..dear reader..

 It is the 25th I am just back from the birth/haven't died yet day shop of buying necessary unnecessarys. No pubs, its Chinese New Year so candles, chocolate, beer, bath plug with a floating unicorn attached, ginger biscuits, new notebook that is just for gardening but will end up with the odd weird lines and partial descriptions of severe trauma. Never know if it's real or not when I feel judged for buying pretty unnecessary shit. Like the middle aged women on the counter are thinking and probably saying something how can I afford it, and how unfair that is and making up ways that I could have come about the funds for new pens, little boxes to keep shit in and dinky box of ferrero rocher. Yeah basically I assume everyone everywhere is like the old neighbors. We are on the otherside of the first wave of how we actually feel about living there all that time hitting us. Its a better place to be compared to everything that has come before. I've been trying to take more picture...

We dreaded the question, having to watch you try and hold yourself together and figure out how to deal with whatever version of Us had come to you this time.  Other times though we wouldn't care how far or how dangerous it was we had to see you so you could ask if we remembered and we could show you We did. We cut back the back garden and have paid Junior to make a start on the front. Everything got neglected from about August last year so I put down some rose food. A early start to spending happy hours looking at seeds, plants and garden furniture on Amazon, over spending, doodling ideas and day dreaming about keeping up with the work and creating fabulous idyllic results. Amongst this years over spending there is mini sturdy propagators (with mini tools!), decent gardening gloves (they are size small but fit Junior so not too bothered they are a bit baggy on us). Not here get is a mini greenhouse as this year I am actually planning on how having spaces where seedlings can adjust ...

We would really try to find some words or images that would go some way to explaining, just to ourselves how it felt being around Margo, if she called, or if we thought about her but it was so difficult. It wasn't good and we didn't think it was all her fault but the lostness itself made it impossible to think or articulate anything. It was like constantly being drugged even when I wasn't. Now that it will be five years this December since she died we are starting to see and feel more clearly.  Any sense of self we fought for based on being someone who lost time, or has her biological daughter in a family that had serious issues as many do but nothing more conspiratorial anything we get from anything we can't keep a hold of around her. Any one else and we have a sense of defiance, hypervigilance ,fury, disgust but also often a sense of having an advantage it always disappeared around Margo. We were always filled instead with a sense of being completely defeated around h...

Hoped that the all the virus procedures in place at the school might mean We could avoid the September illness. No such luck. Within days of getting the 'please make an appointment for a flu jab' text Dude wakes up ill enough to not refuse Calpol. Like every other year and every other fucking September virus it's a doozy. Easily covered all the Corona 19 symptoms so we added attempting to get tests and getting stressed out with Covid NHS phone numbers to the miseries. Got two call backs eventually one said it probably wasn't the new novel nasty as we were so congested, sent some antibiotics to pharmacy we couldn't get to and don't want to take and said we should keep trying for the tests. The other didn't think much of the 'probably not Covid' advice and said the tests weren't that accurate anyway so keep isolating.  Someone at the council got tests sent to us after a week of it and we eventually won through the fevered premenstrual brain to corr...

Not so chuffed today Daddy. The premenstalness is far from its worst but that's not saying much. Considering moving on a little if we can from addressing you Daddy. Or rather let parts that never knew any good Daddies have the keyboard a bit more. Difficult though. Sometimes we just can't accept that we don't know. Your back though Em. It's always ridiculous, lovely with paranoia ripples remembering you. The boy I shouted at for paying too much attention. Then slide back into having no idea and no way to find out and its lonely and fucking tiresome. There was a friend from Uni we have been thinking about but we can't bring ourself to write about it. We can't remember her last name.  We have needed it and would not of survived without it but friendship can turn a glaring light on all the negative ways we are treated. All the pain that isn't felt becomes very noticeable. Things that just are get showed up as seriously not right. The fiction book we were readin...

It's been a blessing. For us and so far. I have a lifestyle that isn't alien to people I can bare to listen to. It happening here and now with us being safer and securer than we ever have been. Month after month of no School day mornings with an adolescent. Happy, childlike, affectionate, large hairy cherub.  We are waiting on the monthly universal credit. It's enough. Enough to cover shool gear probably if we get it right. Amazon list waiting, not just cheap shit and don't order the two of the same thing in the same size because then if one doesn't fit there is at least another. New school and he's shot up a lot  and out a bit since the Spring. The adult sizes for his feat on something that might last him is going to be sobering. And there is the hair and the face. And the everything else. The anxiety and exhaustion of other years. Knowing I would put of, would fuck up would get really upset would really upset him about every single thing that had to be done an...

Seeing rain forecast all day is easing the July depression. I don't think he has had a birthday yet when I haven't had to be really faking it and forcing ourself and the effort of the fakery and exhaustion at living with it all when it's warm and beautiful and sweet and fresh smelling outside means that we can usually forget about August bringing much of break. Fairly organised this year present bought and wrapped, food shop arriving the day before with plenty time to get whatever is unavailable. There's a good start on the uniform organising and making sure he gets school meals to. All this time without the awfulness of the before school mornings, it not being a big deal if we don't get to sleep until six a.m. Hoping when we go back to that we have had enough of a break from it that won't hurt so much. Sleep overnight wouldn't be any easier or possible but.  Happy that we can enjoy more stuff though, years of being aware that podcasts are not only a thing b...