Don't Believe in Pickles

Well a lot's happened. And I'm going to skip all of it and progress to yesterday at about 6pm.

Mum yelled at me from downstairs that Pickle might be dead. Not waiting to hear the rest I plummeted downstairs to try to save my beloved niece. I reached the landing to find that she wasn't even here (I'd only just woke up from a nap and pickle had been here when I fell asleep). Elise had just called and said that Pickle had fallen down the stairs and that her neck was twisted. Panicked we searched for the car keys so that me and mum could go and lend assistance as soon as possible. Not finding them we soon gave up and set about walking up the hill.

I tried to force myself into the reality of the situation; that a baby couldn't survive a broken neck and that my 'ickle pickle, whom I had only taken shopping that morning to buy a new sippy cup, was dead. That we'd arrive to find a mother in morning, a child crying and an infant lying still and silent.

Half way up the hill is where the pavement of the hill meets the foot path that leads almost directly to their house. We just made to climb it (while skipping parts of the winding path) when a car tooted, urgently behind us. It was Elise, Stav and the kids. Pickle was strapped into her chair and, aside from a few tears that were nearly dry, she was smiling and happy. I kissed her cheek and moved back so mum could do the same and broke down and cried.

Apparently it was not her neck that was twisted into the wrong angle but her leg. And even that seemed to be fine.

Mum and I squeezed into the back, which wasn't comfortable as we're both rather large people and I was wedged in between mum and a baby seat and Bink was on my lap. Bink cheerfully told the tale of what had happened; that his little sister had fallen down the stairs "very fast" and had cried. They didn't take us home (which, at that point, would have been less than an minute away. I assumed they were giving us a lift because of mum's walking disability). It turned out that we were heading to hospital of the next town. I'm still not exactly sure why.

I could barely look at Pickle. She was wearing a white kind of furry coat and a pink summer dress and the sun glistened in her Blond ringlets and her eyes were bluer than they normally seemed (as, for a while, they've been becoming less and less blue). She seemed absolutely perfect.

I broke down into crying again. Both Bink and Pickle found this very funny, particularly Bink (I don't know if pickle was laughing because her brother was or because of the way my face seemed to contorting itself in a way beyond my control or both).

The thing is... I couldn't believe it was real. I had become convinced they my Pickle was dead, killed by negligence.

I don't know what's real and what's not. Was she alive, as my senses told me? Or was my mind creating a situation that I could cope with so that I didn't have to live with the alternative? A hysterical mother, coupled with a bad line would be hard enough to understand and "leg" could easily sound like "neck". But this was something I'd already considered and that could be the fantasy my mind had chosen to enact for me. The people around me were talking and discussing the situation as it 'seemed' but even their words could have been my imagination. Maybe what heard bore no similarity to what was really said, maybe we all sat in silence for the entire journey.

Maybe the whole trip was a lie, maybe we arrived at Elise's house to find police and an ambulance and her little body was taken away.

When we got their Elise didn't want to wait for the elevator and took pickle down the stairs (but this, too, could have been something I made up as I discovered the other day that pickle doesn't like lifts and cries when the doors shut. Apparently she's a little claustrophobic). Stav was parking the car so it was just me, Mum and Bink going down the lift and I told mum what was going through my head).

We went to the ward for children's minor injuries. There was a room with lots of toys at which pickle was particularly excited. She ran in and out with some new, interesting toy she'd found and handed them all to me before running back in to see what else she could find.

I couldn't bear it.

I couldn't face the possibility that the illusion might be shattered at any moment and that I'd have to face a bitter reality.

I went out and lay on the car's bonnet until Stav came out to get something and then continued to lay there until everybody was ready to leave. Mum sat in the front, this time, and Elise sat in the back with me, which was slightly more comfortable. (Well, not for Elise, but I didn't really give a damn about how she felt).

Elise and Stav argued a lot on the way whom, assigning blame for the fall to oneanother; Stav shouting and her for not being attentive enough; that just letting your eyes off a child of that age for a moment (which she had; she was moving laundry from one room to another) was a moment too long. She, in turn, shouted at him for not putting up the baby gates which were strewn across their house and yard (several of which are largely used for keeping their dogs from fucking). Of course the were both right and should both have something bad happen to them. (I'd quite like to be the one to perform said badness). This made him exceedingly angry and he continued to shout and I tried to tune them out. My interest was rekindled when Elise took her turn to rebuke him by telling her about police procedures and how, if anything serious had happened, the police would take the time to question the neighbours about the family and how Stavross constantly shouts and is abusive to both her and the children. He was quieter after this, but according to mum he was still steaming in his shell for the rest of the trip.

As we re-entered the town boundaries we nearly passed their old car, one they were still trying to sell. (A horrible little convertible). It was on a grassy corner on the drive-way to an industrial estate where I'm quite certain parking isn't allowed. Stavross pulled up here and got out, took Bink off my lap and went to the other car.

Elise took Pickle with her, deciding that she was taking her to a larger hospital for further checks as there have been so many cases of unnoticed child injuries in the press, this last couple of years ('Baby P' being the only example they could name, who had a broken spine that the doctors they took him to completely missed, somehow).

I wanted to be alone, so (after taking some painkillers for a headache brought on by travel sickness) I slipped unnoticed into a spare bedroom (one with no available beds, as it's recently become little more than mum's wardrobe, as she has an addiction to eBay she can't contain) where I lay on the floor between clothing wracks.

I lay there for an hour or 2 before anybody found me. Mum turned the light on and asked if I was ok and I told her I wanted to be alone, so she turned it off again and left.

At some point I fell asleep. I don't know what time it was. The painkillers must have knocked me out (the only ones I could find were memtid, which are something of an 'Overkill' for a travel sickness headache) because it was still quite early for me as I'd had a nap in the early afternoon and I was very uncomfortable.

I woke up with some parts of my body in cramp and others were numb. It was about 11.30. Mum and Jeff were already downstairs. Apparently I had a dinner in the oven. It was chips and a burger. Everything was still very unreal to me. I don't know what time Elise arrived but I hadn't quite finished eating at the time. Mum took the baby to bed and I took some milk up, after.

I still didn't want to face Pickle this morning. I realised why, later.

This morning, after feeding her and either before or after I bathed her, she was playing with a pot of sudocrem (cream for babies' bottoms) which I took off her, causing her to bump the back of her head on the table. And she cried, and cried hard and I couldn't bring myself to comfort her.

She got up and cried on her feet and asked to be picked up and leaned on the front of the sofa when I didn't and rubbed her tears away with little fists and came back to me and hugged my legs. I wanted to pick her up and give her all the love she wanted until the pain went away but I knew that if I did and the illusion shattered I'd fall twice as hard and might be irreparably broken when I landed. When I still couldn't pick her up she went to the sofa again and repeated and came back and hugged my legs. It was heart breaking.

I did pick her up this time but I couldn't hug her, which she clearly didn't understand. I took her up to her grandmother. I would have asked her to give pickle the love she needed but she'd stop crying. Apparently, after that long, just being held was enough, even if it wasn't particularly affectionate. I tried to explain to mum what my problem was but I couldn't. It's been very hard to explain to anybody.

I even went to the doctor to try and get referred to a therapist.

He said it was most likely brought on by stress and prescribed me something mild to take the edge off for a few days and said that if I still had the same problem after then that I should come back and he'd make the referral. (Actually I'm not sure if he said he'd definitely make the referral, but he did say that I should come back if the problem persisted).

We went shopping then. What was promised to be 'just a few things for dinner tonight' turned into things for dinner tomorrow, things for dinner tomorrow and things to be eaten over the course of the week. I had prevented mum from getting the deepest size of trolley and was forced to regret that with the amount of things she got.

On the way home we 'called in' to 'check' on pickle, who was promptly strapped into the baby seat. I still couldn't face her. I walked home.

That pretty much brings me up to speed. I've been home for hours but I get distracted easily while writing these things.

Prizes Withdrawn

I slept quite well although I was woken earlier than I would have liked in order to get Charles out of bed. In doing so I woke Dave up. (I'm not a morning person). He decided to wake Chug instead, so I went back to bed.

Tony has fallen out with us. He's refusing to come out and Mum and Jeff reckon it might be for good this time. (Yeah; right...)

Tony has said he'll babysit at Elise's place but Elise isn't willing to have him there. I understand where she's coming from, after all; I'm not willing to have him here. I would babysit myself but when I heard that tony was OK doing there I assumed that mum had already spoken with Elise and that she was OK with first. It's not OK for her to go sticking her nose where it doesn't belong, especially if that means inviting to Tony to watch Elise's children at a house that's not hers.

I've put my foot down. There is absolutely no reason why she can't have tony there. Well, there's the Stavros thing. (A few weeks ago he and the bitch had some kind of argument, she came here and he followed some time after to get his son. He was screaming his head off and the babies were scared so Tony held Dylan back where the scouse prick couldn't get him and he went screaming up the hill, still perfectly audible from here, shouting some pretty horrible things. Something similar happened a few days ago, only this time in the middle of the day and there were more people about at whom he could scream directly. I wish the retarded fucker would just go back to Liverpool so we can bomb the place). Stavros doesn't like Tony. Nobody likes either Stavros or Tony but Stav has, in the past, said he doesn't mind if Tony is there to babysit his children. And I'd quite like to see the results of that, to be frank.

So she might have a good reason, I just don't happen to think it's good enough. It seems that mum fails to see Elise's biggest problem with a scenario that involves having Tony at her place; it means that she'll have both children there and the self centered bitch can't handle that.

