I lay in bed moping for another ten days until Caroline phoned and suggested a photo shoot slash mini-hike. We piled into the car and headed off towards the Trossachs, thrilled at the chance to be outside on a nice warm day.
We drove thru Aberfoyle and then stopped at a scenic view spot overlooking Loch Achray. This was place swarming with (damn!) tourists so the stop was short, but we saw the funniest thing when exiting: a car with a hand-written sign in the back of the vehicle window saying "We're S L O W, we're French". The French drive on the opposite side of the road to the UK, so I assume they were tired of being honked at - heh.
This was the view from the spot, and then as we drove further down the road we were able to look across Loch Achray to An Tigh Mor Trossachs (Loch Achray Hotel) which sits at the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park. This is another angle showing the peak of Ben A'an, what we inadvertently climbed towards. We couldn't find the gentle, I repeat GENTLE, walk that Caroline had sourced on the internet and instead mistakenly found ourselves huffing and puffing up some rather steep inclines. I was ever so thankful when a brief rain shower appeared as it brought my red cheeks down to a tolerable pink and then about halfway up we stumbled upon a lovely resting spot with a view. Breathing and heartrate back to a normal pace we set off once again to find that peak and, after receiving encouragement along the way from hikers passing back to the car park, we were dismayed to find we'd only just reached the base. I was quite willing to push onwards had she been of same mind, but we agreed to attempt this another day.
Saturday I showered (yay), dressed, and ventured into city centre to meet with my old workmate. We chatted over coffee, her asking for all the gritty details of the recent work situation and me asking for details of her impending nuptials and I was feeling pleasantly numb about everything, enough so that it tickled me that they have decided to fly all the way to Vegas to get married, and I actually volunteered to go look at wedding dresses with her.
I picked up another box of ultra light ash blond hair colour (a different brand this time), and a scented pillow (sandlewood) for my bedroom. Retail therapy is just the thing you need when you've lost your job, have no money, and no immediate prospects for getting anymore money. I may become homeless, but at least I'll have a nice smelling pillow upon which to lay my bleached blond head.
Except the colour didn't work this time either-- it just went slightly lighter and slightly more red. That's it, no more fucking around with my hair! Once could be a fluke, but not twice. The way my luck runs if I tried to do this one more time, all of my hair will fall out. I'm going to leave as is until I get a job interview, and then I'll spring for a haircut and I'll color it back to medium golden brown.
On Sunday Caroline picked me up and it was such a gorgeous sunny day I couldn't wait to shoot the castle. We drove only a few minutes outside Glasgow, passing through Bothwell before we reached Bothwell Castle. We wandered around the outside for a bit where I think I was snapping shots more to hear the sound than because I had anything spectacular to shoot. Don't get me wrong, as castles go these were nice remains, but there is only so much you can do with one lens on a castle exterior. Once inside, the clerk gave us a breathless account of the history and then we shoved off to explore the remains.Unfortunately, Caroline was still recovering from a bout of illness acquired on holiday, so we cut the exploration short and headed back to the car. After a few minutes of air-conditioning she was feeling better, and decided we should stop at the Bothwell Parish Church on our way home. This is an incredibly lovely church, so well maintained, but sadly the cemetery itself hasn't received the same level of attention.On Monday I got up and made breakfast and coffee, surfed the web for want ads, and then popped out for a bit in the afternoon for my appointment at the job centre. We chatted about my options and he printed off all the job adverts I wanted to respond to and gave me an application for one of the positions and then I went home with the full intention of going back out to asda (to pick up a printer) once the rain stopped.
And that's pretty much where my week ended. I couldn't find the enthusiasm to trudge to asda and back carrying a fucking printer in the rain and suddenly just felt so very, very tired. I took myself to bed and the following morning when I awoke I had the thought, "I wonder how long I would have to go without eating or drinking before I wouldn't HAVE to get out of bed anymore" (if you know what I mean). And now I know the answer to that is about 36 hours - although it does slow down quite a bit after the 24. But throw in an additional half a day of sleeping and you'll find it ain't hunger that finally drives you from the bed but the foulness of your own mouth and body. Man, humans sure are stinky when they skip soap for a couple of days.
One of the side effects of the craziness called my childhood is my severe lack of coping skills. I find in life I will meet many problems head-on when they occur, and I will also aggressively defend and protect those I care about, but when it comes to myself I pretty much just withdraw emotionally from the situation and use any number of harmful things in order to deal. I'm trying to grow and change, but in order to do that I'm being confronted by feelings from past issues and sometimes it seems like my both my head and my heart are trying to kill me and I reach a point where I just can't take anymore and have to shut things down again.
