Laundry
I am once again at the point where my washing fits into the two laundry bags, and wondering whether this time, I will stay functional long enough to get past that point (I have not yet in, um, however long it is since I was well enough to LARP at Empire and went to Germany camping for a few days.)

Setting an alarm for every single thing is perhaps making things better. I don't know.

Oh, and I bought jumpers that will hopefully last a good long time. One has cats on, one sunflowers. Wool-cotton mixes, very warming.

Thermostat now goes to a maximum of 17 Celsius, which is about as low as it can go and not end up with black walls.

I read 'Cold Calculation' by Aimee Ogden, which is online here and enjoyed it.

Last visit to Outside was mid-December to get pills. I have to go again to get more ASAP.

I will catch up on what people have posted very soon, hopefully. My headspace has been the opposite of good, my attention fractured into tiny shards, and so I've been living on memes and my own terrible fiction, mostly. Even Stardew Valley is very hard work, at the outer limit of my ability. This entry was originally posted at https://supermouse.dreamwidth.org/87049.html. There are comments on the original post. If you have no DW account, you may comment on DW using username.livejournal.com as your open ID.

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It's something?
I have income! It's £74 a week.

(Rent is slightly more than that.) This entry was originally posted at https://supermouse.dreamwidth.org/86846.html. There are comments on the original post. If you have no DW account, you may comment on DW using username.livejournal.com as your open ID.

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It looks like summer!
There used to be magpies living around this house and garden and now suddenly there aren't. Zero magie presence. Sexy Woodpigeon is still loud and proud, and the swifts? Swallows? House martens? are shrieking away, although in very small numbers.

The fuchsia is in full flower, if about half the usual growth, and has a few bees, as does the new and thriving colony of purple toadflax, which wasn't there last year. We think the neighbour at the back put it in and it crawled under the fence and to a happier south-facing top-of-a-brick-wall situation.

The apple tree behind us has visible frost damage still. Most of the dead, brown parts of our garden have been cut away or are overgrown. The bramble is thriving and has just now been cut back down again.

No wasps this year. The ones we did have once were bizarrely polite, which was why they didn't get exterminated, and took a long, complex route straight up through plants rather than out into the parts of the garden we used. Wasps are useful predators, just not inside or actually on the house or where people walk.

No butterflies. Not a single one. The buddleiah we cut down to a quarter of its size is now the same size it was last year and in bloom. No butterflies have turned up at all. There are a few bees around and a bumblebee.

The strawberries are done. Not as many fruit as usual. I'll root some runners if I remember, which is a big 'if'. The brambles are mid-flower and starting to set fruit. Usually they're ripe about mid-August through to mid-September.

The sparrows are back, hiding in the giant buddleiah, and showing just how important hedge cover is to them. Food was there, but until the cover was too, they didn't hang about. I keep checking they really are house sparrows and not hedge sparrows...

Everything wants mealworms. White suet gets eaten. Pink suet with added calcium is a last resort. Sparrows have worked out when they can shout for food, so I know when they're out, and recently they're eating a lot more than a few weeks ago.

Other than the sparrows, wood pigeon, swifts(?) and a blackbird, I'm not seeing any birds around. No goldfinches, thrushes, starlings, bluetits or great tits. One by one there are fewer species around.

No frogs sighted so far. No tadpoles again. It's been years since we had any.

The potatoes are really happy.

I'm still very much grieving, but life has to go on. Now and then I just have to stop and very very sad for a while. It's mostly about there being something I'd love to tell him the next time we talk and then of course I can't.

The situation in Germany (and Belgium and .nl) look absolutely dire. All the chickens are coming home to roost.

My inbox is full of plant and garden details, I love it! I hope you're all doing okay! This entry was originally posted at https://supermouse.dreamwidth.org/86668.html. There are comments on the original post. If you have no DW account, you may comment on DW using username.livejournal.com as your open ID.

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I'm supposed to be getting my finances All Sorted Out and that's failing to happen, but I should eventually get there.

The garden is full of frost damage - that mild/frost combo did an absolute number on a lot of plants. The very grey, cool weather means plants don't grow, so the mix of flowers is mildly bizarre. Insects are very, very thin on the ground. I have seen one hover fly and no butterflies at all.