Mum has agreed to have Pickle for the day (which means that pickle is asleep in mum's bed and I'll have to take over the moment she wakes up).

Chug Turns 13

---I started writing this just after midnight (which is why I specified 'today' and 'yesterday' a few times) but decided to leave it until after I'd had some sleep until I finished.---

Yesterday (Monday) Laura came to visit. I don't remember how the topic came up but she wanted Chug to start a facebook account which meant I had to start him a facebook account. This also meant I had to create a new email address since his last email account went inactive. I set him up a gmail account instead of yahoo as it's not as hard to get a decent username on on gmail.

Today (tuesday) I thought that I might as well add him to my Facebook. It turned out that he wasn't on there as I thought he was. The only explanation I could think of for this was that he'd neglected to read the confirmation email in the account I set up for him and didn't follow the link to complete the registration process.

This was after Tony had arrive to take care of Pickle, ofc. Elise had decided to bring her down later than normal, which meant I got a little more sleep. Still, I wasn't happy that Tony was coming. (Fortunately he didn't complain too much today. However, when he finally did complain it as particularly bitchy. I'll get to this later).

So while I was on there I thought I might as well make people aware that it was his birthday today so I announced it on my 'Wall' and also on Zoe's wall, suggesting that she might like to contact him. Well, thinking about it I don't think I did say it was his birthday, just that she should get in touch with him today. But the first thing you see after you log on is a news feed with highlights of what your friends have done on facebook, which should display my announcement that it is, indeed, his birthday. (Nobody replied to this comment or the one I left on Zoe's wall. But I have no reason to feel bad and Chug won't feel bad about it as long as I don't tell him. But then I don't think it would matter too much if I did as he's not the most sensitive of young men).

So, having read my morning webcomics, checked the news and my emails; Dave was ready to watch some Dragonball. I don't remember how many we watched, probably 3 or 4 episodes, 5 at a stretch (they're less than 20 minutes each). Then he took a break for a fag and I agreed to wait for him, but then I realised that it was nearly time for Chug to come home and that I should probably get him something before he arrived if I was to get him anything at all.

I went to Ego and browsed everything they had... I asked Andy his opinion, but everything he could recommend was either already in Chug's possession or they were unsuitable. He did make one good recommendation, though, but sadly it was a game that hasn't been released yet (it should be there within the next few days, apparently); Halo Wars (an RTS based on the Halo games for the xBox 360). I didn't get him this as I wanted to get him something on the day itself; I'm tired of giving belated gifts.

Eventually, seeing nothing else I could see fit to get for him, I got him a wireless internet thing for his xbox.

I picked myself up a couple of lindt chocolate bunnies on the way home, as I have fancied one for days now.

I got home, gave Chug his birthday pressy and watched more dragonball with Dave having given him a large portion of one of the bunnies' heads.

At around 7ish I started dinner; steak and chips but before that I was standing idly around the kitchen, unable to use the facilities as mum was making pancake batter (it was pancake day, today! :D). (In spite of the huge amount of space in our kitchen most of it seemed to be in use). Laura was there by this point but I have no idea when she arrived specifically.

I went to check on them once or twice as mum made the batter. One time, presumably the first time, they were tucked up under a blanket, facing each other on Chug's bunk and seemed very startled on my arrival. So I did what any older brother would do at a time like this; teased them silly. Well, I didn't tease them that badly but I did inform them that I would be back up in a few minutes to make sure they weren't "up to anything". Sure enough; the next time I went up there Chuggle was trying to set up my present to get onto xbox live.

When I came down mum had more or less finished her batter and I started frying the steaks and the next thing I knew Tony had came down from upstairs and was ranting and raving about Chug and Laura being alone in bed together. (This was less than 2 minutes after I'd been up there). He would not shut up about it for ages. I know it's wrong to let 2 people of that age alone in bed together and I certainly wasn't going to let long pass before I went up there again myself to make sure they hadn't resumed their make out session (at least not in bed as they had been). As far as I could tell chuggle and Laura were still trying to set up xbox live.

He eventually settled down but it did seem as if he wouldn't ever shut up about it at one point.

Chuggle was still setting it up as I cooked but was getting nowhere. He constantly pestered until I went to help, which meant leaving the steak unattended which meant constantly turning off the pans so they didn't burn if I was longer than expected every time I went up there. The meal took ages longer than I had intended.

I finished cooking at about 7:50, at which point I remember Tony wouldn't eat chips out of our deep fryer. I asked him if he minded having just steak and salad and he seemed fine with it so I offered to watch the baby while he put a plate together and had it. As soon as he got up he went to the next room to rant to mum about the fact that all he had to eat was chips and salad. (I'll note, here, that when I use the word 'rant' when referring to somebody's actions in real life I generally mean when somebody shouts or moans loudly without stopping to listen to anything that anybody else has to say or at least trying not to listen). When I managed to get him to accept the fact that I had already asked him if 'just steak and salad' was fine with him he started bitching about the fact that it was now after 8 and that we were supposed to be at Elise's by that point for the pancakes and birthday cake. He seemed so close to exploding completely that he had to go outside for a smoke. While he did that mum called Elise to find out if it was OK that we were running late. Apparently Elise hadn't even realised we were late and said it was fine. She even called Laura's dad to make sure it was ok if she was late home, and he was fine with that.

Mum had a random rant at Stavros while we were there but I don't think I'll go into details on this.

After the "festivities" (which weren't bad, all in all, I spent most of the time there playing with Dylans toys on the carpet with him, Chug and Georgia. Dylan gets extremely excited when we come to visit at their place; he spends so much time at our place and we spend so little at theirs that when we come to visit him the role reversal is a complete novelty. You can't help but smile) Mum took Laura home and took Chug in the car with her to see her to her house (we also have him see her to the door as often as we can get him to. Personally I'd have him walk her home but mum's refused to let him leave the house on his own all his life to the point where he just refuses to do so out of fear. I also believe that to be the source of his so-called agoraphobia).

As mum left Elise and Stavross popped to the corner shop (I assume it was the corner shop, as it's the only one near their house and it was nearly 10pm, so I doubt anything else would have been open) purely because of the novelty of being able to step out together with both children in the house, what with me and Tony being there.

As soon as Elise got back Tony told her all about Chuggle and Laura being left alone together. This particularly annoyed me because it's simply not his business. I know we've always called him 'Uncle Tony' (to his face. The only time we refer to him as such is to the babies) but he isn't an uncle or any kind of relative to either Chuggle or Tony. We wouldn't have told Elise unless it seemed appropriate as we'd already dealt with it and Elise would only go ballistic and shout at Chuggle needlessly. It seemed to me that he was waiting to tell Elise this specifically when mum wasn't there.

It took me half an hour to find my coat. (That's an estimated figure, it did take me a long time, though). I looked absolutely everywhere, until the point when Elise started insisting that I mustn't have brought it as I thought I had, however I was quite certain that I did (most of the time I have a pretty cloudy memory, at best, but regarding this, that night, I had a pretty specific mnemonic; Laura keeps staring at me. And I noticed at an early that it is the instinctual reaction for somebody to look back, eventually, when somebody is staring at them. I say 'instinctual' because it often applies when people don't realise they're being watched, they simply become aware of it. I caught Laura staring when I put my coat as I was getting ready to set off, I caught her several other times over the night including when I began to feel a little too warm wearing the thing, so I took it off).

I even went to the car to see if mum had taken it with her. (Not that I could really think of a reason why she might have) and she kept telling me to go back and look in the house. Evidently Elise was pretty annoyed with me, after a while and practically pushed me out of the house, assuring me that she would bring it over in the morning if she found it (though she had adopted a tone that suggested she sincerely didn't believe I had brought the damn thing with me sometime previously and used it even as she said that). It wasn't that I was worried that she'd steal it or search through my pockets, it was more the fact that whenever I Lent her something she and Stavross would promise to bring it back for months and it would never materialise. (My copy of 'the Simpsons Movie', for example, took over a year and I only got that back when mum went and got it. I had gone up there a number of times, reminding myself in advance to pick it up while I was there but, as I mentioned above, my memory is extremely cloudy and I would tend to forget over the course of my visit). I just didn't want to have to go without a coat when I might need one with constant promises of its return that would go unfulfilled.

She gave Tony a lift home on the way back. After he got out I told her how he had told Elise on Chug and Laura while she was still giving them a lift and how deliberate it seemed. I am very aware of how hypocritical it seems to tell her about how he was talking behind her back when I was talking about him behind his back. I feel justified, though, because I wasn't about to start an argument with Tony deliberately.

I know this entry hasn't had much about Chug's birthday but a journal is simply a log of events from the author's perspective and this is how the day went from mine. A little more happened after we got home, for example; Jeff asked if Tony had acted up in any before he got home and mum recapped the events, inspite of my hints warning her not to, causing him to go off and stress (scratch the back of his head) and I explained things in more detail which was a foolish move, on my part. Nothing other than that is really worth writing about.

Well, I did mention that I thought it would be a good idea if Tony didn't come up for a few days. This advice was clearly forgotten as he came up and took Pickle while she was asleep on my bed as I was typing this blog.

Chaperon

(I should have typed this up half a week ago, since I mentioned it several times in advance of the event, but when I haven't been busy I've either been tired or just plain lazy).

