Burgled

No Phone
No Laptop
No PC
No Camera
No Jewellery
No Passport
No ipod
No Television
No DVD
No money - or cards
A bust window frame and a set of house keys missing.

Happy new year Rosie.
Still, the dozy fuckers that did this were stupid enough to leave prints all over the place so even though I'll never get my stuff back, fingers crossed, I might have some justice, one day.

I'll be back, just as soon as I have something to write on!

Gross

Reader, I don't know if you visit a gym or not on a regular basis. I do, I mean not as regularly as perhaps I should, but I do. And I have noticed that the people who seem to need the exercise the most are the people that, well, spend most of the time sat in the jacuzzi.
There is a man that I see regularly at the time of day I go. He is enormous. He is easily three times, maybe four times the size of me and I, am no skinny minny. He comes to the swimming pool (I have never seen in the gym itself), swims ten lengths and then gets out and sits in the jacuzzi for an hour. A jacuzzi that comfortably sits 6, but 8 can squeeze into suddenly becomes very tiny, especially since I note he puts his legs up on the sort of shelf that people sit on. I normally try to avoid getting in the same time that he is in there but today I was cold and tired and needed a bit of relaxation. There was another girl in there, who was maybe in her early twenties, and then me. I have been thinking recently, that as I have put on a little bit of weight, my tankini has become a little bit revealing around the, erm, chest, which hasn't really bothered me, until today. I'm just staring out of the window, and after about 5 minutes out of the corner of my eye I notice that Jabba has put his hand into the jacuzzi around his.. uhh.. trunks area, and has got what can only be described as a 'sex face' on. And his arm, is not completely still. Now, I don't know about you - but I think you have to be pretty sure that somebody really is whacking one off under the water before you start accusing them of it. I'm only maybe 70% sure. Sure enough to make a sharp exit, that is for damn sure.
So I get out, and I take refuge in the steam room. And, I'm lying there, relaxing in the steam when lo, who should walk in but.. you guessed right. And he squelches down onto the wet bench and because he is so overweight, the effort of walking has made him a bit out of puff. So theres all this heavy breathing and I'm getting really worried hes at it again. I open one eye and I'm relieved to see both hands are on the bench. The steam room is tiny, prolly 4' by 7' and hes kind of perched on the bench. And I think to myself, 'I will just lie here for about 5 minutes and then I will go and get a shower.' I'm lying there. And then, like a .. wave, this smell - stench - just washes over me. Jabba has. FLATULATED. IN. THE. STEAM. ROOM. And as I relay this to you, Reader, my stomach is turning at the memory of this. The smell was so bad.
There is a list of rules outside the door of the sauna/steam room. No children under 12. No pregnant women. No 'Personal Shaving'. No Towels. No pacemakers, heart conditions. Surely, surely (!?) we don't have to add 'No horrific flatulence to mingle with the wet air'?
I stop my breathing. I open my eyes. And I very slowly very careful run in slow motion out of that steam room.
Its enough, like further excuse was required, to put you off the gym for good.

Back to work today after the Christmas break. I had a nice Christmas actually, as Christmas goes (Yes, I'm a hater, what of it?). I feel like I need to go on a big diet now though as delicious as the holiday season has been, it has been bad bad bad for my waistline.
I profited well on Christmas day. Digital video recorder, perfume, jewellery and vouchers were the highlights (Finally, finally my mother has accepted that i don't want a pile of cheap tat comprising of faux leather handbags, polyester jumpers, and cosmetics/bath products from what I can only assume to be the Pound Shop and has offered vouchers. ) And loads and loads of chocolate. I think people are trying to fatten me up. More time in the pool and less time in the jacuzzi for me!

And I'm Done.

And I'm done by 21:01 on Christmas eve. For me, that must be some sort of record. Presents are wrapped, I have a fridge and cupboards and cupboards full of delicious food and drink. My housework is done. I am ready.

Given my previous few posts, it may come as a surprise to you that I am feeling in the slightest bit Christmassy. But I am. You don't have to buy into Christmas, to enjoy it. You don't have to be full of joy and light to get something out of it. I am not full of joy and light , by any means, but I do have a small glow of satisfaction that I have got my shit together well enough to give my family the Christmas they want out of me, despite how crappy the last month or so has been.

Merry Christmas.

General Fucking Public

Lisa Snowdon, with whom I must admit I have developed a bit of a girl crush on, did not make the final two of Strictly Come Dancing. Despite attaining two perfect scores on the night and being (in the judges obviously retarded eyes, according to the middle england housefraus that vote on this show) the best dancing couple of the night, they could not win the viewers vote. What do the viewers know about dancing anyway? They were voting for John 'Donkey' Seargent few short weeks ago. Please. In the final, the general public shouldn't be entitled to a vote, or otherwise Noddy the Dancing Donkey has as much chance as anyone else. Which is clearly wrong. However, the BBC clearly must make its rake so vote people, as you will. TV phone in shows, much as online poker, are hardly a meritocracy. Rachel Stevens and her partner are the better dancers remaining, I have no reason to believe, given tonights ressults that they have any chance of winning. Who knows.

I am off to bed, disgusted (!). When ill with the flu, there is one guaranteed way of sleeping. Do not try this at home.
You will need,
1 diazepam
1 cup of milk
2 teaspoons sugar
70 ml whisky
2 paracetamol
1 small glass of water.

Heat milk in saucepan. dissolve sugar in cup with whisky. Pour hot milk over mixture and stir well. Swallow diazepam with paracetamol with water and drink hot milk. Retire.

Goodnight!

What fresh hell is this?