Writerly research puts me in some very odd corners of the web. I'm not sure how I ended up on Sudoku Youtube though. Every evening I watch a Surrey bloke do a puzzle and it's pleasant, it's just very odd to be entertained by someone deciding if a square is a four or a seven...

I have new shoes, they fit, and they are a joy and a wonder. I think the last pair I got ten years ago. These ones are Merrel and should last a good long time. I'm debating getting a second pair so that I know what quality I have and can alternate, and not have to worry about shoes for a long, long time.

Literally just now got informed that the rent has gone up. So there's that.

Life goes on! It has fun distractions and wonderful people. If you're helping keep me sane, I am very grateful and do not take you at all for granted. Many hugs.

I hope you're all doing as well as possible. Do ay of you have any new flowers out? We've got periwinkles, the fuschias are getting ready to go, the bramble is late but getting ready to flower, the hydrangeas are doing their best and we have strawberries! On time! Well, perhaps a week later than usual.

Best wishes to those in new jobs/positions!
Also I forgot to post about my enormous peonies. I love my enormous peonies. This entry was originally posted at https://supermouse.dreamwidth.org/86337.html. There are comments on the original post. If you have no DW account, you may comment on DW using username.livejournal.com as your open ID.

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Birds, plants, writing and Actually Going Outside
So, for the past several years, I have been Outside barely at all, and by barely I mean literally once or twice a year, and by Outside, I mean past the confines of the garden. My main loss with lockdown was other people going Outside and posting about it. Nott'm police posting pictures of empty places was my jam last summer.

Anyway, that's just to set the expectations. I went Outside! I walked around six hundred steps, which is... not much, at all, on Normal scales, but I'm really glad of it.

My feet not so much. I've ordered shoes that should be good for walking and not setting off plantar fasciitis.

One of my oldest, dearest friends has been cheerleading me on and it does make an enormouse difference. Then I got a text reminding me I post about birds, so...update.

The sparrows went away when we cut down the buddleia, but that's shot back up and now gives adequate shelter again. They are not interested, at all, in egg-friendly calcium-enriched pink suet, it gets eaten only when other suet runs out, and they are overall eating a lot less. They went through a phase of eating some pink stuff, and now it's all mealworms all the time, so I assume that was eggs->chicks.

Regarding mealworms, Demanding Great-Tit has also gone with the loss of shelter. By July it will be very bird-friendly again and not destroying the house... There is a lot, a *lot* of shelter all around this area, that's why we have wood pigeons and owls.

The blackbird and magpies are absolutely fine, although the mad singing has settled down and birds aren't strutting their stuff really at all. I assume they're busy being parents, since they are around.

The garden is, in the original sense of the word, retarded, as in all the growth has been very slow and many common plants are actually etoliated, that is, stretched out long and thin to try to reach light. This is how it was in Aquilegia Year up in Leigh, when I managed to grow those flowers, rhubarb and unusually large rampant slugs. Here, now, dry warm weather has arrived and with it a mass of flowers, but a lot of plants are very, very behind, the fuchsia so much so that I had to check it wasn't actually dead. It's really gone green this last week.


Some plants, noteably the shade-tolerant ones, are doing fine, and I will be displaying my enormous peonies later in the year. When I look at my enormous peonies, everything seems okay.

Paperwork wise, my sibling and accountant are handling absolutely everything because I Cannot. I am trying to get at least some income, and to avoid running into trouble later for ignoring things and putting my head in the sand. I did, however, Do The Things (with help) and even, get this, cancelled my Sky subscription! I had an amazingly clear-headed morning, which happens around once a month or so and got all the paperwork done that I could.

Thanks, largely, to daily (and mutual) cheerleading, I'm even somewhat presentable. Definitely less awful than I was.

I am loving the warm weather very, very much.