I suppose a chaperoned date doesn't feel like too much of a date at all. I wouldn't know since I was the chaperon, in this case, and I've never had a chaperon. They spent most of them time not talking to eachother; mostly because Chug is naturally aloof to... Well, just about everyone. The journey out of town he spent most of his time staring out of the window and I, wanting to give them the illusion of privacy, stuck my nose in my book.

(I must say that the first part of the Earthsea series has not been nearly as interesting as I hoped it would. I think LaGuin managed to recreate Tolkien's problem in precisely the opposite way; he writes pages and pages of detail that cover just a few hours, she writes pages and pages of detail covering several years and neither of them seem to have enough story within those pages and I get bored. Towards the end I was really forcing myself to continue, mostly because I have a Neil Gaiman book waiting for me when I'm done but I've reached the second book in the volume and I haven't found the will to read any of it since I finished the first one on the train, that day).

We then hopped on the next bus from the bus station after going to some trouble to find out which one it was. (Apparently it was from 'Stand E'. Again. It's always there, but since it's only once every year or so that I take the buses in Shrewsbury, which are the only times I ever ride on buses at all, I live in constant fear that they will have changed the routes and if I get on 'E' it will take me to completely the wrong place) I learned the value of getting a return ticket the hard way, which I will explain later. (I don't know why I never bother with them for trains, they're completely sensible).

They had already decided on 'The Pink Panther 2' (Steve Martin) the night before. I had been promising myself that I would attend a different film to them but there was nothing that started at the same time that had a similar run time; meaning there was nothing I could watch separately without leaving the 2 12-year-olds unaccompanied. (There was nothing I wanted to see, anyway. There was only one film that looked remotely interesting that turned out to be by Woody Allen. A quick check of the weather indicated that hell was, indeed, still in the middle of a heatwave so Woody Allen was still out of the question). So I got a ticket for the same movie.

The show time was at 4pm which gave us over 2 hours to kill, so I got them each some Ben + Jerry's Ice cream and gave them a £5 note to go on the arcade (I say 'arcade' but a 3m x 5m corner with 1 game, 1 lucky dip and a "who wants to be a millionaire" machine does not an arcade make by any standards), though I would have given them £10 but the cash machines had been shut down and the £5 was all I had to give them. After that we still had time to kill so I took them to dinner at Nandos, which made quite an impression on both of them. Chug displayed an uncharacteristic amount of machismo by ordering his chicken "extra hot" and putting their special "extra extra hot sauce" on everything and daring me to do the same after mocking me for my feeble (he didn't actually use that word but I doubt he actually knows what it means) choice of Lime and Mango chicken which, according to the menu he had studied (though not much further than the 4 grades of spice on the chicken) was the least spicy of the chicken they did.

I had to explain to him that, once you're particularly used to hot foods, you find that various chili peppers and chili powders don't actually change your food's flavour, much, it only makes it hotter and that my choice of lime and mango was made purely on the grounds that it seemed like it was one of the most flavourful. (Alternatively there was 'Lemon and Herb', however seem to have a lot of chicken marinaded in herbs while lime with mango was something I hadn't tried, though I have had them as marinades separately on other occasions, usually with various mixed herbs).

The kids sat themselves down before I could suggest that they sit opposite each other, as etiquette dictates, though I didn't feel the need to correct them since sitting adjacently on a round table can be more intimate and, since it was only a table for 4 and it was a round table I would have been between then, which would have detracted from that intimacy.

They were both suitably impressed by the place, Chug even complained that nobody had ever taken him there before (we explained this was because he had always refused to go before, favouring the allure of Pizza Hut, on the other side of the town). The place was more 'up-scale' than anything either of them were used to (hell, it was nicer that some of the places I've eaten and I've attended some pretty swanky venues, and it certainly had the most posh rest room I'd ever seen; it even contended with those that had attendants). I wasn't expecting a franchised restaurant of that type to look classy; I was expecting something with the atmosphere of a more generic fast food place. The only problem was that the music was so loud we practically had to shout to hear oneanother. (We even considered writing something to this affect on the feedback form that came with the menus, but when you have a lot of family in various areas of the catering business you learn what happens when you give the people who serve your food any form of criticism. I decided to comment online, nice and anonymously).

The film had some funny moments. The plot wasn't great but, then, it was a sequel which is something generally to be avoided with this type of film. It was funny enough to make me consider seeing the original (and by 'Original' I mean the first of the 2 Steve Martin PP films, not the original Peter Sellers version which I have seen many times and never laughed at once), as there's the likelihood that this was just another case of a movie company trying to make a quick profit following up on an unexpected cash cow.

When the bus back to the station arrived I realised that it I had no money to pay for the tickets and asked the driver (knowing that the odds were slim to none) if he accepted cards. This is why I should have got return tickets, as it would have been easier than paying for a return journey. I don't know why I don't bother getting them on buses when I always get them for trains. I will make a point of doing so in the future. He said they didn't so I said I'd just go to a cash point and wait for the next bus, but he said he'd lets us pass this time. There was only one other passenger on the bus and when she got off he asked me 'if that trick works often' and I explained that I hadn't intended for it to happen at all, that I merely hadn't been thinking ahead (but most of what I do is spontaneous or with reluctance and therefore I seldom plan ahead).

When we got to the station there was over an hour to wait until our train arrived (trains between my town and Shrewsbury arrive every 2 hours, so it was just a case of bad timing that we arrived half way between 2 trains) and so we waited on a bench on the cold platform.

While Chug had been very aloof with Laura on the way out there seemed to be something sweet between them, in a shy sort of way, and he did actually make eye contact and there were lots of embarrassed smiles between them. (I actually did catch a glance at them doing something which they swore me to secrecy about. Nothing bad, it was actually pretty innocent, but being 12 years old they're shy and easily embarrassed (especially since I'm always the first person to tease them on their 'puppy love'). I said nothing about it on the way home and I've been bursting to tell somebody IRL ("In Real Life"), such as Dimebar or Mum or Elise (or even somebody online). But if there's one thing I'm good at it's keeping secrets (or at least I am when I know it's a secret, if somebody fails to ask me to keep something on the down-low then I don't see how I can be held responsible for what I share with others. Or maybe that's just the aspergers in me...) I would write it in my journal, as that's always a suitable place to keep secrets (and I do write plenty of stuff that could be construed as confidential to others who didn't tell me it might be) however, having said I wouldn't tell I don't think it would be right for me to do so knowing that I'm going to publish my journal online, essentially telling the world (or at least the world who wants to know. So far I think that's one person).

She came to visit on both the following days and is here now as I type this (when last I passed chug's room she was on his WoW account while he was playing some xBox game she got him).

Yesterday I awoke with a nasty tummy ache and found myself doing squats to relieve it, assuming it was a blockage. Sure enough I felt whatever it was moving through my system quite rapidly over the next few hours. I made sure I had plenty more fiber yesterday, to try to make sure it didn't happen again, though it did.

I had Bink last night and he woke up crying to I took him down for some milk. I fixed him a bottle, put the fire on and we curled up watching the baby channels under a blanket and both fell asleep. (Which was a bugger, because 30 minutes before I next woke up we had a delivery, but as there was nobody there to receive it (the delivery guy didn't knock very loud and didn't even bother ringing the bell) he left a note telling me where to get it). I went to pick it up at 10am only to be told to come back at 1pm (it's 12.43 right now). I don't really know what I did before typing this, I did spend a while looking for torrent files (the latest episode of Kyle XY would have been broadcast in the U.S, however the only rips I could find were all over 1GB, so I'll wait for a smaller file. I know it might actually be quicker to download it at 1GB but disk space has really become an issue, lately).

When Bink woke up again (thus waking me also) I had another stomach ache, though not nearly as bad, so I did some squats and encouraged Bink to do the same for the sheer hell of it. (He seemed to think I'd gone mad).

And now the big question; do I, a guy who must have every moment of his time filled with something, even if it isn't very exciting, to occupy his mind, kill the next 10 minutes or so by dossing about? Or do I load a computer game, waiting for which and getting stuck in with eat those 10 minutes and demand more?

I guess the game it is, then...

Shrewsbury

I've logged on to this with the intention of writing up yesterday but here I am; just staring at the screen.

Elise dropped off Pickle at around 8am, which was thoughtless because she knew Mum was going to the Shrewsbury hospital in today and we had to be on the road by 10. But she told her that we had until we set off.

So this meant calling Tony to take over while we were gone. We generally have to tell Tony appointments are way earlier than they are because by the time he actually turns up there's almost no time to actually make our destination. We told him the appointment was at 10 so, naturally, he didn't arrive until after 10.40 when the journey takes 45 minutes if there's little or no traffic. He even made a joke about how there was no point in setting off in the time left. His tone suggested that he either wanted her to be late or that he knew she wasn't telling the truth about when her appointment was. (She only started lying about it when she had 2 appointments on the same day a few months ago and only had time to attend the second. I suspect Tony didn't believe she had the first and is now playing mind games).

It's nice to drive with people since car travel means that everybodys eyes have to face forward and, for me at least, conversation becomes more natural.

I sat in on her consultation rather than be left with nothing to do in the waiting room and I'm glad I did as, although a lot of it was pretty gross, there was also some very humorous terms thrown about (such as something that sounded like a 'Pretzel Enima').

