I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy it.

Well, the weekend was good. Spent Saturday mostly feeling ill and sorry for myself, then stayed up very late trying to look online for rooms to rent in Cambridge. No such luck in finding anything, most places don't want smokers or anyone under the age of 25, or only want 'professional' housemates. What exactly is the definition of 'professional' anyway? I take it that it doesn't mean students. First thing I'm going to do when I move out of here is become one. The two rooms I found which I did quite like the look of - and for which I fitted the criteria to move in - I wouldn't be able to afford the rent on. Oh well. I have until the end of this year to find somewhere else to live. Six weeks is plenty of time :-)

Sunday I cleaned the house and did laundry and baked cakes. They're fruit sponge cakes, or at least they're supposed to be. They didn't rise properly and are a little flat, but they taste okay. Nom nom nom.

And today I've been resting. I made myself physically ache yesterday, bumping into furniture and lugging heavy wet sheets around between washing machine and washing line. I've also stopped taking my antidepressants. I simply couldn't cope with feeling suicidally depressed and not being able to sleep. At least before I started taking them I could sleep occasionally and I didn't feel quite so miserable. I can't be bothered to waste my time doing/taking anything which is going to make me feel worse, even just in the short term.

Lastly, when I politely ask someone to do a huge favour for me, and then I hear absolutely nothing about it for a month, not even a simple yes or no, I do start to wonder what's going on. The three polite emails I've sent them asking for info haven't been replied to. I think perhaps I will have to sort this out on my own after all. I honestly don't mind, but it would have been nice to have been told first. Moreover, this person also owes me some money and has something of mine which I would like back, and they haven't told me anything about that either. Slightly annoying.

This is probably only completely relevant to me, and being entirely from my perspective it's also probably completely wrong. It's something that randomly popped into my head whilst I was on the train on the way back from Sawbridgeworth at 1 o'clock this afternoon, and I wanted to get it down in black and white (or rather black and pink, as my LJ's bright pink) to see if it made any sense.

( Metaphors )

Happy Samhain to anyone and everyone who celebrates it! I'm swanning around the house in a long black velvet dress and eating nachos. Really traditional celebration, that!

Oh, we also have family staying over this weekend, but since this was arranged weeks ago, I don't think it has anything to do with celebrating Samhain. I'm amazed how many bottles of wine five people can consume in a single evening, and I don't even drink anymore...

Best wishes jholloway!

So anyway, my bedroom is far too cold to sleep in, and I feel a bit sicky, so I decided to come downstairs and organise the cluttered desktop on this new laptop of ours. It was all going well until I somehow managed to delete the Recycling Bin/Trash icon from the desktop when in fact I was merely trying to empty it. I've run several full searches of the laptop in trying to look for it, and there appears to be no trace of it anywhere on the system.

Does anyone with more computer experience than me have any ideas for how I could get it back??

EDIT: Computer problems all fixed now. It's amazing what several cups of tea and an extra hour of sleep can achieve!

In other news, I had a really good time at Sunday's Requiem game. I have plot everywhere now, and this makes me happy.

( Random meme )

I am now on my eighth day of feeling consistantly sick. I haven't actually physically been sick, just this constant nausea and painful cramps in my stomach whenever I stand up or try to walk around. I've been wearing pyjamas since Wednesday last week (not the same pyjamas, because that would be gross) and I've given up with the idea of being able to wash my hair anytime in the near future, as the cramps get worse when I raise my arms above my head. I finished the last of my codeine yesterday and ran out of anti-sickness meds at the weekend, so I really hope this doesn't last too much longer. As for other reasons why I hope this doesn't last too much longer, I'm getting heartily tired of instant mash, chicken soup and sweet tea, as I've found they're the only foods I can eat without my stomach doing somersaults.

When I start feeling better, I really have got to blitz the house, do the laundry and ironing, get some shopping done, sort out my paperwork and finalise course choices for next year. So if I suddenly disappear offline for a couple of days, you'll all know that I'm feeling much better, and therefore will be elbow-deep in various chores!

I won't be going to the Southern, because my bank balance is looking a little precarious, and having considered all different transport options, I reckon I'd still have difficulty getting back to Saffron Walden at midnight on a Saturday. Maybe next year though...

I'm thinking that... maybe I ought to remove the word 'date' from my last entry. It's not really a date in conventional terms. I'm merely going to the cinema with a male friend who I have known for years, and who happens to fancy me. There will be no kissing, or hand-holding, or cuddling up, or even sharing of popcorn. It's just a coincidence that me and this guy are both free on the same evening, and that we both want to go to the cinema. That's not a date!

I guess mostly the reason why I'm slightly worried that people will see this and think that I'm 'dating' is because the guy I do fancy and would like to go out with, might get the wrong idea about me. That's pretty daft in actuality, because I already asked him out once, and it was a negative in reply.

Why is it that ever since I became not part of a couple, the one person I've managed to develop a crush on, isn't at all interested in me in the same way; yet the three or four guys who do fancy me, I don't view in the same way back? I can hardly be repulsive if single, good-looking guys want to go out with me. I think the only issue here is that, I won't go out with anyone just for the sake of being in a relationship. I want to be able to feel that 'little bit extra' about whoever I go out with, that part which isn't there when you're only friends.

