annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Day 212 Today was up and down, up and bloody down. This will be a load of moaning. Apologies in advance. I'd get out now if I were you. Qi gong - fab. Love doing it at home, love the teacher, it's free, it's brilliant, chills me right out. Music lesson in the teacher's home, proper Real Life F2F which was grand, but she doesn't really get how proper clinical anxiety works. She asked me to bring my keyboard so she could check out all the features - if you press this button a vile techno rhythm starts up that sets me straight off with the tightening in my chest, the pounding heart, the desire to RUN. I'm sensitive to sound - I can't watch horror films because of the soundtrack and when I'm bad I can't even watch Masterchef because of the music they use to create tension. So I kept saying, no I can't manage this at the moment, it makes me anxious and she kept saying 'just' this and 'just' that but I held my ground and kept saying no and I didn't cry though it did come close at one point. She lives opposite the house my mum and dad used to live in. That was kind of weird too. Then acupuncture - had an incident with a tree while parking - it's growing on the edge of the pavement which has quite a high kerb. When I was backing into the space, I fetched up right alongside this tree and couldn't open the door and was jammed hard against the kerb so couldn't turn the wheel easily. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing trying to get out of the space I totally lost any sense of which way I needed to turn the steering wheel to make the wheels go - where? Where did the fucking wheels need to go? Wah, big breakdown in car, awful. Made it in the end, had to, no one to help. Took forever. I'd arrived early thinking I'd have a coffee down the road but no time. I hate that panic - I wasn't worried that I was trapped in the car - I knew I could climb over and get out via the passenger door, but the feeling when knowledge I know I have just vanishes is hideous. Acupuncture calmed me down. I listened to Frank Skinner's poetry podcast to stop my mind going wild while I lay on the couch with the needles in. He's a good mixture of academic and simple enthusiast, sometimes reading a couplet he particularly likes and saying, "Come on!" as if the poet has just scored a goal. This bit got him going, from The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins, about a falcon flying: Then Daughter needed some wood fetching so we went to various places that didn't have it, then to her mate's house who had arranged to be there for her to collect a bench, but he wasn't there either and she had a meeting she had to get back to so that was an hour of driving round in the rain for nothing, though we did have a laugh so not entirely nothing. Rush hour by the time I set off for home, road works, didn't get into second gear for half an hour, a mile and a half. Stop start stop start. Could have walked it quicker. Came home to find the new carpets all fitted by M, Sammie's one time step-brother. It's like a hotel now, a cheap hotel. Crappy design, white paint, blue/grey carpet. Doesn't look like my house. I know, ungrateful old miz. It's been too hard today, lots of too hard. And my sciatica is bad - all that time in the car, it hurt every time I put my foot down and it still does. Three good things: when Shirley wriggled around next to me on the sofa until her back was pressed right up against my thigh and gave a big sigh and relaxed back to sleep. Nice. Taking myself to lunch after the music lesson, sitting outside, not minding the cold, having avocado on toast, appreciating being able to afford to do things like that again. Having a laugh with Daughter. Liking the same things. When we knew we couldn't get any wood but were too early for her mate we went and lurked in the shit garden centre and I know I am lucky to have adult children that enjoy spending time with me, not always, not too much, but real when it's real. 11:24 p.m. - 12.10.20 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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