I then accompanied her to have a blood sample taken. I picked us up a couple of drinks from a hospital shop on the way (apparently they have more shops, now, all of which seem to sell snacks and soft drinks). I got mum a diet coke and I tried a carrot and orange juice thing which was surprisingly nice. (I don't like carrots, but I don't mind when stuff I drink comes with its juice in it. Mum said carrots tend to go well in things or make things taste better. I said, 'like what?' and she gave a couple of examples that included carrot cake. I pointed out that I did like carrot cake, especially for the cinnamon, but when I make carrot cake I tend to leave out the carrot cake and if anybody approaches my carrot cake mix with wallnuts I get very annoyed).

We then went to check out cinema times for Saturday, ready for Chug's little date. You see, Cineworld has the most annoying phone system ever. It's much worse than "if you want to blow your brains out; press 1. If you want to be annoyed; press 2. If you want to be put through to another annoying list of things that don't sounds like they apply to you; press 3!". These guys have a voice recognition system, which means you can't talk to other people while on the line to discuss the options or anything because the computer can mistake what you're trying to say for the various options. And you can't just stay on the line for an operator because it'll just keep reading out the same list over and over. The web site was little better, either. Neither the phone line or the web site had listings specifically for the 14th, and those films which I worked out to be actually showing on the 14th made up a pretty dismal selection of about 3 and there's no way a multiplex is just showing 3 movies on valentines day.

The cinema, however, was closed. (And it was after 1pm). There was a notice in one of the windows saying that it would be opening 30 minutes prior to the first film but didn't mention when that would be. (Over the week I even tried looking up details for listings at the Odeon, the nearest one of those being another 30 miles away, however their website was just as useless. I ruled out going to that one because I don't know how to get to the cinema from the train station in that town, or even how to get to the bus stop... or the address of the cinema to know which bus to get on. Actually I don't think I know what the address of the Shrewsbury cinema, either, and it's been a while so I don't know if they've changed the bus routes or anything so I'll have to take a look at that, too).

It appears the customer relations for Cineworld are pretty non-existent. The phone message actually gives the web address of the people who created the voice recognition software. I don't know if I should really complain to them, it's not their fault that the company who hired their product didn't add a way to speak to be put through to a human.

I would still like to send a strongly worded letter to somebody or other.

We then went to the catering warehouse and picked up a few needful things and one or 2 slightly more frivolous ones.

I don't remember much of what happened after going home. Or I might do, but I'm too lazy to access those memories because I've been typing almost since I woke up (except for the usual distractions, and the usually unusual ones) and haven't had a drink this morning so I'm getting a headache which I'll need to do something about soon.

I do remember that Dave and I watched 'Night Watch', one of the DVDs I picked up at ego last week or the week before, before he decided to go to bed and he even managed to stay awake all the way through which was good because he normally doesn't last that long if we watch something that late at night. It was a good film, I wasn't expecting it to be Russian (I guess I didn't do enough research on it) but being foreign isn't something that would usually stop me from watching a film. In spite of the way they were clearly going for a 'Blockbuster' it wasn't too cheesy.

And there I'll stop to get some painkillers, a drink and maybe even some kind of snack to have by way of breakfast.

Eye Contact

Well... What's happened? Fuck all. I wasn't even going to make a post today, but if nothing has happened then whatever I do report will at least be quite short.

Errr...

Hmmm...

OK, well yesterday, sometime after chug got home he was on the phone to Laura. Or, at least, she was on the phone to him. He had the phone squeezed between his face and his ear while playing Star Wars; Knights of the Old Republic intently, saying absolutely nothing and probably not listening, either. So I came in to tease him, as any older brother should. And, for some reason, she had him put the phone on to me after a while.

So we chatted for a while and whenever Chuggle came up I would deliberately mention him loudly as well as whatever context in which we were talking about him, mostly to annoy him. It's hysterical to watch him give me dirty looks (ie; an angry expression, for anybody who isn't familiar with the term). Then she said we'd being talking for around 45 minutes which I said was impossible, she was apparently looking at some timer on her phone. I continued to dispute this but she wouldn't believe me so I told her what I was doing exactly 45 minutes ago; I had been looking at the clock in the dining room and was told to go and make dinner by my mother. I wasn't cooking anything special but it still took me 15 to 30 minutes to so, and I think she may have conceded or at least humoured me. She also told me that we were having what was possibly the first 'real' conversation she'd ever had, including with her Dad.

I wasn't sure if I should believe her or not, it seems unlikely to reach that age without having one at some point, but then again I rarely converse with people myself, due to Aspergers. Plus her dad isn't much of a talker (and, from meeting him, possibly not much of a thinker, either). I have heard that she doesn't have any friends she hangs around with at school (from the guys at club) or from outside it. Plus her Mum lives somewhere in South Wales. All I could think of was of how sad that much be. Not just to be lonely, but not even getting a degree of conversation. Then again, I think it's something I know well, and most people must go through it at some point or another. She said that her 'conversations' with Chug is usually her talking and him not saying anything and then, after 5 minutes.

So I gave the phone back to him and kicked him off his PC, going on there instead. He fussed and argued and told me, repeatedly, to let him back on it but, from my perspective, if I was on the PC and he was on the phone he was far more likely to talk. And if I was there to tease him there would be something to provoke some conversation.

And it worked. He claimed that all the did was argue while he was on the phone but I suppose they're both too young to know (and Chug is both young and autistic) that it was a very flirtatious argument, if it could be called an argument at all. They hung up on each other, they pressed buttons to make noises in attempts to bother each other (something of a phone war it was) and generally bickered. Then there was the smug tone of heir voices which is generally considered to be flirtatious. I'll have to explain it to him at some point later.

I've reached the conclusion that I'm going to have to sit him down and start giving him the 'girl talks', or whatever you'd like to call it. I'm not talking about "the birds and the bees" mechanics of sex, I'm talking about much more basic stuff. And I mean VERY basic, starting with things like Eye Contact. Besides, I'm almost sure he knows the basic mechanics of sex. Most kids do, these days. I had an encyclopedia with some interesting diagrams long before I reached his age. More complex stuff, things such as condoms, STDs and such can wait until he's 14 or 15. (Not that I'm expecting him to be 'getting any' at that age, but I'd rather he know and not do it than do it but not know. I don't want to have any extra nieces and nephews to look after from him before he's ready).

Though, come to think of it, I don't know how much about it he does know. I really hope that "the mechanics" not one of the things I'd have to explain to him.

Not much to say about today, either. I looked after Bink for a little while this morning while chatting with a close friend online. A while later I swapped babies with Tony, who was downstairs; he had Bink and I had the Piglet. And a few more hours still Elise picked up Bink, Tony had Piglet and I got to watch the rest of Iron Man with Dave. It was far better than I expected it to be, not only because it's based on a Marvel comic (I don't know what age I went off marvel, but at some point I decided that all the costumes and pseudonyms were silly, especially considering that the marvel and DC universe had thousands of costumed heroes between them, most of them with super powers. And you know they're running out of ideas for new powers and silly names for them). It made me realise that, in a lot of ways, Iron man was possible Marvel's answer to DC's Batman. (Playboy millionaire sinks millions into creating cool crime fighting gadgets. There's probably a bat man/iron man crossover out there, somewhere I should get my hands on...) Though the Iron Man movie wasn't nearly as good as either of the recent Batman movies I would certainly watch the sequal.

Elise came to take Piglet home surprisingly early, today, around 5:45. Apparently Piglet is having her first swimming 'lesson' tomorrow (I don't know if you can call it a lesson when you're only 10 months old. Then again, she tends to call everything "wblwblw" or "Aggahh!!" or "Hmhmm", so she may have a word for it). I find the idea of the precious little girl splashing away in the pool adorable, I just hope Elise takes a camera or something.

With no baby to watch Tony went home, I went to pick up a few things from the super market and then I made dinner. (I say "Made", what I really did was take some pies out of some boxes and put them in the oven, took some chips out of a packet and put them on to fry, as well as a few other things. The only real 'cooking' i did was to make to chop some chicken breast and cook it in a mushroom sauce. She didn't ask but I added some port and Cognac and a little salt and pepper. I had a taste of it when she was done and severely regretted not adding garlic). I only went to the market for chips, but I also picked up some Cadbury's Mini Eggs (childhood favourite) and a big box of Thornton's Chocolate for Chug to give to Laura.

I'd put the first items in the oven and then I went to give the box to Chug. As I said, I've come to realise that I'm going to have to be the one to give him those 'fatherly' talks. These are talks I never had, unless you count a few conversations with CP in my youth. But I don't really think the advice of mum's ex-husband are things that I should be striving to apply to my life, especially when you consider that he's a special forces trained ex-mercenary who has a track record as a rapist (though never charged with anything). (CP is Chug's biological father. Though Chug is kind of aggressive he's quite unlike his 'old man' in a lot of ways, and we hope he's going to continue being unlike him).

I had him pause his game and come and sit next to me and tried to make him make eye contact with me as we spoke. (This is something that doesn't really come naturally to us Aspergics, but it can be learned, however I've found that when I'm with somebody I'm close to for a prolonged period I will tend to forget to make eye contact completely. I don't know if there's any etiquette to this I can read up on, as far as I can tell it's all natural behaviour learned or almost from birth for humans). If he could do it with me (make I contact) then he could do the same with Laura. He refused to make eye contact with me on the grounds that he hated me which, to be fair, wasn't a particularly good reason not to make eye contact with somebody. I know that we often avoid it with people we feel hateful of but it's hard to do when having an argument with them, especially a heated one.

