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.

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.

This has been bugging me for a couple of days now and, combined with my connection going toes-up again, has restrained me from blogging here. It’s a combination of an email and living as a FTC, as I do. So what’s the problem? I feel like a second-class citizen.

The feeling’s been there for a while and has regularly been simmering, without a proper name, just below boiling point. A couple of days ago, it boiled: firstly, I had an email from the people at Today following their regular, 3-day review of content. They go through regularly to look at “quality, productivity, popularity, and potential” and basically decided that this blog isn’t good enough on one or more of those fronts to warrant the dollar-a-day payment.

This is, in many ways, understandable. Although I would like to believe that the first two criteria are not a problem, personal blogs rarely get a large number of followers and, of course, are unlikely to bring in vast quantities of advertising revenue. That’s the main reason that the advice to people wanting to make a living through blogging is to pick a commercial subject rather than a personal one.

In my case, however, this rebuttal attached itself to a moment of introspection, when I was looking at why I often feel so stressed and annoyed. On further reflection, it occurred to me that I feel unappreciated. No, not that - I feel as though I don’t exist in the same way as my partner does. Let me explain.

If she wants something, she only has to ask. If she’s doing something, I don’t interrupt. If she’s tired or sick, I take care of her. When she talks, I listen, often for hours. I cook, I clean, I shop and so on. Now, the other side of things: if I want something, I get it myself. If I’m doing something and she calls, I drop it for whatever she wants. If I’m tired or sick, I take care of her. When I talk, she listens for thirty seconds, then starts talking again. She doesn’t cook (except occasional masterpieces in the form of chocolate cake or omelettes!), she doesn’t clean unless the house is a tip, she doesn’t shop or whatever.

Heck, I once left an empty sachet of cat food exactly where she’d left it in the kitchen, to see if she would throw it away. Three weeks, it sat there. In the end, I chucked it in the bin, before it grew legs and tried to take up permanent residence!

Now, I don’t mind looking after her. I’m a carer, that’s what I do. But I need things as well. I need to do stuff for myself, to have her do things for me, to share and exchange. I don’t want to be her parents and watch her live like a teenager, always counting on me to do whatever it is that she doesn’t want to handle. The list of jobs I have to deal with at the moment is well over twenty items - and it rarely gets any smaller. I guess I have to stop sacrificing quite so much and slowly teach her (not literally) that she’s an adult and can do a lot of these things for herself. That she needs to stop treating me like a combination of whipping boy, housekeeper and personal assistant. That she has to let me be more than a second-class citizen.

If she doesn’t, and this carries on much longer, I won’t know whether I even exist.

I had a really nice note from someone who reads one of my blogs this morning. Apart from being very complimentary, he asked if I read any other blogs and what sites I frequent: he’d read a few of my various posts and thought it sounded like I spend a lot of time online, wandering around.

He’s right, of course: I do spend a great deal of time connected to the Internet. I’m a geek at heart and my virtual life has almost as much importance as my bricks-and-mortar one. So I thought I’d go through a short list of places I hang out.

As far as blogs go, I maintain three, as you may know. Firstly, there’s Wordophilia, where I talk about writing online. Secondly, there’s this one. Finally, and most recently, I started Daft As A Brush, reviewing films, books or whatever else I happen to be doing to amuse myself. I try to post on them all once a day.

There are only a couple of other blogs I visit regularly because my connection isn’t very good, so I can’t visit loads. I’m a subscriber at Bloggercises, because Chris is an excellent tutor in a lot of the basic essentials of blogging. He’s been doing it for a while and consistently comes up with useful comments, exercises and thoughts on the scene. He’s also a very amusing and friendly guy. I also subscribe to Back To The Eighties, because that’s the period I remember the most from growing up and I just love to drop in and read about things I may have forgotten.

My final subscription is at Sex, Lies and Dating In The City. I came across this one as part of my daily LinkReferral visits to keep Full Time Care reasoably high in their blog directory for a few extra hits. What can I say? I immediately added it to my favourites. SINgleGIRL, the owner and author, writes in an incredibly engaging, honest style. She’s funny, blunt, profound and silly by turns. The stories, advice and ongoing dating battles are intriguing. She always replies to messages and comments, stays true to herself and openly talks about a very interesting subject. I love it. Simply can’t get enough.

