Full Time Care

Picture from Threadless (they have a T-shirt based on the rhyme).

How many of you remember that old nursery rhyme? You know the one.

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly
I don’t know why she swallowed a fly - perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a spider,
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her;
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don’t know why she swallowed a fly - perhaps she’ll die!

And so on, through the bird, cat, dog, cow and horse.

Well, today I realised just how significant it is as a learning tool. Not only does it encourage kids to visualise (quite morbidly, I might add) and improve their memory, but it also teaches the utter pointlessness of escalation.

“Huh?” you say.

Allow me to explain with an example. My lady slept all day yesterday: she’s off the booze (aiming for five days, with today as the fourth) but was really tired for various reasons. She woke up at about 11pm.

Since she was sleepy, she drank a couple of strong coffees, intending to stay awake and do some revision for an upcoming interview. However, she was too sleepy and couldn’t concentrate. So she went back to bed and took some kind of pill to help her sleep. An hour and a half later, she still wasn’t asleep and felt awfully anxious (mixing caffeine and sleep-inducing pills will do that to you, hun). So she got up.

Since she was sleepy… yup, you know where this is going. I’d dropped off to sleep at about midnight (since I’d had 3.5 hours’ sleep the previous night - the cat’s sick again, with constipation this time), but she woke me up at 4:00 this morning to explain how utterly crappy she felt. She had so much caffeine and sleep-stuff in her that I wasn’t really surprised, but boy, was she in a foul mood.

So eventually - after I’d made her some… er… breakfast, I guess, and had my head ripped off for pointing out the silliness of the cycle of events - she went back to sleep. My being awake helps with that: she feels reassured to have me nearby with my eyes open. She slept a couple of hours, then got up again… and almost started the whole damned thing again. Thankfully, I caught her and pointed it out (without losing my head a second time).

So you see, knowing an old lady who swallows animals can teach us to avoid doing stupid, reactionary things that screw us up for hours on end.

I had an absolutely brilliant day on Tuesday - and another pretty good one yesterday. I don’t know what was in my coffee on the first of the two, but I spent the whole day running around and dealing with a bunch of stuff that was hanging over my head and stressing me out.

Three letters sent, two packages of stuff returned for refunds, a parcel sent to my second parents (i.e. my partner’s), entries on all my blogs (except this one) and we even found time to sit and watch several episodes of Friends in the evening. Damn, but it was a long day!

Even better was that my lady isn’t drinking. Yes, that’s right: five days, then an evening of alcohol, then another four days. She’s going to push for five or six days this time. She’s doing a ton of sport and has reduced her smoking, too - life’s looking pretty cool.

The only down-side is the debts, but they’ll get sorted soon. I hope.

Yes, it’s been a long time since I posted anything. I’ve been busy - even more so than normal! So what’s been happening?

Over the past couple of weeks, my lady’s had a bit of a lapse into drinking heavily again, but is now fighting her way out of it. She went without a drop for three days about a week ago, then had a night of imbibing. Since then, she’s stopped again - today was her fourth complete day with no alcohol! Great news.

I’ve been concentrating mostly on my other blogs for a while, trying to get them sorted out and active. I also picked up a paid blogging job for 20 days via GAF. It doesn’t pay much, but it’s a little extra and is my first real freelance job. The blog is over at NewsSup and I’m writing on whatever’s news in films, tech, gadgets, software or other geek stuff. The guy who runs the site is really nice.

Wordophilia is coming along wonderfully. My reputation on Orble grows daily, with most posts hitting the ‘most popular’ list and bringing in almost 200 visitors a day now (compared with about 20-30 a month ago), so I’m really pleased with that. The folks over there are really helpful and friendly, which has helped bring in a bit more traffic. Some of that is shuffling over to my second blog there, Peanut Butter.

I’ve also published a couple more articles on Associated Content today. I’m finally getting my arse back into gear and producing content instead of stressing and doing nothing. The odd thing is that I was on Constant Content for a moment, to make one of my articles cheaper and non-exclusive (so I could throw it on AC as well) - and as soon as I did, someone bought it! $30 (minus their cut), thank you very much! There should be some more AC or Helium content soon.

Finally, the bank has just screwed us out of over £500 this month. I put the money into my account to pay back a couple of outstanding short-term loans and they whipped it. Apparently, my agreement with their collections department ran out and they seem to think this gives them the right to take arrears on everything without warning. Obviously, I’m fighting them tooth and claw: we’ll see how that one comes out. If I lose, I shall probably change bank - they’re just becoming way too much hassle these days and, although the branch itself is great, the telephone people suck, totally. Outsourced, of course.

So now we’re trying to get to the end of the month without spending, so that I can pay the rent. Great fun. Not.