My argument got more heated when he declared our talk to be 'over' and that he was going to go back on his PC. I pointed out that I was right next to his power socket and could turn off all of his electrical appliances with one movement. I think he came close to calling my bluff, though I wasn't bluffing and I think he saw that. He stormed off to tell mum and I followed so that I could reasonably explain things. (I think that Chug has finally realised that, if I follow him when he runs off to mum after I tell him off, punish him or simply "lay down the law", as I had just done, it means I'm going to explain things to her and she'll probably come down on my side). Mum did agree with me, though she wasn't certain, but Chug still wasn't having it. I'll try again tomorrow, but I'll try harder not to back down this time as I'll only have 1 more day before I take he and Laura to the cinema.

I went down to finish cooking and we all ate.

Dave and I later watched some Doctor Who (episodes 5 + 6 of the 2005 season) before he went to bed at about 9 and I started typing this. (It generally takes me several hours to write all of my entries as I happily allow myself to be distracted. For example, at about the same time as I started writing this I started browsing some shoes that I had been meaning to buy for a while).

These are what I ordered; Like them? Want to know why I like them? They're PUMPS!! (Plimsolls) or as close as you can probably get without a time machine. We used to have to wear these indoors, back in primary school; they were our "indoor shoes". They don't make these, anymore. I don't know why, they were worn by children in schools all over the damn country and they were the most comfortable shoe you could possibly buy (after you broke them in). I first saw them in one of Dave's "Rollersnakes" catalogues. I couldn't find the specific shoes I fancied online (I think the ones I wanted had some sort of iron maiden motif) Anyway, I book marked the page (I had to do something, I suppose) and more or less forgot about it until today.

I wanted something dominantly black that I could wear in public without people jumping to conclusions about my tastes or personality (as most of my first picks had skulls on them) but ever so slightly ostentatious and I thought the checkered pattern would cover this. They're still pretty conservative in my opinion.

This is what I was originally going to get from the rollersnakes site. I still might, tbh. The ones I did order were on amazon but this design isn't on there as far as I can tell. I like the colours, I like the design... They look a little like carpet slippers but that's forgivable. And there probably will be times when I want to advertise my tastes, if not my personality (I don't see how footwear can prove this, but they do say women look at your shoes before anything else. If this is true then it shoots the 'girls are smarter than boys' argument out of the water. Besides, in my experience they tend to look at your package before anything else)

I'm looking at them now and I'm seriously reconsidering them. They don't seem to 'ostentatious' now, but if I actually put them on and went out they might. Since I don't normally give a damn about what people think of me or how I dress, I shouldn't let it get to me. (Especially since I don't care how I dress either, most days).

After ordering the black and grey checkered shoes above I continued browsing Amazon and found this pair, shown on the right...

Had I seen these first I don't think I'd have bothered with anything else. Possibly the least subtle of anything I looked at today and yet probably the pair in which I most saw myself. (I know that one of the figures appears to have cleavage and therefore women's but you'll look closely you'll see that one is a queen but the other is a king. You know, from playing cards... I think I'd have preferred a Joker motif but you can't have everything... Though I may yet find some with such a design. If I can't find some with Jokers I'll get this pair, next). You, the casual reader (and I imagine most of you exist primarily in my imagination) probably wouldn't like them, but that's ok.

I was still browsing shoes when my good friend came back online (whom I will henceforth refer to as Gydha) and I must confess I continued to do so for a while as we chatted. I did write more about our conversation, giving no particularly specific details but when I logged on today she said that she was 'aggressive'. She said it was because of the housework she had to do but I thought I would delete this small segment just to be more respectful, just in case.

And, as should be obvious, I continued to type. I don't think I've ever written so much about stuff I did while I was writing the very account of that stuff. I think there's a paradox in there, somewhere, but that's cool because when you look at things from a metaphysical point of view being caught in certain paradoxes give you some measure of immortality.

And you can't really complain about that, can you?

Poor Little Bugger

I had Bink, last night (Tuesday night). The poor little bugger has at least one infected tooth (Tony argued, as Tony always must, that it wasn't infected; it was rotten. Which I suppose is true but I imagine that the second reason we don't want our teeth to rot is because rots cause infections. The first reason is because we don't want to form cavities to form which will expose our nerves). We found out that it was a rotten tooth today after an emergency dental appointment.

Elise spent most of yesterday here with both of her children until she finally decided she would rather be somewhere else, though we still had both children at this point. The reason for this, due to the pain in his teeth, Bink has been highly sensitive, today. I'm not saying that he's not normally sensitive; the boy is set to become one of the finest people I know if we play our cards right, but today he burst into tears at the smallest of things; particularly the word "no" and especially when phrased as "No!"

Apparently Stav has also been ranting about the cause of his son's oral decay; he claims it's the fact that he's been given milk in the night when he's supposed to have only water. (Elise has claimed that he was going back to sleep readily with water and she wouldn't even have to refill it because Bink would only sip it and go back to sleep whereas he would generally drain the bottle of milk). Elise blames us for this because, apparently, it's only since the last time he slept here that he's been refusing to have water in the night. I wasn't in the room to respond to this, I was in another room and she was being deliberately loud, possibly to get a rise out of me. I didn't feel like coming in because it's hard for me to know whether it's acceptable to but into her conversations with getting told off (by her) for it. Apparently the fact that I have Aspergers doesn't concern her at all. (But then, whatever does?)

In anycase, both mum and Elise have referred to Stav's behaviour as 'bullying' which I assume means that Stav has been losing his temper with Bink when he start's crying

This accusation of theirs (concerning the milk) was the cause of much private snickering between other members of the family over the course of the day as this theory because, while it was true that Bink completely refused the water I gave him and he would only accept milk, when last I had him, I have never heard of anybody who thought that milk might cause tooth decay. But then Stav is a Scouse ("ˈskaʊs"), a notoriously stupid breed and Elise is just particularly stupid anyway. (I don't know if I ever made this comment previously in this blog but as I can't be bothered to check I'll say it anyway; during both of her pregnancies Elise I would frequently mention that her offspring would be born smarter than her parents combined).

He kept waking up in floods of tears, during the night. I took him down to give him some calpol and bonjela for the pain once or twice. At one point he was crying so for so long, no matter what I tried, that Dimebar came in and complained, so this lead to the second time I took him down for painkillers.

At one point when I got him back to sleep I got up to go back to watching the cartoon ("Death Note") I had downloaded to my PC, however Bink wasn't properly asleep yet and demanded I stayed. I explained to the distressed 2 year old that I was only going to the desk and he asked if he could come with me, which I allowed.

He sat on my lap and watched it, though he complained of some discomfort (and that he might fall off at any time, even though I assured him that I wouldn't let that happen) but somehow I don't think he was really into it; it's pretty much intended for adults but then he's never really into the programmes on the TV much anyway (though he will often dance to music if the song is upbeat enough). Eventually he cuddled up to me and I decided to put him to bed. Once I had put him to bed it was clear that he wasn't going to let me go this time either so I just stayed with him and went to sleep.

He woke up at about 10am this morning. I took him downstairs and called Tony, asking if he could come as soon as possible; explaining how Bink had been up all night, Crying. And Tony can't say no to Bink, so he was up pretty quickly and I went back to bed until sometime between 3 and 4pm.

Apparently Bink needs to have 4 teeth removed. When you look in his mouth only one has had any particularly obvious

Nothing interesting happened since then except for RocknRolla, the latest Guy Ritchie film which I had wanted to see last summer (but nobody wanted to go with me and I don't particularly like going to the cinema alone). It was quite late when Dimebar suggested we watch this, something I didn't question because I assumed he knew how late it was. About half way through the film, when he was about to go for a cigarette, he checked the time and it was after 1am and he said he couldn't watch the rest but told me he wouldn't mind if I did so without him, something I wouldn't normally do but I made an exception with this case as it was something I had wanted to see for a while.

There was something missing from the film, though. I never really noticed before but I think the other Ritchie movies I've seen must have had a certain level of complexity to them because this one seemed to lack it. It was still highly enjoyable, though.

Stinking Cold

I guess I could feel this cold coming on a day or 2 before it did but I just thought it was going to be a case of the sniffles.

I remember having a conversation with mum a few weeks ago about how I had managed to escape from the cold, this year, which is something rare and this reminder her about an article she had read which said that, this year, the cold had some how been covered by the flu shot. (I'm entitled to one because I have asthma).

Then, the night before last, it just went from the sniffles into full blown nausea, sinus pain, runny noses and streaming eyes, on top of the usual sneezing fits. Normally when I get a cold it's just runny noses, sneezing and maybe one night of coughing and then back to business as usual. I'm not normally one of those people who treat a cold like they're dying (ladies; just so you know I'm also willing to stop and ask for directions when I'm lost and will except the blame for my actions ;-) ); I'm willing to get on with house work and things but I still don't like exposing my bugs to other people when I can avoid it.

So anyway, when it got late, yesterday, and I realised that we not only had both of my sister's children but that nobody had come to pick them up I had to ask the question I already knew the answer to. "Do we have the kids tonight?"

Not only had my sister dropped off the other child while I was occupied but she had told mum and Tony that she had already cleared it with me.

I really wish people would check these details with me before assuming that Elise is telling the truth, for a change. Maybe it's the fact that we don't spend so much time with her, these days... She isn't here to lie to us so much but all people seem to have registered is that she isn't spouting as much bull shit as usual. Maybe, subconsciously, people are just assuming she's being more honest lately; at least as honest as a normal person.

