a temperature of 56F or 13C! No wonder I'm having trouble sleeping. Funnily enough it's not the central heating I miss, it's the hot water... if I had water I wouldn't care about the heating, we have electric fires and blankets so it's not a huge problem, and if things get too chilly then you just go to bed (well, I do - must remember to add another blanket tonight).

The only problem I'm having is washing my hair - I have scalp problems and have to wash it daily or else the itching and soreness get too great and I'm in a foul mood and I feel dreadful (like I have swarms of headlice - not a pleasant sensation). I literally have 24 hours before I have to wash my hair again and any time over that and I can feel the tingling and itching creeping back again. Maybe it's psychological, maybe its me subconsciously clock-watching and making my head itch... I have no idea, but the burning and the consequent scabbing from scratching is real, and hurts and I really want to avoid that if possible!

Pingu has a friend that was meant to be coming round yesterday to have a look at the boiler and see if he could see the problem... then he was meant to be coming today, but now John (the friend) has miraculously discovered the problem without even looking at the boiler and has ordered a part (which is costing almost £100) and he will come and do it for us and waive the labour charge. The only problem is that it will take THREE DAYS to get the part and then he has to come down from Essex (about 70-85 miles, depending where in Essex he is based) to do it for us... on top of working his regular job.

Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful to him for helping us out, but part of me wishes that Pingu had kept his nose out of it! As soon as the boiler went wrong he was straight on the phone calling his mates and trying to get it fixed... without even asking us first! He had no clue as to what kind of breakdown cover we had in place, he never even asked, he just did the usual and "Super Builder" came to the rescue!

Regardless of the problem, be it big or small, he thinks he is the only one that can fix it or get it fixed, and I actually find that blanket assumption very insulting! Just because he's a qualified carpenter (though is now a delivery driver) he thinks that he is the be all and end all of odd jobs and how a house should be run! He regularly tells Mum when to pay the bills and says what he thinks the rent money he gives us should be spent on, he complains when we buy food, yet never complains when he eats it (and then never replaces it). He just pisses me off... he even tells Dad off for pinching cigarettes and when he sees him coming will hide Mum's or give them to me so that Dad can't take any. He thinks he's helping, but in reality he is just pissing people off - big time, with his constant poking his nose in where it doesn't belong! Any more of it and I'm going to have to say something... along the lines of "how the hell do you think we coped before you came here, Bob the fucking Builder?"

I wouldn't mind if the work I've seen him do was good, but it wasn't, it was half-hearted and unfinished, we are still waiting for him to put all of the screws in a ceiling fan, for instance - from July... he gets so far and "that's good enough" and he stops - so why he feels that the opinion of "Mr Bodge-Up" is more important than my Dad's, who was a fully qualified plumber/multi-tradesman his ENTIRE CAREER, I have absolutely no idea. My Dad is a depressive, not brain-dead, FFS! When my Dad does a job it's done properly, it's done well and I trust him, Pingu put up a ceiling fan so poorly that it wobbles ominously when it goes above the first setting and scares me so much that I won't turn it past that, if I turn it on at all (I'd rather be hot than have it fall on me!!)

And to top it all off, Mum now cannot find her bank card so has had to cancel it! The card that is tied to the account with all of our money in it! She also has a tax rebate check to pay in there so this is just turning out to be a very bad day! The Gods help Pingu and Sissy if they start complaining today... I know Sissy will be in a bad mood as she started her new temp xmas job in HMV today... the HMV that is an hour's travelling from here... on a bus, in the cold (Pingu was the one that convinced her to take it... purely for the money, everything he does is based on money... you don't need happiness in a job, according to him if the money is good enough... the man is an ignoramus!! *sigh*)

Moved yet more of my stuff out of my old room...