Other than those three, I spend a fair amount of time at MyLot. That’s a PTP site (paid to participate), much like a discussion forum where responses earn a cent or two as well as being useful. Some days it’s really interesting, others it’s a bit bland. It’s not the best-designed site in the world - the list of interests and categorisations of conversations is horrible, for example - but there’s some really nice, helpful people there.

I also answer a lot of email. I get about thirty or forty a day from various places, which is significantly less than the hundreds I used to have to deal with (thank goodness for spam filters). A lot of those are project updates from GetAFreelancer, where I keep an eye open for odd jobs to bid on. I drop in at Helium, Associated Content, Constant Content and HubPages when my connection permits.

Finally, I go through the LinkReferral blogs, thirty per day as I mentioned: it takes time, but I take that seriously. Some sites I stay on for a minute or two, others I’ll read a whole ton of posts: it depends how good they are. I’ll also skip through the list each day, not just hit the thirty at the top. I like seeing some of the ones lower down. Hidden gems.

And that’s about it online. I’m a creature of habit, but I’ll wander off elsewhere if one of my regular visiting spots has a link, and sometimes I’ll keep link-hopping. Most days I have too much real life stuff to do, so end up doing the shopping, cooking, looking after my partner, watching a film or reading a book. It’s not a bad life.

My lady and I had an interesting chat this morning over our coffee, despite being half-asleep. With an interview coming up soon for some voluntary work, she was trying to figure out her ’schedule’ of drinking, so that she could organise the right day for the meeting and break the two-day cycle of alcohol at the same time.

It was while we were talking about this that she suddenly thanked me for being open to discuss the problem so easily. I’d never really thought about it like that, but apparently she finds it a huge help in her recovery: she can talk about when she wants to drink, how often and her plans for the days to come without fear of reprisal or of me getting upset and annoyed.

I suppose it’s partly down to my personality type: I’m not one to hold grudges or to dislike someone because they hurt me once or twice. I’ll assume, until proven otherwise, that they’re just having a bad day or that there’s some other kind of influence that’s affected them. This ability to debate the relative merits of drinking on certain days without getting all emotional has turned out to be a real feather in my cap, as it were.

So much for people considering the Capricorn traits of being cold and aloof as a negative, eh?

Yesterday was, of course, Valentine’s day. We don’t celebrate it as such in our house: not that it’s a celebration event anyway. Partly, this is because the fundamental idea behind the day has been horribly corrupted over the last decade or two: whereas it used to be a romantic opportunity to express one’s love for another person, it’s now become yet another commercialised bunch of utter tripe. In all honesty, it depresses me to see cards with “Happy Valentine’s Day” printed in them.

Whatever happened to the secret admirer, the blank card to be completed for a special person, the love poem? Marketing, that’s what. Now it’s all obligation and thoughtless purchases of standard text. Everyone seems to think that this one day in the year somehow determines how much we love our partner - nonsense. I have a friend who used to work in a supermarket before becoming an Oracle consultant and she recounts the experience there as defining the modern version of Valentine’s - an endless stream of young men coming in and buying a bunch of flowers, a box of chocolates and a pack of condoms. Brain in neutral, testosterone in top gear.

Here, we celebrate 15th February instead. That’s the anniversary of the day we first met, sixteen years ago today! It’s also the anniversary of the day I proposed to my lady. We won’t be doing anything dramatic this year, due to a rather severe lack of funds, but we’ll definitely order in some nice food, open a bottle of wine and watch something smoochy. Now that’s what Valentine’s day should be like.

Anyone else remember that episode of ST:TOS (that’s Star Trek: The Original Series for the less geeky among you) where Spock mind-melds with a rock monster, the Horta? He puts his hands on it and starts shouting “Paiiiiiiiiiin”. Well, that’s how I feel today!

We have our landlord visit tomorrow. Every six months, the agency sends someone round just to check that we’re not knocking holes in the walls, making virgin sacrifices in the shoe cupboard and generally keeping the place in order. So for the last four days, I’ve been doing housework - and it’s killing my back. All that scrubbing, mopping, dusting, hoovering (or vacuuming for the Americans) and washing is not recommended activity when your back is fragile.

