Full Time Care

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.

My head’s on a different planet this morning: yesterday went really well until the end of the evening, when it was slightly marred by my partner being blotto. This morning I’m still recovering from eating too much and a bad night’s sleep.

The day itself was cool: she was busy revising a bit for her upcoming interview and doing her Tae Bo workout. That’s my fault - I discovered Tae Bo a few years ago and really enjoyed it, so she gave it a try and loves it as well. Meanwhile, I was busy messing around on the computer and re-reading one of my favourite books. She managed to avoid drinking until fairly late in the day, making it (just about) to three days without a drop. After the day before’s nightmare of anxiety and stress from trying to resist, I was pretty darned proud that she’d survived and broken the two day circle.

The evening itself was iffy. She drew a little, producing something that should turn out really well, while I was trying to do a couple of blog entries over a very dodgy connection. We ordered in Chinese food from a local place that’s incredibly good quality and quantity for the price. Unortunately, by this time, she was drunk. So I had to sit there for about 90 minutes while she obsessed over a bunch of things before finally getting her to come and eat.

The food was wonderful, the film we tried to watch was brilliant (Mystery Men) even though she was having trouble focussing on anything much more than getting the food into her mouth without dropping it all over the place. She failed at that. Eventually, she decided she was too tired, as usual, and went to bed. Still, it was a pretty pleasant evening.

Unfortunately, again, I have a slight intolerance for monosodium glutamate, which tends to be somewhat overly present in Chinese takeaway food here in the UK. If I eat a full meal, there’s a very good chance I’ll wake up at four in the morning feeling like I’m going to die. I didn’t eat too much last night - I always order something simple like chicken and chips - but it still affected me, so I tossed and turned all night. Ho hum.

Today’s a slow day. I shall try to take care of some of the paperwork I’ve been avoiding and write some letters, but I have a feeling I’m going to be more of a couch potato than I should.

In my last post, I promised that I’d talk a bit about how things are finally starting to come together for us here. This blog’s only been around for a couple of months, so you can’t know the mess we’ve been in over the last few years. I suppose I should start with a bit of that. I’ll summarise for today, as it’ll take several posts to cover everything!

Where to begin? Well, we’ve been in a lot of financial trouble since returning to the UK. The cost of living here is significantly higher than I imagined and, well, my lady is not the most frugal of people. At least, she wasn’t: that’s changed over time - or has been forced to. A couple of years ago, I left my job at the RSPCA to earn more money, since we were spending far more than I was earning. This was partly due to the beginning of my partner’s alcohol problem.
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Good grief. I could quite easily just repost two of my previous entries today. My partner’s been in a bottle again, and it’s been one of those evenings: we had the drawing frenzy, the repetitive music and the overwhelming desire to scream “SHUT UP!” as she babbled on and on.

So I’m going to talk about good things instead! Today’s been a brilliant day for good news. First off, I spoke to a guy at the DWP’s call centre and kicked off my incapacity benefits claim again: I tend to have a really good time on the phone with them because - apart from the fact that I try to be nice to anyone with a crappy job - it helps that I used to work in the same branch of the government. They don’t have to go slowly through everything, but can skip and jump along, knowing that I understand and will stop them if I need clarification. It’s nice to think that at least one call in their very long day will make them smile.
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About ten days ago (4th January, to be precise!), I joined LinkReferral.com - it was just another one of those sites where I thought I might as well be listed, like BlogCatalog, Technorati and all the rest. Since then, I’ve had quite a lot of extra visitors.

Now, I’m not naïve enough to think that the majority of these visitors stay around long enough to do anything more than read the first few lines, then move on. The LinkReferral system only requires a click, not a timed visit.

However, I’ve been really surprised by the nice reviews I’ve been getting and by the number of people who actually did stop in for quite a while.

This blog is a way for me to exist outside of the full-time job of looking after someone else. I have neither friends nor family locally and so am fairly insular: writing stuff on here allows me to express myself.

So this is for you, the visitors. Just to say “thank you” for stopping by and reading. It really does make a difference.

I’m having a good day today, so far. We were up ’til the early hours last night, what with my partner’s drawing, a belated birthday celebration and some other stuff. She produced another really good sketch with a bit of help from me resizing bits of it on our printer/photocopier and tracing outlines so that all the reproduced crud wasn’t visible - and she was really pleased with it, which is a bonus.

At about midnight, she called me for food and a film. My birthday was Monday, but we celebrated it last night: she’d bought me the DVD of The Dark Knight, which was really nice, but she was disappointed. Apparently, she’d spent ages trying to get one of my favourite films, Shall We Dansu?, but the guys in the store had been horrible to her. I shall be dropping in on them soon to have a few words with the manager and see what can be done about that - no one, but no one mistreats my lady and gets away with it! Continue Reading »

I realised something this morning that made me laugh and I wanted to share it. I don’t know how many of you remember the rather excellent Columbo TV series, starring the always-wonderful Peter Falk, but for those who do: what was the thing he always used to do? That’s right - just as he was leaving after talking to a suspect, he’d stop and say “Oh, just one more thing…” and ask them the really important question that showed he’d figured out their supposedly clever plan. It was a really cool series that I loved watching, and he was equally brilliant in The Princess Bride: so much charisma and presence!