I still write every day, it's still absolute rubbish, it's still absorbing and engaging and rather like eating lots of biscuits. Writing about people doing normal things, like playing The Sims games, is something of a prompt to do normal things. Of course I always add magic because wish-fulfillment... I haven't written fanfic in a while though. It's as if posting two stories scratched the itch, or I've just thoroughly plumbed every idea I could possibly have and moved on. I'm a Pantser, so the first draft is, usually, several hundred thousand words of a main character or characters stumbling around a new-to-me world doing the most mundane, boring activities until, more by accident than design, they stumble into a badly-sprawling Plot which will cover closer to ninety thousand words than the half-a-million or so it takes for me to deal with not wanting to actually give my characters serious setbacks because it makes me feel bad.

Editing is done by my going through and cutting out every part that makes my eyes glaze over, which is... a lot. I also have lots of sentences which made sense at the time, and sometimes there's actual word salad from migraines where I have to read before and after and entirely rewrite, but I was having fun, so...

Second drafts are slow. Very. Those are actual work. I don't have a full novel in second draft yet. The writing is always moving forward though. I have two complete novels in terrible first-draft set in the near future as I conceived it before the Pandemic was even a series of odd rumours on Twitter about events in Wuhan. I was revising them when lockdown happened and the world changed so much that it was clear I'd have to do a huge rewrite to take all these new events into account.

So, anyway, I'm feeling comfortable now about incorporating the whole thing, since there's much more of a shape to what 'the whole thing' is. Revising isn't happening yet, but the violent distaste for the whole idea has gone and it keeps coming to mind, which is usually the first stage before a real editing binge, it's just this time it's not fanfiction.

Mentally then, I'm in... a much better place. It's light all day, I'm not SAD, although I am sad. Pol and I weren't in one another's lives that much, but it was nearly every single day and I would think he'll like this, he'll like that and occasionally we'd get to chat. I did work out, too late, that a big problem between us was that he liked to fix things and there's no fixing migraines. I feel very, very sad that he was stuck being miserable and waiting until he could come home, it's just a crying shame. He did have a whole different life up in the North Wet, one he was definitely engaged in more than he was with me, but he was always very, very firm about being married and staying married within our very severe limits of mutual tolerance - I literally can't handle being around people for more than a couple of hours at most, and that occasionally. Even Pol. Even talking to one of my closest and dearest friends on the phone... it's good for a little while then it isn't and I just want to go and lay down in the dark and quiet.

Other than feeling very sad sometimes, though, I'm mostly fine, since other people are handling the things that were turning me into a poorly mess. I try to concentrate on one thing at a time, and, moment to moment, I really am fine and okay. So.

Birds! Yay! Tell me about birds where you are!

Plants! Yay! Tell me about plants you have noticed! Even the annoying ones!

Outside! Have you been?

Vaccines, how are those going? I am past my two weeks on the second and much less fearful, still masking around people, mainly delivery people.

Gosh this got long. Hugs to all, you're all lovely, and I truly do hope you have the best possible day. This entry was originally posted at https://supermouse.dreamwidth.org/86265.html. There are comments on the original post. If you have no DW account, you may comment on DW using username.livejournal.com as your open ID.

Current Mood: optimistic

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Happy Bank Holiday Weekend - The State of the Garden
I'm up, showered and dressed in clean clothes, it's fantastic.

I made myself a list of things I could go and do a while back, but actually I'll be writing entirely unpublishable stories because that's what I do, because it's fun and absorbing. There's a real freedom in writing something you know for certain will never see the light of day, that is just for you and you only. All the terrible plot ideas can come out for your Mary Sue/Gary Stu to enjoy.

The magpies are loudly creating about something, probably a cat. The garden is full of bramble that is feeding a whole lot of aphids that will, in turn, feed the ladybirds people actually want to have around. The fuschia looks distinctly wintery. The jasmine is sprouting. The garden feels a few weeks behind on where it should be.

Ground elder is edible and, if you like parsley, delicious, and it smells wonderful when you pick it and cut it. Nothing clears out a prolific weed quite as rapidly as wanting it around to use as a vegetable. Like nettles, it's good up until it starts getting ready to flower. It is also called goutweed because it used to be used as a poultice for gout, probably not very effectively.