I'm not sure if I'd have babysat, last night, given the choice. I mean, I suspect it's one of the babies' who cave me the cold in the first place but all either of them seems to have is the sniffles. I'm not particularly sure it's the same thing; it could be that they're just much better at fighting infections than I am. But if they're not and their sniffles aren't the same strain of virus as my cold then I have probably given them what I had.

Anyway, what I was getting about way above, concerning what mum read about flu vaccines immunising people against the cold, it kind of tells me that the cold and flu could be the same thing but when your body fights it more easily we call it a cold and when we feel like death we call it flu. (This could also explain why men complain about colds more than women do, as females generally have better immune systems than men do. With the exception of my mother). Since I get flu shots it could be that I'm fighting a slightly mutated strain of the flu, making it seem like a severe cold.

At about 6.30 or so this morning I couldn't stay awake any longer. I climbed in next to Bink, who had done a good job of keeping the bed warm for me.

He woke up at about 10, maybe 10:30 with an extremely weighty nappy and we had none his size for me to change him into. As soon as mum was sure I was up she gave me Georgia to look after until Tony arrived. We actually had ones her size, though. When Tony got here I was to hand him a tenner and send him back out for nappies. When he came back he bathed Dylan and I went on up.

Around 30 minutes later still, after I had checked my emails and web comics, etc, I had just got in bed, so naturally this was the moment mum chose to shout for me. She wanted me to watch Georgia for an hour. This meant that Tony wanted to go out, somewhere. (I don't mean to treat him like a servant but the guy grates on my nerves then rubs salt on them). I called back that I had just taken a bunch of melatonin, which was true, and she let me stay in bed. Normally I'd have gone to do whatever was asked for me, I'm generally the kind of guy who let's people walk all over me (or so various people tell me) but if there was an occasion when I needed to have some rest it was this morning.

I slept until nearly 6pm and did what I normally do; stayed in my bed room and went out of my way to let nobody know I was awake. Dave came home and told me he was going to a raid in 9 minutes (he don't remember him asking if he could use the PC to do so, this time, so there was a bit of a cheek in that, though I didn't really mind). I logged on for him and informed them that he had only just got home and had gone for a quick smoke. His whole timing was off, as I had finally decided to download season 2 of Sam & max and was going through the payment details, which meant updating my card on pay pal.

I sent chug down to get my card from my coat pocket but he couldn't seem to find it, so I went down.

(Both babies had been picked up which was highly surprising. Tony, however, was still there. He had asked to stay for dinner which is fine; he does deserve something for his efforts... Putting up with his constant whining and complaining doesn't really constitute as payment).

I finished the details and payed for the remainder of the season (I had downloaded episode one a year ago) and started downloading the first file (episode 2) as Dave started gathering consumables for his raid. He was on in Orgrimmar for a long time so I saw nothing wrong with watching over his shoulder and downloading the other episodes as they finished, seeing as they all came down so quickly. Then I went to help with dinner.

The potatoes had burned. Well, some of them had burned. Others were just slightly coloured because they were in the same water as the burned ones, so we were able to fish them out and put them in another pan for mashing. The tasted fine, though were a little tough to mash. The lamb was the best I've had in.... Actually I don't remember when I last had lamb that nice, though I don't doubt that it would have been minted lamb shanks from Langfords in Welshpool.

Then I went to lie down because I was still feeling a little nauseous. I think I may have dozed off, but no more than for 5 or 10 minutes according to the PC and mum called me down to help tidy the living room. Oddly enough I think that few minutes of sleep might have done a lot of good for my cold, who knows how much better I would be feeling now if I had been left to sleep. I got up and felt extremely groggy, which is how I tend to feel after 5-10 minutes of sleep, and went to see what I could do for them. I just was not with it, though, barely registering anything anybody said. At least Tony was gone, though.

Jeff was extremely stressed. Being completely out-of-it I thought this was due to the mess he was attempting to clean. Apparently it turned out that, after I had gone to bed, Tony went off on one of his rants at them again.

It was especially hard to concentrate on anything that was going on because Die Had 4.0 was on. Although this is the cheesiest of the Die Hard films it's still hard not to become engrossed by it. When I had finished everything I had been asked to do and the instructions seemed to end I sat down to watch the end. Then I came up, kicked Chug off the PS3 and Dave, who had finished his raid at this point, logged off and went to bed. He didn't feel like watching anything, but I knew it was a long shot just to ask, as it was already 11pm and he has work tomorrow.

It turned out the girl who had requested to be my friend on facebook was Lauren Thorley... It also turns out that Eden Ivy Lee IS her real name. I wander how she acquired the name Lauren, if that isn't her real... I replied to the last message she sent to me through Facebook and I started updating my blog and we ended up sending messaged back and forth through face book as I did so. One of the last messages I sent was asking if she had MSN or Yahoo IM but I don't think she got it, as she replied to the one I had sent previously and that appeared to be the end of it.

I also took the time to check out my friend Kirvil's blog; http://noeullent.typepad.com/. I don't speak any Norwegian, however when I run through it through a translator it's still pretty damn hard to read and I grasp pretty much none of it. Hopefully there's a better translator out there...

That would apparently bring us to the here and now.

I'm long over due for a shower but I'm probably going to play some games first. Even though I really want to get into Sam and Max I think I'll play the sims a little, as I want to make the latter last as long as possible, as there are a few games that come out in February that I'm really looking forward to. Plus there are several games that came out last year I'm interested in yet I don't seem to have got my hands on, yet.

There is no life A.F.K.

I named this blog as I did because, at the time, I was playing a lot of World of Warcraft. Actually, my time on that game dropped dramatically as my sister had a baby boy, Dylan, 6 months prior to the first post I made (the only real post before this) and she didn't seem to want to spend any time with him. And she went on to spend virtually no time with him until he was nearly 2 years old; she would drop him off at our place soon after he woke, usually between 9am and 10 am, and wouldn't come to pick him up until after 9pm.

At some point during this time my play time on WoW and any other games dropped even further and yet I still seemed to have no life of my own.

When her son was around 18 months old she had a Daughter, Georgia-May, just as adorable as he is. We frequently took care of both children for a few months, but as her son was now able to walk unaided and speaking in full sentences (no thanks to her) she started taking much more of an interest and we don't get to see him as much, these days.

(Elise isn't actually employed and nobody is completely certain why she can't watch both children, or why she couldn't look after Dylan when he was an only child).

We now baby sit her as much as we did Dylan, if not more as Elise tends to drop her off after 8am, some time, and will rarely come for her before 10pm. She seems to have less interest than she had for Dylan, and I thought her treatment of him was pretty deplorable. Realistically I know George is getting treated better than he was, or at least changed more frequently. Though this could be because she's spending more time with us during the day, although Dylan probably spent more time here as we had him for far more nights.

Most days a guy called Tony Quigg comes and babysits for us. I don't think I can really explain the way this man makes those around him feel and do justice while accurately explaining the feelings he evokes in us. He does it for free and he's not exactly affluent. This, you would think, must make him some kind of saint. This is what I would think. However I think that if you, my imaginary reader, got to know him for a few weeks, then eventually you'd want to be payed to endure his continued company. There's no end to the amount of personal comments and cutting remarks he makes. He has no problems telling people what he thinks about their personal habits, especially my poor step father who has several medical conditions which prevent him from leading a hygienic lifestyle. I think about killing Tony at least once a day, which is still much more merciful of the amount of homicidal fantasies my mother has of him.

I don't even think he babysits out of the goodness of his heart, I think it's more to do with some perverse way he see's my sister, who has to be 40 years his junior. (He claims to be about 50 or so, though I wouldn't be surprised if this was true and life has simply aged him a little prematurely).

Even though he's babysitting my sister's children she won't let him do it at her house because he keeps complaining her house stinks of weed (she denies this repeatedly, but I think this is one area where we might actually agree with Tony. Though, thinking about it, I couldn't smell weed when me and mum popped by for a few minutes earlier), that her boyfriend is a twat (one of the few other things we agree on. Even Elise has a hard time rebuking this) or anything else that comes to mind. She also suspects that she snoops around her house, in places where he doesn't belong, and opens her mail. She doesn't mind the idea of him doing that here.

Today he told mum "wasn't fit to look after the baby" (he's ill) this morning, however I pointed out to her that he's not fit to look after her full stop.

So I had her all day, not that I really minded. A few months ago (it might have been about 6 months ago, it was summer) we had a huge blow out and I wouldn't let mum have him around for a month. This was the longest we've been rid of the anal bastard since the birth of her first child. I knew that, as soon as I started backing down and letting him come infrequently it wouldn't be long before he was here almost every day of the week.

Mum had a dentist appointment today, needed to make a trip to Welshpool and had a weight-watchers meeting. I was supposed to accompany her to Welshpool, but we both agreed it was unfair to take a baby out in the car in this weather when we don't have to. I still didn't like letting her go along but I didn't see any other choice.

George took 2 short naps in the middle of the day, the later one lasted for the better part of an hour, most of which I spent trying to revive Chug's yahoo email account. For some reason it won't accept (what we believed) to be the old password or let us change it to anything new. I didn't manage to do this while she slept. I even tried starting a new yahoo account, however I kept getting messages saying I couldn't open an account for anybody below 18 years old without parental or guardian consent and required a parent or guardian to log in to give it. I don't know my mother's password (which I'm a little surprised about, truth be told, as I know the entire household's passwords for their online services except for mum's email. And I swear I used to know it).