... because "they" need more space! I am so angry right now. They agreed to all of my books being in the room when they took it on, and now over time more and more of my stuff is going into my tiny room, meaning they have even more room and I have less! I now have books stacked on my floor, at the end of my bed, even outside my bedroom door! It pisses me off as it was fine when they first moved in, but now it's not... I still have no more space to put stuff, but they want it out  **fumes**

The time frame of their being here has also increased, first it was roughly a year, then a year to 18 months... now it's 2-3 YEARS!! I will go insane, I know I will. Just the thought of them both here for that length of time fills me with a sense of dread that I cannot put into words (I'm not joking, either, it really does). Three years of having to hide my journals/blogs from prying eyes, three years of Pingu's "suggestions" for how to make the house better, three years of being woken up at all hours and of never ever having a good sleep when my stomach plays up as I'm always woken by them slamming drawers or stomping to the bathroom, three years of there never being any hot water to have a shower as they take it all (he had two showers yesterday and there was no hot water left for anyone else!). I will be end up writing this from an asylum or going to live with my Nan, I just know I will!

I just feel so helpless... like an invader in my own home!!

I think I had my first panic attack on Friday!

Sissy was laying into me about her view of personality disorders... saying that she feels that most people use them as an excuse to not do the things they should do, and I felt myself getting tenser and tenser until I had to pretend to be asleep in my chair in the hope she would go away!

She sat there talking to Mum and all I could think was "Go away, please, go away"... and I sat in the same position, rooted to the spot for so long that even after she left the room I couldn't move! I had to go to bed afterwards as I felt so mentally and physically drained that I couldn't even think straight, let alone do anything. I ended up crying in pure frustration at seeming to behave in such a weak way. It was kind of like being in your own body, but hearing things from very far away... like mentally cowering in a corner. Most strange, and not something that I ever want a repeat of!!

I really have to realise that I have an opinion and I have a right to air it... damn other people... and damn others for being able to affect me so badly.

One of the things I do all the time is to change my opinion to please the people around me... and I shouldn't do that. My opinion should please no one but myself, and if others don't like it, then TOUGH! But my wanting desperately for everyone to like me means I have the ability to think that the opinions and views of others are more important than my own, and they're not! When I'm around Sissy and Pingu, I can't even mention religion in passing, without them kicking off on some atheistic diatribe and discounting all of the worlds religions as nothing more than people refusing to live in the real world and trying to get "god/s" to solve all of their problems for them, or else use "god/s" as an excuse for all of the things that go wrong (or right). They constantly bring up the tired old argument of "if God is so brilliant, why does He allow suffering, and let bad things happen to good people?!" I have no idea how to counter stuff like that... or even if I want to - why should it be up to me to try and explain away their arguments when they are spat at me with such venom and arrogance? I'm not a Christian Apologetic and I have no idea of even where to start in trying to find an answer for them... but I am expected to (they fail to realise that regardless of what I say they will never understand it as they disagree, and never really understand that which they think is wrong - basically I'm damned either way  *sigh*).

How can I explain stuff that I am unsure of myself? I have no idea why there is suffering... but I do kind of understand that without it we would not be able to show empathy, compassion and understanding to other people - sometimes you really do have to have been there in order to be able to connect with others that are either going through similar things, or that have done in the past (or will do in the future). I know that all that I have suffered in my life has made me more able to comprehend other people more... I am able to use my experiences to help me understand what others are going through. Oftentimes you really do have to walk a mile in someone else's shoes to truly know how they feel. Suffering brings understanding... even if at the time you don't actually realise it. That's my thoughts on it anyway... trying to get other people to understand my opinion, though... well... that's a different matter entirely  *sigh*

People and their opinions

Why do people feel that their opinions are more important than someone else's?

I dislike Leonardo DiCaprio... both as a person and an actor. Sissy and Pingu have just gone to see the film Inception and were waxing lyrical about how brilliant is was. I said that I still didn't what to see it as Leo is the star of the film. I was basically told that my refusing to watch an actor I dislike is stupid and that I'm missing out on so many good films.

I DON'T CARE!! I dislike him, I don't like his acting, I refuse to give someone I don't like any of my hard-earned cash (through royalties and such) so just SHUT UP!

I don't care how good the film is, if it stars someone I don't like then I won't watch it... on the flipside if there is a film that stars someone I love, then even if the film is dreadful, I will watch it. I can't help not wishing to spend hours of my time looking at people I can't stand!! It's just the way I am.

To be told, on a fairly constant basis, that my opinions are silly and I should change them really pisses me off!