Our peony is enormous and the flowers will be enormous too. It is definitely not behind. There are twelve buds, each the size of a golf ball or thereabouts. It is the current, flourishing star of the bed that the fuschia will later, in its thuggish way, entirely overgrow. The fuschia is very friendly from July onwards, and wants to sit next to us, be among us, visit new places... Bees and hoverflies absolutely adore it, so by then it's very loud too, and it flowers right through November as of late.

Just now the bees are eating a variety of woodland flowers, the rosemary that is almost entirely blue just now, and a whole lot, a huge amount, of Herb Robert, a wild geranium species with little pink flowers and intricate leaves that can be reddish at the base. A very pretty, very prolific plant that is weeded by getting under the crown of leaves to the one very central root and lifting out, clearing quite a wide area with one tug. The dandelions out in the front lawn have already been and gone. This entry was originally posted at https://supermouse.dreamwidth.org/85799.html. There are comments on the original post. If you have no DW account, you may comment on DW using username.livejournal.com as your open ID.

Current Mood: hopeful

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I did The Thing!
Two things! I cancelled my Sky broadband subscription, which was less of a nightmare than I thought. The biggest hurdle was having thrown everything to do with that account in a black bin bag along with all the other papers I was slowly sorting through.

Then I applied for non-means-tested ESA on account of being really disabled. To give you an idea of how disabled: I could not make money selling things on Ebay because I would never be able to get things posted on time even if someone else took them to the post office. I can't concentrate long enough or fill stuff in reliably or even remember that I should be doing something. I can have One Thing I have to do and that's that until I do it and move to the next thing on the list, and it can take two weeks to make a phone call.

Anyway, that particular application process was remarkably easy. It would be impossible on a normal day, but today was a Good Day and I got it done.

PIP meanwhile is going to be a weeks long slog for my sibling who works in administration for a government department and thus does bureacracy for an actual living, and she's already confused as to what evidence they actually want. I forwarded on emails from a helpful afper who knows who they are which I hope will help.

So, two months after Pol's death and a month after his funeral, I am finally getting benefits sorted out.

At some point in the dim and distant future I have a laptop to set up with details from this laptop, which all seems like so much hard work. The last thing Pol helped me with was getting the right laptop to replace this one. He was really, really busy at work so we weren't talking much, but he made time for this. This entry was originally posted at https://supermouse.dreamwidth.org/85525.html. There are comments on the original post. If you have no DW account, you may comment on DW using username.livejournal.com as your open ID.

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My arm hurts AGAIN! :D
Astra Zeneca.

So tired. So worth it. Not looking forward to tomorrow but very much looking forward to two weeks from now. This entry was originally posted at https://supermouse.dreamwidth.org/85464.html. There are comments on the original post. If you have no DW account, you may comment on DW using username.livejournal.com as your open ID.

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You're all lovely.
I have a full inbox I've read and been glad to read, that's really sweet. I will get to individual replies. Hugs to those going through/remembering similar situations. Hugs to everyone.

My PIP application is underway now I've had help with the form from my very patient and kind sibling, and I really needed it too. PIP is a disabilty benefit that is not means tested, that is there to cover the costs of disability and level the playing field. I have qualified for years and years, but it's quite a hard slog to get, and of course my disabilities make it much harder to deal with the process in the first place. I'm hoping to lengthen the time it takes before I need to apply for Universal Credit for my main source of income because that's also no fun even without the migraines.

I'm leaning on the family accountant to try to get all my paperwork and finances in order because I don't have a clue and keep defaulting to being overwhelmed. So that's just a case of waiting for things to happen without me. It's way less expensive overall to have the accountant Pol and I already have sort things out than to hope I'll do things properly with constant migraines and depression.

I have bed risers! The bed's really heavy. So now instead of climbing a pile of pillows every night, I can have a normal amount and just sleep without terrific heartburn, and I can't slide down the pile and end up lying flat either.

Thanks to people being willing to help me get it back together, I have it back together, or at least I'm eating and I slept last night. At some point everything will be sorted out.

