Another Update

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When I started to type that heading up there the computer came up with ‘Another Relapse’ because that was the title of a few of my private entries but thankfully they were from many months ago so I was mightily glad to change the second word to ‘update’!

Health
The year-long taper has ended at last and today is Day 52 of being codeine free and Week 4 of an increased dose of the anti-depressant Citalopram.  The side effect of these things has been almost unbearable – fatigue especially.  Another couple of weeks should let me know if these are working at this dose – if not that’s it for me – I’ve been going through this merry-go-round with these drugs (the anti-depressants) since May and am sick of it.

Work
Sarah is now on her way to Oz and the outcome was that her post is not being filled as we had thought and the office is to be closed.  Therefore it’s compulsory redundancy for me.  The down side to that – or one of them – is that I have to pack up the office and clear the furniture – a pretty depressing affair.  It made sense for me to do it though as I’m the only one left and our nearest office is 150 miles away.  But being 3 floors up (with no lift) it’s very frustrating – I can only fill a black bag about a quarter full so that I’m able to carry it downstairs and swing it into the big commercial bins in the car park with one hand, the other hand needed to keep the lid up.  There’s loads of stuff to chuck out – 8 years worth – although thankfully a good chunk got binned when we moved to this office 3 years ago.  The last 5 years’ worth of files will be couriered to our Glasgow office and will probably lie in some dusty room somewhere to get chucked as well when the time comes.

I met with the 2 girls who are running the charity I mentioned previously which could offer me a job at 15 hours a week and they were happy to have me on board – the job should be available around the start of the New Year sometime which will fit in fine as I should finish here at the end of the year as far as I can gather.  That job only brings in about half of what I need to survive each month so I will need to look for a supplement or dig bigtime into my savings which I’m loathe to do.  Still undecided on that one as yet – the tiredness is the main factor there – I just can’t see me having the energy to cope with another part-time job at the moment.

Nikki
Nikki has now changed her job to being a cook with the same nursery but only working in the mornings instead of full-time so she gets to spend afternoons with Lily.  She works in a different unit to her now and misses the stimulation of her old job tremendously – the new one is pretty boring but they created it especially for her which I thought was really nice of them.  And at least she’s still in the nursery so that once Lily is older there might be a chance of crawling up the ladder again if she still wants to.

There’s a chance she might be starting on anti depressants as well because therapy for her OCD hasn’t worked and it’s beginning to get worse.  I have no wish for her to go through that hell in the slightest but everyone’s experience on these things is different so I have no way of knowing how she’ll react.  Her doctor stupidly told her there were no side effects from the ssri’s and also that they would only take a week to take effect – WTF?!  I put her right on that score because it’s important she needs to realise she has to persevere with them to find out if they work.

Lily
It brings a smile to my face just to type her name.

Still entertaining and amazing us and the other day delighted us by taking her first steps!  The great thing is we were both there to see it.  She had been doing the whole ‘trying to walk between us’ bit but it was more of a one step and lunge into a pair of waiting outstretched arms affair then on Sunday she managed to stagger a few steps on her own before falling into the outstretched arms and by Tuesday night she was walking longer distances and walking between objects.  It’s fantastic how quickly little ones pick up things and how determined they are to master something.

She’s had her first birthday although was unwell on the day of her party poor soul and threw up 3 times in the morning!  We just operated a Nil By Mouth policy in the afternoon and she was able to enjoy the party until the next projectile vomit at teatime ……

Nikki had a whole ladybird theme going on for the party as Lily’s favourite toy is Ladybug – see below:

which now doesn’t exist in the shops so we have a major panic whenever he gets lost and have bought various other versions off ebay etc. when it happens!

So Lily was dressed as a ladybug as well (sort of) and everything was spotty – even the food.

And of course the cake.

Boyd and Bev came to the party which was nice although didn’t interact very much with Lily but there were a lot of folk there and I think they felt a bit out of things.  Boyd did play with her for all of about 5 minutes at one point though.

On the way home …… it’s an exhausting business being one ……

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v171/MargUK/Lily%20Mae/ExhaustingBusinessTheseBirthdayParties.jpg&quot;

We went to a Hallowe’en party at the end of that month and Nikki, knowing Lily would want to be on the move the whole time, dressed her up as an old wifie out with her shopping trolley which was her babywalker in disguise and meant she could toddle round the hall to her heart’s content the whole night!

Worked a treat.

The Nulling and Voiding
Referring to the tortuous process of the Roman Catholic church which doesn’t recognise a civil divorce so have their own methods of deciding whether a marriage is over or not.  I have to say this pissed me off greatly as I’ve already written about but strangely, when I came to actually be interviewed I found it, although slightly harrowing, almost a cathartic process.  They go into things in great detail – Boyd’s childhood, education, upbringing, siblings, parents’ marriage, career, relationships, personality, courtship, engagement, expectations of marriage then the marriage itself.  Then exactly the same for me.  That meant that after two and a half hours we had only reached the first year ofmarriage and still had 24 years to go!  We had to reschedule another meeting the following week but that one was more rushed – only two hours this time – and more difficult because he wrote everything I said down longhand each time so it took ages to cover anything.  It did help though that I warmed to the guy – a family man himself (which stupidly, because of that fact, meant he couldn’t be a priest only a Deacon) – he was down to earth and fully sympathetic so that made it slightly easier.

But it just made me see how much I was up against it right from the start and how blindly I carried on putting up with things I would never put up with now.  Having said that, we do the best we can with what we have at the time and we both agreed even if Boyd and I had met all over again and were more prepared this time we probably wouldn’t have done anything differently because we were in love and thought that’s all that mattered.  I was asked if I thought the marriage could have worked and what it would have taken to make it work and that was interesting to think through (I said yes by the way).  It was almost like a counselling session at the end of the day!

Anyway that’s my bit of it over now and I’m glad.

I still can’t decide whether or not to change back to my maiden name or not.  I’ve been mulling this over for absolute ages and I need to get a new driving licence and also my passport renewed anyway so thought it might be a good time to do it.  I had a dream last night where I had joined this maths group (of all things – not my strong point at school) and I was handing in homework to our tutor in an envelope and at the same time she handed me another brown envelope with the following week’s homework in it and I noticed she had written my maiden name on the front!  This wasn’t a younger version of me or anything – I was around the age I am now and I remember saying “Oh I’ll just change the name on that other envelope in case it causes any confusion because that’s not the name I’ve registered as.”

Very strange.

Probably just my subconscious saying Oh just get on with it FFS and stop whining about it!

I have a very smartass subconscious.