annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Busy
I've done far too much today and I'm not yet finished - still haven't done my meditation - and have to be up early tomorrow. It's not all easy being mental, I tell you. Today in numbers:
- Tuesday art group where I cracked on with the massive collage. I'm quite liking it, though I would have preferred to have been able to make the sky out of found stuff as well. I need more buildings on the pier and something on the sky and maybe a bit of windfarm on the horizon then I'm done
For a lot of the time I was fretting about my trial session at the 0xfam shop...
2. 0xfam... fuckers - honestly. I was sooo anxious, having not worked for over ten years etc and as I drove over I was arguing with myself about whether or not to cancel, but I didn't, I turned up, after paying two quid to park and all. I go up to the woman at the counter.
"Hi. My name's Anna. I've come for a trial session."
"Oh, you mean an interview."
"I thought it was a trial session, but maybe it was an interview."
Another woman comes over.
"Anna, is it? I'll show you through."
She unlocks a door and indicates a staircase.
"Up two flights and the second door on the left."
I get up there and there's a notice on the door saying 'Meeting In Progress' and through the glass panel I can see a bunch of people sitting round a table. Hmm. I ponder. It doesn't seem the kind of meeting that's set up to interview a part-time, unpaid volunteer. There's nowhere to sit and wait so I go back down and bang on the door to be let out. They are a bit sniffy at my reluctance to barge in on the meeting ("That notice is always on the door"), but find me a seat and offer me a cup of tea, which I decline. Time passes. I listen to two people folding clothes who are talking about researching their family histories. After a while, a long while, the second woman says, "Anna, was it?"
"Yes."
"Did we speak on the phone?"
"I spoke to someone..."
"Yes, that was me - sorry, we thought you'd come for an interview for a job."
"I did say I'd come for a trial session..."
"Oh well, I can't do that now. When can you come in?"
"I've come in now, as arranged on the phone, with you, when you called me and asked when I could come in."
"Well I can't do it now. When can you come in?"
For fucking fuck's sake. I told her I'd go in next Monday morning then left and went and sat on the beach and cried. (Bet you were wondering when and where I'd cry today.) All that anxiety for this? I don't know if I will go in. They're fucking rubbish and rude as well.
3. After that I went and sat with ED for a bit. She'd been up but was having a rest after going to a zoo on Sunday and having a visit yesterday from her dad's sister and family, over from Canada. I was beyond speech and just sat holding her hand and giving her a little kiss every now and then for a couple of hours. Then...
4. Waitrose - supermarket, expensive but on my route home and fuck it, I only wanted some onions but also got fennel and peppers and a lemon and lime posset, because I'm fucking worth it.
5. I cooked two large and three small cottage pies plus seven portions of meatballs for my pal M, on the chemo, to put in her freezer. She's having chemo fortnightly and has a few good days after a session, followed by five or six days of increasing debility during which she can't manage anything beyond getting something from the freezer and bunging it in the microwave. And that something has to be nutritious and for that you need home-cooking so there it is. She has gallons of my chicken and veg soup but needs something else as well sometimes.
6. I made a fennel and pepper and chicken thing for our dinner, which wasn't all that as I put a whole preserved lemon in when probably a third would have done.
7. I watched Eastenders and a bit of a programme about surrealism before remembering to look at my pedometer. I'd only walked 1.8 miles, so I put my trainers on and
8. Walked round the estate listening to a Standard Issue podcast. I find that walking round a rough estate at night makes me a bit nervous but that I can counteract that by listening to strong, funny, arsey women. 3.2 miles done.
9. I watched the last episode of This Is Us, a programme I hate but have become hooked up in, god knows why. It's so manipulative with its awful music telling you how to respond to every fucking situation and a truly ghastly, arrogant, selfish man presented as the best dad/husband ever. But I do like something to get steamed up about and I'll have to find something else now.
10. I wrote this blog and now I'm going to bed.
Thank you for reading.
I am grateful for: a healthy body; the energy to do all that; a sleeping cat who, at the age of seventeen has finally realised she can go to bed without me, rather than yowling at me from 10pm onwards; a warm bed; spring a comin' in
Night night xx
ps I've also been wondering how dear dangerspouse is - whether you still have a job... I do hope so, but this silence is ominous...
12:26 a.m. - 05.04.17
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------