Oh, and the magpie has been by, that's always really cheering. They don't need suet nearly as much as they did. The sparrows have returned to the cut-down buddleia too, now it's grown back enough to shelter them. I felt bad about that, but the thing was filling up my upstairs bedroom window it was so tall, and it was killing the pyracantha that the blackbirds live on all winter. We cut it after the end of the worst of winter but before nesting, the end of February, and then we had some sad bare branches and no birds, where before that it was like having an aviary. Now they're coming back! Shelter is so important! (Especially with magpies around... but I cannot dislike the magpies at all.)

Oh and my neighbour across the back way managed to cause me a crushing disappointment by putting a plastic peregrine falcon by their chimney pot, which fooled me but not the local woodpigeons, who treat it as the scenery it is. I worked it out when it hadn't moved for a while. This entry was originally posted at https://supermouse.dreamwidth.org/85237.html. There are comments on the original post. If you have no DW account, you may comment on DW using username.livejournal.com as your open ID.

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To nobody's surprise, dealing with Pol's death is pretty awful
So, I managed to get Pol repatriated as per his parents' wishes and with the okay of Kira and Random before I finalised things. It was done, the funeral was in hand, I could relax.

And then my health collapsed (not surprisingly) and I've had an ME/CFS relapse and something like and probably actually a nervous breakdown, managing, with difficulty, to keep in touch with the funeral directors for the month it took to get his death certificates, but I've been having a real wobbly any time I need to do anything involving forms or websites. Yesterday was an entire 'I cannot anything at all day' for example.

I've had severe trouble keeping up with people too. Hugs have helped, a lot, but I know I've been silent on here through sheer lack of spoons.

So, now financial stuff *has* to happen and I'm handing everything on to our accountants, who only heard that he'd died today when I told them. Waiting for a call back, but it really is like he's just died all over again, having to inform someone.

This time I have omeprazole for the stomach ulcer.

The pandemic is not helping anything...

Vaccination round two next week.

Hugs and messages are life, every random sudden message has really helped whether I responded or not, and often several times as I see it again. I'm all scattered and spoonless right now. But I did manage to call the accountant! I'm even clean and dressed, which is a major step up on the last two weeks.

Hope everyone is doing as well as this year allows. *hugs* to anyone else who needs them. This entry was originally posted at https://supermouse.dreamwidth.org/84846.html. There are comments on the original post. If you have no DW account, you may comment on DW using username.livejournal.com as your open ID.

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Plans?
Still no word on death certificates, so I will be trying to get my head together enough to see if I can get the help offered by the British consulate to clear the logjam. Having had that idea, of course I haven't been able to sleep at all so I just hope I'm coherent and somewhat functional.

I can't imagine what it's like for Kira, who was very close and is the executor of his will and can't do anything without those pieces of paper, and who has of course travelled to a funeral and back.

Magpies have been by at 06:30, feeding time is always after 07:30, but actually there's food out. Once the weather is warm they really don't seem to eat nearly as much, to, like, a startling degree.

Also, setting f.lux to a level that makes playing games almost impossible late at night was a very good idea, but it's still irritating when insomnia strikes and every gem on Bejewelled is green or brown or deep orange.

I've read through the book I was working on in January. It's promising, there are problems but nothing egregious. The story halts just as Obvious Love Interest has dragged Protagonist over to an NPC and I have no idea why or what he was thinking, so I need to work that out (not happening today) and then flesh out the villains (also not happening today). At least I have a decent cast of characters and a decent setting to noodle around in.

The garden is very, very full of spring-flowering bulbs. Like, chocka. I made myself go out and look, go me.

I make myself ground coffee every single morning and have done for years, and yet it is still too many steps to 'just do', I always get stuck and have to work out what comes next, which I suppose wakes me up? There's a whole sequence of putting ground coffee in the Bobble presse, adding hot water and pressing a timer, that is distinctly hit and miss. Usually it's the timer I forget, sometimes it's the hot water instead, and then I've put ground coffee in some odd places before now. Or poured hot water into a random mug and wondered why I was doing that. This entry was originally posted at https://supermouse.dreamwidth.org/84558.html. There are comments on the original post. If you have no DW account, you may comment on DW using username.livejournal.com as your open ID.