I don't remember what I did until after 4, when Charles came home, and I don't really remember what I did until around 6, when I watched the episode 1 of 'Psych' on my computer, as he never saw much of the first season.

George was asleep at the time, this time sleeping for at least 80 minutes. After Psych I took fer down to change her nappy and make dinner for family. Although "making" dinner seems wrong, mum got a cooked chicken from the supermarket and some pork stuffing and meatloaf, which I warmed and fried some pre-sliced chips. (Actually, it's been so long since I've had anything other than pre-cut chips that I don't remember what home sliced ones even taste like. This isn't because I prefer them or even because I don't like the hassle of cutting chips (I don't, but this is beside the point) but because, years ago, I found the McCain's Home Fries were better than any other chip I'd ever tasted from anywhere. They're not nearly as good since they made them into oven chips, but they'd become too habitual by then).

I stayed downstairs until it was time to take Georgia home. She was very talkative in this time, though she doesn't know any 'actual' words, unless you count 'mumumum' (which I suspect we do), and possibly bababa. (She also make a sound which I don't think I know how to repeat, let alone spell, which seems to combine a 'W' and a 'B' sound. You can try to imagine it but I don't think you could possibly understand the noise without hearing it first). I watched a little Q.I with Chuggle.

Stavros, my sister's loser boyfriend, had taken their car to Liverpool for whatever reason (I wouldn't like to think about his reasons, let alone speculate about them as publicly as this). When we got there Mum had to pop inside "for 5 minutes" to top up my sister's mobile phone credit. We ended up staying for far longer, but this was to be expected.

We arrived to find her playing that memory game with the cards where you flip a pair and if the pictures don't match you have to flip them back. Dylan apparently had some trouble understanding the rules. But he's 2, so I let that slide, especially as he played so enthusiastically.

He cried when we left, which was pretty heart breaking. He was pretty excited that we were there, as we rarely make the visit to her place (in my case it's mostly because I don't like my sister) and I think he wanted us to spend the night.

It's not fair to have to take care of them so much, but it still hurts to see the little buggers go. I've bonded so much with both of them it's almost a maternal thing, which is more than can be said for their mother.

On our way home mum said she wanted to have a look around town (which she does sometimes, and so do I, occasionally), not that there was anything to say by that time (especially on wednesday). I reminded her that I was the only one who hadn't eaten yet (as I was looking after the baby while others ate, as they were nice enough to watch her while I 'cooked'), but that I didn't mind as my dinner was, no doubt, already cold. We didn't spend long going through town (my sister lives 5 minutes away by car so any stops made between her house and ours are detours).

I warmed my dinner a little and ate it with some buttered bread and watched Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. (It started off pretty hard hitting, but trailed into more of a court room drama, like the original show. Actually, it one I'd seen before, where the woman from the D.A's office comes out of witness protection). Then I came up here, checked my messages and finally got around to updating my blog after 2 years.

I think I may go and have a mug of Rooibos before I actually go to bed, though.

Girl in a Box

Friday was my step-sister's funeral. I began writing this in the small hours of the next day because my sleeping pattern is messed up beyond recognition I went to bed not feeling slightly tired at I-don't-know-what-time, feeling completely restless as I listened for the downstairs clock to chime every 30 minutes. The last chime I remember hearing before I fell asleep was 4am, meaning that I had at least one and a half hours of sleep before I was awoke by my step-dad.

I found a shirt, (I found another shirt when it turned out the first one wasn't big enough for me to put in both of my arms at the same time without squeezing my shoulder blades together and force me to walk around with my arms out-stretched) got dressed in the new suit that I blew all my cash on a couple of weeks ago, got mum to put on my new tie for me and then went back to bed, where I failed to get any more sleep before the time to leave approached.

I changed my nephew's nappy; something I don't mind doing but this morning... having taken off the one he slept in (which he had clearly pee'd in several times and was a hefty weight) he pee'd again. And again. He must have pee'd at least 4 times, although I counted 5, each time failing to hit me (although he managed to get the corner of mum's laptop, I have no idea what the shape of which is now). I made my usual joke, when he made a large amount of waste that I was "surprised there was any baby left".

So when I finished changing his nappy and had him dressed I went to put my coat on when somebody (Jeff, I think) noticed I had managed to get baby cream all over the top of my new suit trousers and part of my jacket. We got most of this out but it's grease based cream and very hard to remove, but we managed to get it to the point where it was only really noticeable if somebody pointed it out.

I don't know what time we set off. An old friend of Tanya's, Kelly, was accompanying us so we took 2 cars; Steve had agreed to drive some of us and Elise would follow mum's car (after mum's chemo yesterday she wasn't feeling well enough to drive), which may have been a mistake because Steve is an erratic and often dangerous driver. Kelly, Chug and I were in his car, mum, Elise and the baby were in mum's.

Steve and I talked quite casually, only occasionally speaking about Tanya or the Funeral. I wandered how Kelly would interpret that as being callous, since was clearly taking things much harder. Then I felt a mild sense of shame that I was thinking about my outward appearance on such a day.

We stopped at a service station just east of Birmingham because mum needed the toilet. We were hoping to grab a quick breakfast but fate was not in favour of this; I had forgotten my cash card and had to borrow £10 from Steve and most of the food court was shut, opening in 15 minutes which was unacceptable because we were already behind schedule and the one shop in it that was open was highly over-priced and I didn't have enough to feed and quench 4 people. So I got a drink for Chug, mum, Elise and myself, Kelly got her own drink and some food and I think Steve got something, too. I didn't have to break the tenner Steve gave my since I managed to find enough loose change in my pockets to cover it, but I kept it nonetheless in the hope there would be an opportunity to get some food later on.

Unsure at first that we were in the right one we found the cemetery about an hour early, probably due to Steve's erratic, dangerous driving.

Steve got out and looked at the various tomb stones, Kelly and Chug squeezed into mum's car for warmth, while mum fed the baby, and I paced around a little bit and looked at a couple of tomb stones, staying a long distance away from the freshly dug hole not far from where mum had parked. (Steve had a good look at it at some point).

After a while the ladies got out of their car after mum asked me and Steve to fetch the reefs from his far. I began to suspect that I was being somewhat petty, as I wouldn't touch the reef sent by Tanya's father, taking the one mum had selected instead. We put 2 cards on it, one from mum and one with a short message from me, Elise and Chug. I don't really remember what they said. My message read something like "Tanya, I love you as much as any real sister and I always will".

I do love Tanya, as shamefully distant as we were. I deeply admired her until she gave up... And even then I felt the deepest of sympathy when I heard the circumstances of her death. And I felt these things every bit as much as I do for Elise or Charles or any other relative, even as short as our time together was. In a strange way it was a relief to know that I loved her.

I was worried about how I felt... I couldn't tell if my lack of feeling simply due to my Asperger's or if I really didn't feel anything. It only really hit me that she was gone the night before; Jeff said something about seeing Mark and Zoë (fumbling a little bit, trying to remember Zoë’s name) and I was about to open my mouth to correct him and say something like "you mean Mark, Zoë and Tanya" and then realising that Tanya was gone.

I don't know if the 5 stages of grief will never apply to death for me as they do for everybody else; I seem to miss staged, or take them in the wrong order and tend to get through them very quickly*, but I guess my grieving prices started there.

Much as I wanted to I was still unable to shed a tear.

Having finished my message I put them both in the card holders and the 6 of us (it may not have been 6, the baby may have been in the car with somebody attending to him) stood around, waiting for something to happen.

"Collo" was the next person to arrive in his van with a couple of other people we didn't really get a good look at, although we all seemed to notice that one of them was on crutches but didn't see the person's face.

He walked up to us and asked if we were alright. We all ignored him as well as we could; I couldn't even glimpse him with more than my peripheral vision without feeling a little nauseous. Maybe he thought we hadn't heard about the things that happened between Tanya but Zoe had told us all about the absolutely despicable things he had said and done and none of us wanted to know him.

The next thing I remember Elise was on the phone to Zoe... I don't remember who phoned who but I guess Elise phoned her, since I don't remember the phone ringing. Elise told her that Collo was there and that we all ignored him and that he was there with somebody who might have been his new girlfriend, but we couldn't tell because we didn't see the person from the front and only knew that they were in crutches.

Zoe told us to move out of the way because some bikers were on their way down.

I think Steve had already returned to his car by this point; he didn't know Tanya or any of her family and I guess he felt uncomfortable with the prospect of attending the funeral (which is understandable, especially given to his irreverent nature).

We all walked around to the other side of the chapel and stood around there and, sure enough, minutes later the bikers arrived. They parked their bikes on the other side of the building from us (the side we had just walked from) and they marched back towards us, looking stern and into the chapel. They walked out and seemed to be looking around.

Elise took it upon herself to see if she could be helpful, asking them if they were looking for somebody (which they were) and if this somebody had ginger hair (which he did). She pointed them in the right direction, saying that he was by his van with somebody in crutches.

We didn't see Collo again that day and the malicious thought crossed my mind (and, presumably, everybody else’s) that hopefully nobody would do so ever again.

More people started to turn up and eventually the funeral procession arrived.

We awkwardly tried to position ourselves as out-of-the-way as possible, which sadly meant we found ourselves bunched next to the doorway where we were available for all to see...