Well, now I really do have something to feel self-pitying over. Not the sniffles, not a bad cold, not man-flu but the bona-fide, 'why do my eyelids hurt so much?', sleep for 20 hours a day, night sweats, flu.
Which is great timing.

I did, in my fuzzy state, play a bit of poker last night. Why do I become so easily tilted by others' bad play when I am not even in the hand? Some people, probably all normal people, are pleased when they watch bad players get lucky at the table but it just makes something inside me snap a bit when I watch some tard call off their stack preflop with Ax and hit 4 to a flush, with their crappy kicker against decent hands like KK. Granted I had recently had my Queens busted (and my pretty healthy stack reduced to 2 or 3 big blinds) by some nasty little fish who wasn't going to fold their Ajo, but I so wish what people did when I am not affected didn't bother me so much. I guess, after all this time, having suffered so many suckouts by people who can't fold Ax, I just want the best hand to win. Anything wrong with that? I know I'm unrealistic - I know rising blinds and the bubble make people behave in strange ways in tourney poker. I know if I will play $6 tournaments, I should realise that for many people that A9o is gold, I know.

Right, thats more than enough.

There is a bit of me, alright, rather a lot, that worries that my darling son's memories of this Christmas will be 'The one where mummy sat on the sofa and cried a lot'. Depression, is not a fair illness. Theres a relatively high degree of this around in the blogosphere at the moment so nothing you read here is likely to be surprising, or really very much fun. In fact, I don't mind if you skip this post, should it ever make it to air.

I started a new job last Monday - I didn't really want it - although it is just well paid enough, and the hours are fine. I didn't really want it, because to work conflicts with my sole desire to sit on the sofa and cry a lot. I felt that in starting the job, whilst in a state where I didn't want to meet anyone new, or do anything that involved leaving the house was a mistake, I had little choice at the time. There are few jobs in financial services currently, in Bristol, certainly, and this was the only suitable part job I had seen in some time. It was a relatively good fit with my skills. And I had no money. And Christmas was coming. So I took it. And it didn't feel all that hard to start with - it did make a pleasant change, to leave the house for anything other than routine chores. And then I found the colleague whose job I was shadowing had a propensity to talk to me like I was three. And then my baby, got an ear infection. And so I had to stay home from work, in the first week. And my new employers made me feel like crap about it. And when I went back, today, after spending the weekend barely sleeping and nursing a hot, unhappy, clingy infant who had been in terrible pain, I got a lecture about how the day that I had to take off on Friday to care for him 'Really didn't fit in with business needs'. Cunts. At least I know I'm not so depressed I can't fume.
So it wasn't a fantastic weekend at all. My child, in common with the majority of children in acute pain, has been irritable, tearful, hyper-sensitive and whiny. I don't blame him at all, I am all of those things a LOT of the time, regardless of ear infections, but i have to confess that this time, I found it hard. Not hard in that I ever stopped feeling sympathy or that I ever blamed him for any of this, but hard in that sometimes, I just didn't know what to do with him or I couldn't see an end to it (there still hasn't been an end to it - I put up the christmas tree for him tonight in an attempt to cheer him and he cried all the way through). And in the end, I just broke down I suppose and sat and cried with him. And then the awful, heart wrenching 'Please don't be sad, Mummy,please don't cry' which just makes you feel like the most terrible, most shitty, most selfish, incapable, undeserving mother on earth.

I don't know what it is really. Long running readers of this blog will know there has always been a bit of a battle with the black dog, but this is quite a bad patch. Losing my Dad earlier this year hasn't helped, neither has the war that has errupted between my siblings and my mother, I suppose. I'm skint, tired, not holding up well to the everyday frustrations of everyday living, but thats not unusual. Maybe its the meds, maybe its seasonal. maybe its everything. I feel sick with myself that I complain how everything feels like a big struggle when I have a comfortable life really, a fortunate existence. People might have more than us financially, some people might have slightly more in terms of personal freedoms than me as a single mother, but I know I have the best really. A lovely home (not mine, but still lovely), a beautiful, bright, kind and loving son, friends (see below). Just when you hold it up against the blackness its still.. black.
Quite honestly, there have been moments of relief. The few precious hours between getting the nipper down to sleep and him waking in tears of pain, having a cold beer, playing a few hands of poker and watching rubbish on the telly. My friends, (or the vast majority, anyway) have been kind and funny and relatively thoughtful. But depression is like a mirror held up to your relationships in many ways - depression maybe very negative in that its all about you (bad) but it does help seperate the wheat from the chaff, relationships wise. Whoever isn't for you, when you're on your ass, so to speak, is against you. I have no real problem cutting people out when they've been mean to me at times like this. Their loss.

So, a cheerful post! No better for writing it down,but no worse, and frankly - this blog was in need of some content. A bath, some dinner and then a fuckload of paper chains and snowflakes to make and hang. Deck the Halls.

And so another whole month has gone. I have nothing that isn't quite depressing to say, so this will be a short post! I know you don't really want to hear it anymore than I want to write it.
Poker has been ok. The beats and suckouts at Party really did finish me, and despite practising bankroll management, my roll there after a withdrawal for my holiday just wasn't big enough to handle a bad downswing and I ended up cashing out just a few quid in the end. Poker can be a cruel mistress. I tantrummed for a little while (had you suffered a run like mine, you also would have been tantrumming, believe me) stopped for a week and put some money into Bet365. Its been going well. I've been running like normal people do again.

I finally got a job - I start on Monday. Thankfully its only part time, just a few hours a day. I don't think I could face working full time at the moment. I don't even know how I'm going to face this, really. I just want to stay in bed, forever.

So good luck at the felts and hopefully I'll be back soon with some more festive cheer!