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Pol's Cremation
My health broke down so I couldn't travel up and ended up watching from in bed, although I did manage to get clean and dressed first.

It was a lovely Humanist ceremony, navigating a great many difficulties, from Covid to the entangled nature of his relationships. All of it was about how, pretty much, from a very young kid, he was very thoroughly Pol and remained that way, how rapidly he rose in his career and just how widely he's going to be missed.

So many tributes are about kind things he did for people. And the driving, always the driving, and installing tech, and then more driving.

He will be missed very much. This entry was originally posted at https://supermouse.dreamwidth.org/84266.html. There are comments on the original post. If you have no DW account, you may comment on DW using username.livejournal.com as your open ID.

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The State of the Rodent
So... Pol's being cremated tomorrow. I can't travel up there, it's just not an option. I managed to get myself real coffee this morning and will otherwise be in bed all day. I really need a shower this evening, somehow.

I never gave words to the eulogy and haven't heard back at all on what the humanist minister said. It's all very remote. I'll be watching remotely while it all goes on without me.

There are still no death certificates! The German registry office are dragging their feet over the lack of Pol's passport. I've been sending everything as soon as I'm asked.

Meanwhile I cancelled all DDs as I was told to, only to get asked to not do that please, so there's a huge mess going on up north that's very stressful that I can do nothing about. They need the death certificates they do not have to pay utility bills. I feel as though I've screwed people over but can't fix it.

I'm mostly sleeping or wrapped up in whatever distraction I can find. I'm in the same mental state I was last year when we were on lockdown and dealing with a garden full of trashed bushes our back neighbour cut down and dumped where they fell, a six foot high pile of stuff in a tiny garden, with my mother freaking out and having to talk to the police and stuff, with pandemic everywhere.

A dear, dear friend is making me a rose to remember Pol by, which is just very sweet. Another is chatting online with me right now. I'm wondering what I have to do next. I have a lot of email addresses to change. Twitter and Facebook already have my new, main email address added to other accounts, so now I need to set up a new email for those and just now I Cannot for, well, everything just about. Thankfully I have siblings who will help.

A large plate of liver, dark green cabbage and mushrooms seems to have done something good for my appetite. It tasted delicious. If you don't like these things, good for you, tell someone else please, not me.

I have lots of very good friends. I love you all. I hope you're all as well as possible. Perhaps you are doing nice things for Spring? This entry was originally posted at https://supermouse.dreamwidth.org/84027.html. There are comments on the original post. If you have no DW account, you may comment on DW using username.livejournal.com as your open ID.

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The Eulogy I Cannot Yet Write
I've been asked if I have words to add to Pol's eulogy and the weekend since I got asked that has been mostly 'I cannot'. I mean obviously I have to, although not alone, and I have passed the request on to his other close family up in the North Wet.

I miss texting Pol before I sleep, I miss checking the reply when I wake up. The rest of the time I've been writing so much my hands are complaining about the typing. My mother doesn't have the emotional tools to handle grief, but she has been making a proper cooked meal for us every single day.

I literally have no idea what to say, at all. I loved him and I wish to hell he was still alive, that's about it. This entry was originally posted at https://supermouse.dreamwidth.org/83794.html. There are comments on the original post. If you have no DW account, you may comment on DW using username.livejournal.com as your open ID.

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I did The Thing!
I have sorted out the paperwork for my side of our joint account, which has been impossible to access since it was made back in 2003. There's a 'put wrong info' curse on it, on all sides. Like, if I have a six digit code and write it out with numbers under so I can tell which is 1st, which 5th,

815243
123456

and I put 8 and 4, it still doesn't go through somehow and cancels that number. Every single aspect of the account has been like that, including a non-working PIN, and them sending my card to two addresses ago then refusing to update the paperwork without a passport. The counter person put an extra four in the phone number so it didn't update....

So finally that's been sorted out. The funeral director in Dusseldorf has indicated that they have all the paperwork from me that they need, and the Scottish end wants a meeting with his brother tomorrow.