Some people might think I'm being picky. I call it having standards.

I have a 'date' next week. This is a 'date' in quotation marks, as I'm going to the cinema with a male friend who has a crush on me, but I don't really fancy him back, and have made it clear that we are going just as friends. Normally I would look forwards to this. My life committed social suicide in late February/early March, and so any opportunity to spend time with another human being is not something I'd pass up in a hurry.

However. Although me and this guy I'm going with: a) have known each other for years - I was fifteen when I met him; b) there's only three years between us, and I usually fall for guys who are much older than me; c) he's unemployed and so am I, so hopefully there shouldn't be any awkwardness when we start talking about what we've been up to; d) he has depression and so do I, so even if we both spend the whole evening moping, he's not likely to be nasty to me about my mental health; and finally e) it's flattering to be fancied, even by someone I don't fancy back.

I still have huge amounts of doubt in myself to be able to have a nice, relaxed, enjoyable evening with someone, without me doing or saying something to screw it up. I get so nervous in social situations, and have been known to end social-based evenings crying in the ladies', because I can't stop thinking that everyone I'm with wishes they were somewhere else, i.e. somewhere other than spending time around me. Often my self-esteem is so bad that I actually feel 'repulsive' and think that's how other people see me, even though the rational side of my brain tells me that's just me thinking that way. I think what I need to do here is use the time it will take me to travel to the cinema, to remind myself of cliché garbage like 'he wouldn't want to see me if he thought I was repulsive.' And other sh*t like that. Gah, I hate my self-esteem.

Know what I love so much about IoD? And in particular, Cambridge Requiem, and right now?

That I get to be all devious and bitchy playing Trick. Love it! *evil grin*

... to the ever-fantastic superglue_85!

... is pretty awful, really.

At least from a personal perspective, this article basically makes public quite a few things which from previous experience, I sadly already knew. I mean, as some of you who read my LJ will already know, I've been in and out of hospital quite a bit. The food I was given whilst there was often overcooked and tasteless, the portion sizes were miniscule, the food was often cold, and if you didn't feel like eating it, or like many of the elderly people I was on wards with were, incapable of eating it without assistance, then nothing was said or done and no questions were asked. People literally went hungry until the next meal.

I'm an insulin-dependent diabetic. If I don't eat, then bad stuff - like hypoglycemia - happens. Not to mention a fair amount of unnecessary weight loss. When I was in hospital for a little under a fortnight in January 2008, I was admitted weighing 9 and a half stone. I was discharged weighing just under 9 stone. And I was in bed much of the time. Not exactly strenuous exercise. Half a stone of weight loss in just under two weeks? You don't need to be a nutritionist to figure out that's just not right. Can you imagine the effect that this would have upon really sick people, or elderly people, or anyone recovering from eating disorders? So yeah, I figure hospital food needs sorting out. Whether or not anything is done about it now that's it's (slowly) becoming public knowledge remains to be seen.

Rant over; thank y'all for your time!

Hey all,

Would anyone who is going to Cambridge Requiem on September 6th be able to give me a ride home after the game? I can supply petrol money and directions to my house. Contact me by email (email address on LJ user page) or leave a comment below to let me know.

Thanks!!

Apart from the obvious, I think there's definitely something wrong with the state of my head. I sometimes find myself becoming very upset over or about things which ordinarily wouldn't bother me in the slightest. Today, three such things have happened and each one has reduced me to a teary and annoyed state of being which frustrates me immensely. Either I'm weirdly sensitive to certain undefined things on certain days, or my brains just decide to short-circuit every now and then. Tomorrow I know that I'll feel really silly about the way I felt when each one of these things happened, and in the meantime I'm going to tell myself to get over it, and have a long hot bath to help deal with the rest. So ner.

... you sit down to have a smoke and realise halfway through your well-earned ciggie that you've lit the wrong end and have been smoking a cigarette filter for five minutes. Drat.

Happy birthday to evilshrubbery! Hope you have a really fantastic day!

So... picking at them isn't generally a good idea, is it? They do tend to bleed quite a lot afterwards.

*This entry is brought to you by three glasses of red wine and a bag of prawn crackers.

... for spydacarnage! Have a super-dooper day!

Also, you know your family are health freaks when at 3am you discover that you are craving something sugary, and the sweetest thing in the house is a chocolate-flavoured lipbalm. Hmmm.

Happy Birthday jm_hood - hope you have a brilliant day!

1. Taking huge gulps out of a mug of freshly boiled tea will burn your mouth.
2. Not reading the ingredients list on a bottle of body lotion which I've never used before can prove hazardous on skin. Thank heavens for Sudocrem!
3. Going to bed without locking the back door means that every cat in the neighbourhood will get into and shit in the conservatory.
4. Forgetting your bank card when going shopping makes you look like a bit of a dolt at the checkout.
5. Falling asleep at the kitchen table gives you chronic neckache.
6. Leaving the taps running into the kitchen sink will make the sink overflow all over the kitchen floor.

What a day I've had.