Busy busy

This week seems to have gone extremely slowly, but so much has been fitted in when I sit here and think about it...

It began, I suppose, with a sleepover for four girls (plus our two). By the time one asks for a friend over, the other is left out so we invite a second friend, then they seem to multiply 🛊🛊🛊🛊🛊🛊

We love it when our two are happy and surrounded by their mates, so we don't mind one bit. Besides, ever since our children were little, we have always seemed to be the hgouse where people come and congregate. I prefer this to not knowing where they are. I can't imagine miss A going out to play and us not knowing who she has gone to play with or where she is at any time with how unpredictable and impulsive she is. What ever nerves I have left would be shot!

Miss G wouldn't cope with the uncertainty of going out to play with no direction or plans, so having her friends come here is the best option for her. She does go out to play now and again with her friends, but they tend to play outside our house anyway. Miss A does that too sometimes, especially on a sunny day in the colder months.

Of course we have days where we just need to be as a family, and those are the times when the children are all allowed in our garden but not into the house (except emergency comfort breaks). They are all pretty good and understand I need to rest a lot so know to be quiet if I am resting. 

As I type this there are six girls here. Two are inside watching YouTube andthe rest are out in the hot tub in our back garden. They have already had a BBQ here for lunch, played with the parachute on the trampoline and had a water fight (not all the girls were allowed in the hot tub today so we included them by giving them water pistols, water balloons and the hose pipe). 

I have been sitting outside in the garden by some of the plants we have grown, swollen feet up on a garden chair, with three dogs crammed around me. I had intended on reading my book but honestly only managed a couple of pages. I spent the rest of the time watching everything else going on and chatting to everyone. I chose a different spot to my normal garden space today. I usually like to stop, surrounded by the lavender, gladeoli and foxgloves we are growing, but today decided to sit by the flower seeds we planted earlier in the week and the French lavender instead.

I have a number of books to read now. The home link library delivered twelve for me, of which I have started two but not got that into them. I can't get to the boxes where the rest have been put (one of my main frustrations). I also have a few I have bought from used bookstores online or from our trip to Waterstones a couple of days ago. 

Hubby and I found ourselves alone, both girls at their friends' houses. As usual whenever this rarity occurs we had no clue what to do. We didn't want to waste the chance by cleaning or sorting out the house so went to a nearby town for a wander and a hot drink. It was there that I spotted the bookshop and couldn't resist a visit. I prefer used book shops and love the smell of books, but new books are always good too. I am trying to expand the genres of books we have available in the home. We seem to have numerous nature books, both fiction and non-fiction and books about autism and PDA, but not a lot of other options. With the new school approach we plan on using in September (no point until then with all their friends here) we need to have different books available as well as library visits planned regularly. 

So, I purchased a few (ahem...) interesting titles that I want to read and are suitable for all. They include:

And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

How to be humanby Ruby Wax

The PDA Paradox by Harry Thompson

Monster Tamer Girls by Mujirushi Shimazaki

Have You Eaten Grandma? by Gyles Brandreth

Happy by Fearne Coton

and a few magazine style booklets about Dinosaurs, History and Minecraft.

Hubby has also purchased a couple of books recently, both for me admittedly, about minecraft since I have begun to access the PC more now that I have coloured acetate screens covering the computer screen to prevent my migraines and eye disturbances. I started building my own world, trying to follow guides in Cool Builds in minecraft from game master, but got confised so many times I went off script and gave up on the book. I felt it was written for people who already understand Minecraft and was missing out too many steps for me to follow without regular googling sessions inbetween stages. The second book he bought me was an official Mojang Minecraft guide to Redstone. I totally overloaded myself with the first few pages, but once I found the first build to follow, it all started to make more sense to me. 

I also bought a kindle book this week called Cautionary Tales for Children. I read sections of it out loud to my daughters and Miss G's best friend whilst we waited outside the vets which made everyone giggle and feel terrified at the same time. Most of the tales ended up with death or serious injury to the child involved with no niceties or happy ever afters to be seen.

As you can probably tell from all of the above, i am still trying hard to distract myself. Everything is punctuated with unanswered texts to my son or his biological father, the knowledge he has seen my WhatsApp message and not replied, or has been on WhatsApp and deliberately not opened my messages. The mind games being played by him and his father are so hard to cope with and are really messing with my own head. I am not sleeping well atall- last night I was still awake at 3.30am and then at 7am, 8am and finally 9.30am. I am trying my best to not nap in the day in the hope that will make me more tired, but my mind won't let up. The house goes quiet except for the sound of dogs and people snoring and my brain seems to get louder. I can't decide what to do- whether to keep messaging my son in the way I have been, just updating him on what we are doing, sending pictures now and then and memes, or whether to give up because then the onus would be on him. It is so hard.

Whenever there's anyone here, the mask goes on, everything is fine, don't worry about me, nothing to see here. I find it exhausting though. Pretending it is OK seems wrong, but noone wants to know the truth. I haven't wanted to talk to my best friend about it or talk small talk for the sake of it either. I just want to be in the family, at home and busy.

Also this week we have been to a theme park. We went to Gulliver's and had a wonderful day together. I felt it was pointless me being there except for support for Miss G when she couldn't go on the scarier rides that Miss A loves. 

We have also been to a dinosaur themed farm park, discovered Floof,  been to the drive in cinema to see The Life of Pi, and had a terrible accident happen to our smallest dog.

The farm park was so well organised when it came to being covid-safe we didn't feel concerned at all. The same when it comes to the drive in cinema too. We even had our food and drinks delivered to our car windows!

When we got home on the evening of the cinema trip (where we had taken two friends aswell as our own), the dogs were excited ,as usual, and rushed to greet us at the doors. When I looked down at them to say hello, I noticed Chica's eye was bleeding. She is only tiny (a chihuahua crossed with a yorkshire terrier- a Chorkie). I immediately told hubby and got onto the phone to the emergency out of hours vet (of course this would happen in the evening on a weekend during a pandemic!). They arranged for her to be seen that same evening and she was given painkillers, antibiotics and anti-imflammatories too. She came home very chilled out and has been spoilt ever since. 

She went to see our vet on Monday and it was confirmed that she is blind in that eye now. We don't know if it will be permanent or temporary bless her. She sesems to have adapted very well. Her eye is far less swollen than it was but the white is red and the pupil is cloudy. Now and then I am testing her vision and there is still nothing there now, five days later, but maybe it's early days- I don't really know. Later that evening, hubby spotted a trail of blood near their bed. It looked as if the dogs had been in there when we got home and perhaps Chica had been pushed against the wall in the rush to get to greet us first. I guess one of the others must have caught her eye with their paw because the vet told hubby there is 'a significant scratch on the eye'.

All in all it feels like someone is trying to test us all. I don't know what else there is coming but I do know I have had enough now. I have asked my GP for help with my mental health and have spoken to something called 'the access team' who said they are referring me to something called 'secondary care'. I don't understand or care about the jargon used, I just need some support as soon as possible because I can feel myself going under and have done for weeks now.