So I think I'm done for the day? My brain has decided that once I'm finished with an urgent and scary task (and my fears that I am Doing Everything Wrong \*catastrophise\* \*catastrophise\*) then the point at which I relax is Crying Time. So it's basically Panic Or Grief just now.

I wish so much he wasn't gone. This entry was originally posted at https://supermouse.dreamwidth.org/83505.html. There are comments on the original post. If you have no DW account, you may comment on DW using username.livejournal.com as your open ID.

Current Mood: distressed

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Trivial wittering about life.
I'm listening to Five Words, Five Grand on Absolute Radio, because my alarm goes off at 7:30. It's been depressing to hear the news segments repeat right-wing talking points as of around last year, but the actual show is sheer silliness about words and somewhat about how the world is to live in with lockdowns and whatnot.

Radio adverts have definitely adapted, but it's been a weird journey of a mismatch between adverts clearly made in the Before Times that advertised things people could no longer do, to a lot of adverts about companies Caring A Lot about you, to people running out of ideas and reassurances about safety procedures, to ads centred around doing things online and getting stuff delivered.

Out again in a couple of hours to try to sort out the same Halifax account again, since I managed to lose The Number I needed to add to get online banking working. Halifax do not let you ever talk to a human no matter what, and play 'first and sixth' letters which keep not matching even when I can see them in front of me typed out with 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. beneath.

This account has been just as difficult to access since it was last made and even my card isn't up to date, so it's a pain. I get the horrible feeling I'll end up with someone trying to use the exact same interface and no online banking at all, but I can at least get some management done. This entry was originally posted at https://supermouse.dreamwidth.org/83214.html. There are comments on the original post. If you have no DW account, you may comment on DW using username.livejournal.com as your open ID.

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Joint bank account
The bloke at Halifax was very helpful, wrote step by step instructions on what to do when the death certificate arrives, and sorted me for online and phone banking at my actual correct address. This was a paperwork snafu that was going to get sorted out when Pol got back home from Germany...

So, I'm good living here for a year or two and don't qualify for means-tested benefits, although I definitely do not have comfortable-for-the-rest-of-your-life money. I'll be eking it out as best I can. I'm not in desparate straits.

Also I'm clean and in clean clothes, go me. This entry was originally posted at https://supermouse.dreamwidth.org/83096.html. There are comments on the original post. If you have no DW account, you may comment on DW using username.livejournal.com as your open ID.

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The State of the Rodent
So, at seven o'clock this morning - 8am German time - I got an email, saying everything I've done is sufficient and now we're waiting on the registry office and a flight booking.

There's a joint account I never touched, so I have to go and say this is me and get everything actually working. There was a paperwork glitch that Pol and I had been going to sort out last March but pandemic happened, so we were waiting on his being able to come home, and it didn't seem urgent, since the money I actually live on came directly to my own personal account. I have no idea how much is in there. So, sorting that out is today's job.

I feel like an exposed nerve in a tooth but all over, with waves of hot and cold, and a fluey ache in all my joints. My legs feel wobbly. That's sheer stress. My usual opiate, writing, works really well, but it means being oblivious to the world pretty much all day. I spent yesterday writing, retweeting memes and Not Thinking About It. Today I have to get this one thing done and then I think I can Not Think About It. Random drive-by hugs have made me feel not alone with all this.

First effort this morning was passing on the info from the funeral director to Pol's brother and to Kira, then checking in on everyone who is grieving and letting them know they're not alone. Dealing with Pol's death is, as expected, really hard.

My siblings are being very practical and very helpful. My mother's housing benefit claim is finally filled in since she retired in November, and I'll get help with my PIP, for which I absolutely do qualify, but when your illnesses are all exacerbated by stress, going through PIP claims are just not worth it (which is kind of the point of their making disabled people jump through every hoop possible - for example, I know my claim will be denied, go to appeal and then the chances of it going through are around 70% and the process will take around seven months to a year).

PIP is not means-tested, it's there to level the playing field to make up for the extra burden being disabled gives. For example, I need a lot of ready meals, which cost more than cooking for myself, but I'm often not safe with a knife and find cooking a headache-inducing nightmare. There's also a bereavement allowance. It all ekes out the time I can live where I'm living. In the short term, there was some remaining salary, so I'm fine for a couple of months, it's all about years to come.