Still, it’s all done now and everything is spick and span. Well, almost: I still have the loo to clean and the tiny front garden to tidy. Unfortunately, the wind blows crap into our garden all the time and, because it’s so small and right up against the path, adolescent (or drunk) passers-by tend to dump tings over the fence into a corner.

I also had a call from the local Job Centre today about our benefits. Apparently, I get to choose which ones I want, since I’m sick and a carer. I’ll go through that some other time, as it might help people in a similar situation. Suffice it to say that the lady who called was lovely, of course, since we used to work together. Actually, that’s unfair - I know she’s lovely to everyone she calls it was nice to speak to her again, though!

Enough for the moment. I have to go and move a huge pile of washing into the bathroom.

Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide…

Oh, alright, I’ll stop singing Queen songs! I shall, however, explain my sudden outburst of Freddie Mercury-ness: I had a comment from a visitor the other day, asking if “this neurotic woman” I write about is actually real. Apparently my blog sometimes sounds more like a novel than real life.

Well, yes. She’s most definitely real. Sometimes reality is, as they say, stranger than fiction. In all honesty, I would never have imagined - some sixteen years ago, when I met her - that she would turn out to be such a psychological mess. I never thought I’d end up caring for someone on a daily basis, working harder at it than at a ‘normal’ job. I could never have envisaged the depth and breadth of suffering and anguish she goes through every day, and all the struggling I’ve had to do to keep up, to keep the house going, to pay the rent, to keep food on the table and everything else.

I’ve sacrificed almost everything in life for her over the last few years. Tens of thousands of pounds, putting myself into more debt than I’ve ever had before (and that’s saying something, since I’ve been badly in debt in the past), two jobs, virtually all social contact with family and friends, a car, an apartment and even decent food when things were really bad and she couldn’t stop drinking. Surviving on instant noodles and baked beans - with a smile - while she eats normally, is an art form I would prefer not to have mastered.

In return, she has - despite my almost constant online whining - made me a very happy man. She’s my soul-mate. Every day, she makes me laugh. She’s the smartest woman I’ve ever met. She’s la femme de ma vie (’the love of my life’ would be the closest translation for that). Yes, it’s tough sometimes. Yes, it’s almost bloody downright impossible at other times. But it’s worth it. And finally - finally! - things are starting to work out for the better. I’ll talk more about that another time.

In other news: my connection sucks. It took me 35 minutes to load this page. I’ll try to keep entries going, but as you can see from the calendar over on the right, I’ve missed quite a few days because of this problem. I’m working on it. Honest.

Today.com also just redid all their templates, so the main page has changed. Not my fault. I’ll figure that out when I have a slightly better connection, or at least a more stable one. Bear with me until I figure out all the options, please. Thanks.

I woke up this morning feeling awful: I think I’ve caught a cold or something. The weather here’s taken a turn for the worse over the last couple of days and, with my normal sleeping patterns disrupted by being woken at ungoldy hours to make my partner something to eat, I’m suffering. I guess my immune system’s just a bit out of whack. I was supposed to go into town and grab some shopping, but I’m really glad I didn’t - it actually snowed this afternoon!

Both my lady and I have been slobbing around today - she as a result of yesterday’s drinking, me due to the snot situation. Normally, I’d have enjoyed the day, but there’s a bit of an imbalance in the way things work out. If she’s sick, she stays in bed and I take care of her and everything else. If I’m sick… she stays in bed and I take care of her and everything else. Ho hum.

Apologies for the somewhat choppy entry: my brain’s not functioning very well. I hope it’s better tomorrow.

One of the hardest things to deal with as a full time carer living with someone bordering on alcoholism isn’t the evening of inebriation. Of course, that’s pretty difficult, as some of my posts indicate! Still, the really tough part is the aftermath. The next day.

My partner usually spends the day after a drinking session recovering: in her case, this means sleeping most of the day. She’s someone who needs a lot of sleep anyway (her average of nine or ten hours is significantly larger than mine, down near four or six), but after a session she’ll just stay in bed and effectively lose an entire 24-hour period.
Continue Reading »