My partner, I realised, has this habit. Whenever she goes to bed, we’ll chat a bit and so on. I always sleep later and - since I have a back problem - I sleep on the floor, so I tend to wish her goodnight and go off to write a blog entry or something. Almost every time, she waits until I’m almost gone, then asks me to remember to do something. Buy tomatoes. Write a certain letter. Feed the cat. It can be anything at all, but there’s always “just one more thing”!

Perhaps I should buy her a shoddy old trenchcoat or a cigar for her birthday? I don’t know, but it’s a funny feeling to know that I’m living with Columbo. This obviously does not bode well if I should decide to become a career criminal or try to do something surreptitious like stealing the cat’s food bowl or murdering a neighbour. She’ll figure it out in short order.

At least she doesn’t look like him…

(And this is December 29th’s post… connection’s working now, though, so I should be back on schedule!)

 Yet another up-and-down day in the apparently never-ending cycle. My partner was up at 4:00 this morning, since she slept all day yesterday, but she waited until about 6:00 to wake me. She’d decided that she wanted to go into town to pick up a birthday present for me, so we prepared and confronted her anxiety at going out. This is never an easy thing to do: she’s socially phobic (i.e. scared of dealing with people) and only goes out very occasionally so has tendencies towards agoraphobia as well. Add to this the fact that she’s somewhat overweight at the moment and thus very self-conscious, and you have a pretty good idea of the amount of encouragement she needs to get out the front door and onto a bus.

We made it into town with the plan of going to one shoe shop (for her to spend her Christmas money from my mum) and wherever she needed to be for my present. I’d also planned on doing a bit of food shopping since we would be near the big supermarkets. Now, I dislike going to town with my lady: not because of spending time with her but because it generally deteriorates into a desperate bid to empty our bank accounts of every last penny. Yes, she loves to shop, which is not good when you’re as deeply in debt as we are.

Anyway, she found a pair of boots she liked (and which are very cool indeed) and we did all the other stuff, too. This was a major success for her. Rather than opening a bottle of wine, drinking and complaining all day, she’d managed to go out and do stuff.

Unfortunately, the evening was pretty much like a couple of days ago. Too much alcohol followed by anger, depression and all that lovely redirection of bad feeling onto the nearest person. In other words, me. I’m starting once again to get really sick of this cycle of self-destruction that she goes through. Not only does it upset and hurt me, but it destroys our life - both emotionally and financially. I’m really quite seriously afraid that this is going to end in one of those Alcoholics Anonymous stories everyone recounts, where the person loses their job, their home, ends up on the streets and all that other bad stuff - only in this case, she’s doing it to us both.

One of the most difficult aspects of being a full-time carer - especially one who is, himself, incapacitated for the moment - is that of budgeting. I’ve just recently lost my job due to chronic back pain problems, so my partner and I will be reduced to living on benefits for the moment. And I have to deal with it all since she’s not that good with figures and I’m the computer geek with all the online accounts!

Here in the UK, the benefits system is pretty darned complicated. They’re trying to simplify it, but since everyone is different it’s a huge job. Thankfully, I’ve learnt my way around its twists and turns enough that I can now claim the things to which we are entitled.

Until I actually lose my job in January, I’m allowed Statutory Sick Pay. Since I’m considered sick (in the physical sense!), I am eligible for Incapacity Benefit. On top of that, I’m a carer so can get Income Support and Carer’s Allowance. Add to that my partner’s Disability Living Allowance and mix for ten minutes. Simmer on a low heat until ready, then serve into a bank account.

Still, with the alcohol problem and the fact that we’re smokers, there’s never really enough money around. We have debts coming out of our ears. Our ears and pretty much every other orifice you could think of, come to mention it.

That’s why the arrival of a couple of letters this weekend was, for once, good news. No banks hassling us for once - just notes from both sets of parents with a bit of Christmas money. Ah, reassurance. I was able to go out yesterday and recover my engagement ring from the pawn shop where it had been for a few months. Now that’s a Christmas present!

It looks like we’ll be able to make it through and even have a little left over for my lady to go and buy yet another pair of shoes. Just one, mind you.

Well, maybe two.

This morning is turning out the way I like my Saturdays: slow. Originally, it was to be a significantly busier day, with a trip into town to do a bit of shopping - my partner wants SHOES! What is it with women and shoes? I mean, I can understand the desire to have a few extra pairs, but this many is just insane. It’s not like she’s a millipede or something. Whatever.

Anyway, she decided to do a bit of a workout this morning, since she’s been eating a bit more now she’s stopped drinking again. Unfortunately, she managed to pull a little too hard on a neck muscle (bad position = pain) and that’s given her a migraine. Dark room, no sound, eyes closed, take a nap.

We’ll see if we go out a bit later, but for the moment I can hang out and do stuff online, which is nice.