It is difficult keeping the focus on myself as I get easily distracted by the needs of others. I want to rush in and solve their problems and while that might work for the short term, I'm probably not doing them any favors either so I've been learning to back off while they handle the situation on their own. Fuck that is hard.
I'm going to try real hard to shut the lid on the laptop and go take a shower now. And then I would like to go into the kitchen to wash the dishes and maybe cook some soup. That is all I'm going to ask of myself today. Tomorrow is another day.
I just awoke from a nice, long nap and feel pleasantly lackadaisical about doing anything else tonight (it's 8:30pm). I'm going to city centre to meet a friend for coffee tomorrow, and I have the photoshoot on Sunday (yikes, still need to pick the destination!) but otherwise there isn't a whole lot of activity planned for this weekend.
Today I awoke to the alarm, set on purpose for 8am because I needed to get up to eat & drink before 9am as I was required to fast from then on until my scan at the hospital at 3pm. I threw the couch blanket and some towels into the wash, then ate a turkey sandwich and drank a large and liberally laced coffee, before hanging the blanket outside to dry. Since I had to go out to the backyard I decided it was beyond time to take out the trash as well. I dug out the packing tape I had brought home from the office, and finished wrapping up the broken glass from the coffee table. That and two large sacks of accumulated garbage plus two sacks of recycling. How, oh how, did I let this much stuff stack up in my house?
I wiped the clothesline off and threw the blanket over and then went back into the flat to open all the windows. It was blessedly cooler this morning and I was hoping for a good breeze to help air the place out. I faffed about on the computer and then set to working on the task of attaching eye-hooks to the frames I've had sitting in the cupboard for months now because I'd decided today was the day to get those sorted and up on the wall.
I posted an entry on 43Things asking for suggestions of what to put in the frames:
Now that my room has been painted and the furniture is all back in place, I’d like to finish it off by hanging some stuff on the walls. I have one large mirror above the radiator, but the rest of the wall(s) are blank. I purchased 7 small frames from Au Naturale, and these will go in a line above my bed. I am in process of converting them for hanging by attaching eye-hooks and wire, but I’m at a loss for what I want to put inside the frames.
The frames are wood, then clear glass, and then silver metal with a 3”x3” square for a picture. Considering the location, it won’t look right to have actual photos in there so I’d thought about putting plain, coloured squares. My friend Caroline suggested textured squares, and I’d even thought of putting in swatches from my curtain material and nightstand swag to sort of tie it all in. Or maybe cutting up an old map? Ideas, anyone?
Abs suggested wallpaper, and that set me to sorting thru my keepsake box where I keep sentimental swatches of paper from gifts, etc and I found a couple really good ones. Once finished I lined them up on the top of my headboard and then zip bam boom had them nailed and hung. The photo is a bit blurry and the bed is unmade and from the pic I see I need to straighten a couple, but I’m quite pleased with the result.That task complete, I dashed outside to retrieve my blanket from the rain drops and then jumped into the shower to get ready for my appointment. Could have saved myself the trouble, really, because it was raining so hard that even with my giant brolly I was quite soaked by the time I reached the subway just two blocks away. It is a weird feeling to have water soak upwards on your legs, thankfully stopping just at the knees.
I reached the lab and waited less than 1/2 an hour to be seen, and as I walked into the Ultrasound lab I saw the previous patient had obviously been there for a prenatal appointment and was going to have (from my untrained eye) a rather large baby boy. I turned to the nurse and said, "I'm just here for my gallbladder - if you find something like that we've got a problem."
Basically they did the abdomen, and the tech said she didn't find any gallstones but that the doctor should have my results in two weeks. Huh, not the gallbladder, so maybe the doc was right and it is a bacteria infection. Back at home I phoned the doc to find out the results of my blood work I had done on the 18th. Nurse checked it over and said according to the notes all was good and the doctor was happy with the results. So now I'm completely stumped as to what in the hell is wrong with me. Unless there is something else wrong that showed up in the scan?
Feh.
I went to Job Centre yesterday and got the unemployment & housing benefits claim going, and I have an appointment with the disability advisor on the 14th. They are also going to get me an appointment with regards to possible retraining. I’m taking anything they throw at me right now, hoping to maintain a positive momentum. There were a couple of jobs I applied for, but I'm too aware of how much I really need to tweak my CV. Ah, well, another task for Monday.