My credit score is ridiculously high, all based on my personal account. Regular direct debits and no defaults on the same account for six years seems to be enough! I've never had a credit card.

I'm on max omeprazole and gulping Gaviscon, that's stress as well. I'm slightly overweight by a pound or two and getting all my vitamins, so I have reserves, and I am making sure I get some calories every day. I'm also doing my best to at least lie down in the dark for at least half an hour at 11pm and then every time I feel even a little drowsy thereafter. I'm getting around four hours a night and I'll try a sleeping pill again tonight since I think it will get me an extra hour I really do need.

Dealing with the very personal fact of never, ever seeing Pol again is something that's coming in very small allotments. We texted every night if we could to say goodnight, and so just when I'm going to bed is when he's suddenly dead all over again.

So that's the current state of the Rodent. This entry was originally posted at https://supermouse.dreamwidth.org/82820.html. There are comments on the original post. If you have no DW account, you may comment on DW using username.livejournal.com as your open ID.

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Your experiences of sleeping tablets?
I took a sleeping pill last night because I've been have trouble getting to sleep, with racing thoughts that go nowhere. When I have slept, I've had a broken night, waking up and having to go to sleep again. I've had vague ideas I have dreamt but don't recall what those dreams are. I've been getting to sleep at around one in the morning and waking at half past five or six in the morning, which isn't as much sleep as I need, but when I was Awake, that was it for the day.

I wake up tired and in pain and have to just slog through somehow, but I've had a stress-related 'buzz' I don't like, because it reminds me of the 'wired' feeling from having hypomania and I do not want to experience hypomania ever again. It's stayed at the level of 'con buzz', but continuing poor sleep will not help.

So I took a sleeping pill as prescribed, and my gods, that was disappointing. I took the pill at around half ten. I think I eventually got off to sleep some time after midnight, after a lot of lying in the dark, giving up, reading something, looking at the clock and lying down to sleep again. I woke up in the night and went back to sleep, had a vague dream and woke up at six thirty.

Since the absolutely no sleep of Monday night, I've been getting gradually better anyway, so I'm just going to do without. I just thought they'd do something I'd actually notice.

Is this usual? What's your experience? This entry was originally posted at https://supermouse.dreamwidth.org/82538.html. There are comments on the original post. If you have no DW account, you may comment on DW using username.livejournal.com as your open ID.

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I can *see* Pol's grin at giving us all 'a challenge' to deal with.
There's one particular photograph on the memorial page (it's [here](https://www.forevermissed.com/dapol/about), go and leave any memory you have of him if you can) where there's a toy cat with a doughnut and a bottle and a glass, and Pol is photobombing the picture.

That's my Pol. That's the man I married and I'm crying about just now. When I think of him, that's the face I'm seeing. He wore that smile so often.

Every other photograph is great too, because they show him as he lived. He did a lot of things. He went to a lot of places and saw a lot of people and he was usually trying to give good, practical help. He liked to live.

Regarding paperwork, everyone is doing their absolute best all the time just now and so we're forward on where we were. I can't do anything more until Saturday and that's something of a relief.

I have sleeping pills, so I'll get one good night's sleep tonight and tomorrow... I have no idea at all but I'll have slept. The GP suggested one every hard week until all the stress is dealt with might not be a bad idea. Sleep is incredibly important for managing bipolar, so I've been doing my best. I definitely, absolutely need one of those pills tonight though.

The random hugs, the phone calls, the offers of help, it's all been everything I've needed. I do love you all so much.

Since people keep checking, tonight's dinner was a big flapjack and a bottle of Mana shake (400 kcalories) so yes, I've eaten. My enthusiasm for food is at a very low ebb but I am working around that.

Pass on hugs to Kira and Random if you know them. Kira is the executor of his will, which is a mountain of paperwork such as I couldn't imagine, but she's been an absolute champ. This entry was originally posted at https://supermouse.dreamwidth.org/82384.html. There are comments on the original post. If you have no DW account, you may comment on DW using username.livejournal.com as your open ID.

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