I know this is something which shouldn't have meant anything but I have attended enough funerals to know that there is a weird kind of pecking order when it comes to position and being seen much the same as weddings. The mourners who were the most closely related to the departed (spouses, parents, children, siblings, etc) will be at the head of the procession (after the casket), at the front of the service and at the head table of the wake, followed by 'lesser relatives', people of importance, close friends, and those who wished to pay their respects and be as inconspicuous as possible. It can all get very shallow from time to time, but I didn't want to be perceived as some stranger standing in the place of Tanya's closer relatives. Again I wandered if I was being shallow or petty.

Fortunately Mark and Zoe made a point of coming up to us and greeting us all exceptionally warmly and stood with us.

The preacher said that there was no way everybody there would fit in the small chapel.

Both mum and I said that we would remain outside if there was no room. I think she was able to procure a seat and I remained outside with the baby, deciding that (uncomfortable as it was to stand there carrying his chair) my own comfort should be second to that of Tanya (such as it was) and the strangers there whose closeness to Tanya was a mystery to me. The undertaker ushered me in, though, saying that I shouldn't be stood out there with a baby (I'd just like to point out that he was well wrapped and it was as cold inside as out, so standing in the shelter of the doorway he would have been fine but she seemed to find this idea unthinkable) and not only sat me near the front but on a bench in front of the other mourners, adjacent to Tanya, next to 4 or 5 people I had never seen before.

Sadly I found myself trying to feign the appearance of my genuine sadness so that anybody not aware of my condition who noticed me (i.e., everybody except mum, Chug and Elise) wouldn't think I was totally heartless. This time I didn't think of myself as shallow because I reasoned that if somebody did spot somebody who didn't look as if they were deeply upset would become distracted and [further] resentful of me. Some of the contortions in my face, at least, were caused by real pain from some of the things being said by the speakers.

The baby awoke during the service and began to make noises and I fed him his bottle (after all; he's usually of the opinion that being awake means its feeding time) and took it away again when he coughed slightly. He cooed and gurgled happily and quietly (for the most part) throughout the service and I caressed his cheek and his faint, wispy hair from time to time.

I noted that the reverend twice mentioned all of Tanya's brothers and sisters and other immediate family without mentioning Chuggles (I didn't mind that Mum, Elise and myself weren't mentioned), her half brother; as much a brother to her as her half siblings Gaynor, Daniel and Alex who were mentioned. But I understood; her mother was for some reason resentful of us; Tanya's extended family; probably because of our connection to Carl; Tanya's father. Or maybe the list given to him was given by one of Gaynor, Daniel and Alex themselves who would have been too young to remember any of us. Or maybe it was Mark and/or Zoe who didn't include our names in order to avoid trouble with Renarta.

The list was also mentioned by Daniel, who delivered the eulogy and seemed to gloss over the years she lived with us. But this was time spent with her father, so etching it out of history may possibly be a good thing. I know I don't want him mentioned in my eulogy if only because I was taught that if you can't say something nice you shouldn't say anything at all.

It was about this time that I felt that I should create a new blog and write about the day.

Then the coffin bearers took her remains outside... The people in the front row followed, along with the people standing in the doorway, and then people seemed to be unsure who was supposed to go next. The guy sitting next to me stood up and walked out of the room, and I was sitting right next to the door so I surmised that it was probably me causing the bottle neck. I cautiously got up, trying to look around to see if I was indeed supposed to go next but nobody seemed to be looking at me. I left anyway and the rest of the congregation seemed to follow me so I guess I was.

I shuffled around nervously, awaiting the rest of my family so that I could walk with them and got separated from my mother (as I tended to during funeral processions), but Elise caught up with me and took the baby's chair off me for a couple of minutes (much to the relief of my arms) and she walked with me.

It's not often I'm glad to see her much less walk with her but I was then.

The flowers and reefs had already been taken from the chapel and hurst and displayed near her final resting place for all to see before the service. Tanya's remains were lowered into the hole and people were invited to drop roses into her grave; mum ensured that Chuggles was among them, being a genuine half brother.

Then, as people started walking away something happened that I had never seen at a funeral before; people stopped to admire the flowers. This wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for the rather tacky feeling that came with this and I asked mum "What's happening? Are they 'comparing sizes'"? At which she sniggered but I pointed out that that it wasn't funny. It really did seem to me that people were checking to see who gave the biggest and nicest reefs and bouquets.

Gradually people began making their way to their cars and Chris (an old friend of Mark's whom we didn't recognise at first) started to give people directions. Mum told him we were from Wales (and so we didn't really know any local landmarks or street names) which prompted him to recognise us and he said just to follow his car (a white Ford Fiesta).

Kelly and Chug decided to ride in Mum's car leaving me to go in Steve's. Steve and I nearly lost the procession to the wake a few times, probably because the car we were following didn't realise we were following him, he seemed to be having some trouble keeping up himself, he was overtaken by other cars (not part of the procession) once or twice and so were we.

We were a little worried that perhaps he was not actually attending the wake but just going straight home, however we spotted mum standing next to her car in the car park of the community hall in which the wake was being held.

Everybody else went in and I assured Steve that I would find out how long we would be (he said he didn't mind how long) so that he would know if he had time to grab a bite to eat from the nearest corner shop. After using the rest room I found mum and asked and she told me she didn't intend to stay too long, but I gathered from the tone of her voice that Steve probably had time to get some food quickly and I told him so.

The Pears side of the family, as well as the younger mourners, were more jovial than the older attendants whom I supposed were the Collo's family and Renarta's in-laws, who sat at their tables looking more like those people more traditionally found at wakes.

One or 2 of the bikers joined in the merriment but most of them sat along the wall looking as solemn as the older guests.

After a few minutes of standing around feeling uncomfortable I sat at the same table as Kelly and Chug, which Elise and Mum had been at previously as evidenced by their coats and bags. They were not far off, chatting with Mark and Zoe.

Then they, along with Kelly, wandered off into the bar room for a few while leaving me and Chuggle with the baby again. (Not that I mind, I love that baby incredibly and I love Chug just as much). I had a few crisps (some kind of smokey chicken, I suspect) but I didn't like them to much (not that this stopped me from picking at them every now and then; I was famished) and I chatted with Chuggle about some mindless stuff.

I couldn't help but notice Chris from time to time, as he was laughing and joking loudly with some people I didn't recognise, exchanging stories which I don't think were really related to Tanya. It seemed somewhat disrespectful to me and made me a little uncomfortable, not that I could really make out what they were saying specifically, and I found myself regarding them with some mild disdain.

After a while Mum, Elise, Kelly, Zoe and Mark returned and I got to hug both Zoe and Mark, told them that I missed them (it just slipped out, unexpectedly. It was true enough but I hadn't actually planned on saying it. I hadn't really realised how much I missed them until I said it, to be honest) and we all got to chatting (I say 'we'; I chimed in every now and then but I'm not a brilliant conversationalist).

Having spent some short amount of time (in truth I have no idea how long we were in the building, it could have been half an hour it could have been over 1 hour) we went out to set off home. Mark and Zoe came out to see us off and the small talk continued. We talked about the baby, computer games, and work in that particular borough of London.

We had time to talk considerably because Steve still wasn't back from getting a snack. Mark assured us that the nearest corner shop was just at the end of the street so we weren't sure where he could be. Steve told us he often gets lost in big cities, so we imagined him in lost somewhere in the middle of town. Well somebody imagined that; my imagination tends to get the better of me and I imagined him getting arrested for making another illegal u-turn somewhere. This was a thought I probably should have kept to myself.

He eventually returned, having found some kebab house some way away where he got himself a burger. We pointed out the shop mark told us about as wel left; it was less than a minute away.

We went back to the cemetary for one last moment at Tanya's grave. First Elise went to see it and Kelly followed and I waited to accompany mum, who stayed with the baby. I went to see it with Kelly as Elise returned. It wasn't the personal moment the ladies hoped it would be; it was being filled in by some some ugly men who seemed like the couldn't care less about whom they were burying. As cold as they found it it was the thing that eventually made me cry, and I turned away so that Kelly woundn't see. (I have a problem crying infront of other people).

I thought about her half siblings in London and her 3 children. Tanya was a mother or big sister to everybody she was a friend with, even people of her own age. The world seriosly needs more people like her.

I opened mum's door so that she could go and pay her respects but Elise had described it to her and decided to stay.

We stopped for a KFC on the way home. It was some cheesy radio 2 show with Chris Moyles or Chris Evens or Christ Tarrant or some other terrible radio personality called Chris taking cheesy requests. Although it's kinda weird; in the dark on a long drive after a long day (particularly when everything you see is only lit up by the cheap orange glow of street lights) there's something kind of comforting about the tone of the radio, no matter how bad the programme is.

Kelly, now that Chuggle was in the other car, stretched out on the back seat a few times to sleep, according to sleep. I nodded off myself a few times but I don't think it was ever longer than a couple of minutes.

Dave was there when we got home. We watched some TV together and eventually we went online to play World of Warcraft. I would have gone to sleep but I was over-tired and didn't see the point of doing so until I came off my 'second wind'. (I would just be awake, thinking, all night). When I did head off to bed I remembered that I really wanted to record the things that had happened so I came back to my room and started a new blog. I was up until sometime after 5am writing until I couldn't keep my eyes open.

Although Tanya's body was buried on the 16th of February, she wasn't there. I believe in an afterlife but this is something differant... It wasn't her body she left behind. She died once in december and what was left behind was what remained. When that died 2 weeks ago it wasn't even the remains of Tanya, it was just some girl in a box.

*I don't know what happened with my nan, 6 years before; it was about 4 years later when I started crying uncontrollably in the middle of a night when I was having trouble sleeping.