Last night I selected 20 photos for MaryAnn to print & mount (or mat, whichever side of the pond you're on) and she'll bring those across with her. I want to take some new shots into the cafe and if the old ones haven't sold, then swap them out. If I can get it together before mid-week, I would like to choose several to be printed as greeting card sets that can be sold as well. So many projects, it is hard to organize it all in my mind.
I'm giving myself permission to take the weekend off from worry...
It's official, I'm unemployed. Again. Monday and Tuesday I went into the office and did some work, but basically just played on the internet and watched movies. After 6 months of insomnia, I slept like a baby last night and at 10am headed in for my final meeting which took less than 5 minutes to be handed my final letter and for me to hand over the petty cash box and my keys. They seemed a bit put out when I made the Director sign for the items. Heh.
I chatted with my workmates for a few minutes and said a goodbye to the cutie pies from upstairs (they give fab hugs) and then took myself home. Its been bloody hot out this past week and I was happy to be back out of my jeans and into the less constricting pants and tank top. I washed the spare room sheets and those are hanging up to dry and tonight I'll move back into my bedroom.
I've been rather numb about this whole situation, veering slightly towards hysteria at one point but specifically steering myself away from negative thoughts. I watched more dvds and then got online this afternoon to check email and journal entry notifications.
I had a long cry over Robyn's (Bitchypoo) loss of Stanley (aka Mister Boogers) and wished like hell I could find the magic words to make her & Fred feel better. Sadly, there just isn't anything that can take away the pain when one is grieving no matter what the loss.
What isn't a loss, or shouldn't be considered one, is my job. I had a look back over the past 5 years worth of my entries (where DOES the time go) and noticed a bizarre trend for this time of year:
July 2004: first entry was about Molly & Ramona. I was still job hunting, while going to school full time. (Man I miss that cat. I miss Molly too, but she's still alive and well and keeping my sister company and hopefully I will be seeing her in December.)
July 2005: first entry was filled with enthusiasm because I had just found a job.
July 2006: first entry was about walking a lot every day after spending the morning sending out job applications (I had lost my job on the 1st of June that year).
July 2007: first entry about the bombing at our airport and how I was still, one year later, looking for a job.
July 2008: first entry was about a wonderful day spent with Gav and the family in Ayrshire. Lots of terrific photo ops and not one mention of Jay Oh Bee (probably because this time last year I had one).
So here we are July 2009 and my first entry is about looking for a job. Rather bizarre, think that is some kind of record? (Maybe someone will give me a frickin medal for it)
I've already phoned the unemployment office and started the benefits claims process, and have an appointment tomorrow afternoon to meet with an advisor, plus I already have a couple of jobs to apply for in the morning. They are both for office management, which seems a silly thing to do considering just how much I despise the work, but I can't afford to hold out for something different. Until I figure it out, I have to go with whatever will get the money in the door.
I'm feeling strangely optimistic that I will do better this time around, if anything because I don't have the soul sucking depression dragging me under and sapping my will to live (not to mention the will to do anything productive). Caroline has offered to take me to the water/photoshoot on Sunday, and I think that's exactly what I need right now.
Sally, MaryAnn and Esteban are arriving in 3 weeks and there is a lot for me to do before they get here. We've got 2-day passes to the Gathering 2009, which should be chock full of photo ops, but I have to say that the biggest attraction for me is the chance to meet Diana Gabaldon. The Monday following we'll be traveling up to Inverness to meetup with the cousins, people I have not seen nor spoken to since I moved here 4 years ago. This should be fun, right?
This is Esteban's first trip to Scotland, so there will be a lot of repeat destinations but with plenty of new ones thrown in as well. Culloden Battlefield, Pitlochry (Edradour Whisky Distillery), and Glencoe (to drop off Grandma). I've also planned an evening for catching some Shakespeare in the Park (Bard in the Botanics) and a few other side trips as well.
MaryAnn is bringing her big zoom lens, and I can't wait to get my hands on that puppy. Last time I used it was in Spain back when I was still using the Rebel, so it will be very cool to see results on my 40D. This should come in handy at the Clan games, for sure-- lots of people shots :-D
okay, I'm off to bed. Have yourselves a good weekend and I'll be back on Monday with more photos...
