2017

Essentially the year from hell.

Except of course there are positives, as in everything.
Little ones I will never regret you.

wtf life

Seriously give me a break. It's been non-stop for weeks now and my to-do list is only getting longer. With all these emergencies popping up how am i meant to get anything done?

And then floods?

Everything.

Just crazy.

Too much to figure out at once.

Nothing is simple.

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So, before this all went down I was managing to do all the children's stuff. Everyone had their own activities and everything was organised and busy but calm and flowed nicely.  I was calm, I was even happy. Feeling like I'd made progress with myself and my organising skills (at least in regards to the children's learning).

But now, wow, everything is so chaotic. Something going on everyday. So much stuff I'm trying to organise. I'm feeling really stressed again. But like always when doing things for my brother, it doesn't matter how much work I put in, how much time, how much I advocate for him; in the end the brunt of the work and decisions need to be made by him, for him.  And that is stressful for me. I used to think it was just teenage laziness holding him back, now it might be much more. Now he's apparently in recovery but... There are so many symptoms still present it's hard to believe he's expected to function as normal when he currently isn't.

It's difficult. I can talk to him now and he can seem completely fine until... he starts talking about something completely random and nonsensical. And it's probably just leftover symptoms that will fade but what if it's not? What if he's always been like this? What if this is how he is now? When I remember back I can think of times he talked similarly but I thought it was just pretend, make believe, imagination. What if it wasn't? What if he always thought it was real?

When it rains...

It pours.

So what to say? How much to say?
My brother has had a mental health episode. It seemed very sudden and shocking. Not a huge amount of information available right now. He has been admitted to a short term facility and they currently believe it is an acute episode and they hope for a full recovery within a reasonable time period. The cause is currently unknown, tests are ongoing. It has only just happened a few days ago so the recovery depends on the cause and could be anywhere from a week to several months.
I'm not sure what I feel right now, worried, guilty, anxious, confused. There's so much unknown right now.
He came to my house on Saturday evening and he was very disturbed and confusing, I thought he just needed sleep. I sent him off to Dads house, Dad kept him there for most of the next day before deciding he wasn't improving and calling the police and ambulance etc. He spent one night cuffed and sedated in the local hospitals emergency department before being transferred to a different hospital that has a specialised mental health unit. He is now on some sort of medication while confined to the ward while they wait for him to calm.
There were/are also personal things happening outside of this situation that still involve him but don't relate to the episode. They are still very serious in nature and now I have to deal with them while he is unable to.

-Raur

Everything is fine!

title from an internet video by Loading Ready Run.

I'm not really sure what to write. Also it's hard to write properly on a phone,  even one with a qwerty keypad.

uh so. .. life is a thing.

Rent is annoying. I would really like to use that money elsewhere. But it's worth it to have our own house/space.

Except housework is also annoying. Like seriously I just washed those and now they're dirty again, sigh.

Children, they certainly contribute to the aforementioned mess. Did you know it's quite annoying to be constantly cleaning rice off the floor? Especially when the dining table is on carpet. Letting it dry and then vacuuming it is easiest but seriously kid stop shoving handfuls of rice into your mouth while watching t.v. Also stop eating on the couch! Just because I'm in the kitchen doesn't mean my rules don't apply! (btw the child in question is 2 so... mess is expected)

It's also quite difficult to work with one child individually because it doesn't matter what you've given the other one to do they still need to be right with you watching/interfering with what you're doing with his brother. My best chance to work with the 4 year old is when the 2 year old is napping but that doesn't always happen and sometimes I get stuck with Lobster(2) in bed because he cries if I try to leave (even if he's already asleep). It's even harder getting time with Lobster because if I give Turtle(4) something to occupy him then Lobster doesn't care what I'm trying to do with him he just wants to do what his brother's doing. It's not usually a huge issue, in general working with them both is fine. It's just occasionally I'd like to focus on something in particular that the other one doesn't need or can't do yet.

I believe it's fairly normal for parents to fear they aren't doing enough for/with their children and are failing their children in some way. It's certainly something I struggle with quite often. Turns out though that having your partner tell you they don't believe you can handle raising the children is something different entirely and can quite break your spirit.

Also turns out that getting told that right after hearing from the uni that they've looked at your results and are kicking you out of your course and you're not allowed to re-enrol for the  semester or year and when you do re-enrol it will be under special conditions (there is obviously a massive story behind all that which i won't be going into right now). Turns out it can really f**k you around getting told that literally no-one thinks you can adult successfully.

so yeah

Everything is fine.. sort of.

Nothing

Nothing I do is good enough
Nothing I do gets seen
Nothing I say gets heard
Nothing I am gets noticed

Harvest

I haven't been blogging lately, no real reason.
I started a nice garden this year but then ran out of time to tend to it, it lasted pretty good by itself though.  I got a pretty good harvest of cucumbers and the beans would have been a good harvest if we had liked the beans, unfortunately they weren't the green beans I was expecting. We also got a decent harvest of radishes, although then we didn't know what to do with them...

I also planted carrots, which have just become ready. The potatoes I planted last year sprouted this year, but I think they started too late in the season because the plants have died down but the potatoes are still mostly quite small. A random chilli plant has been going real well, although they haven't been used yet, I think Tiger is too afraid to put them in the food because then the kids and I might not eat it (he's the only one that likes hot things).

I tend to forget to take pictures but I did remember to take this one:

Up and down

Today's been a crappy day

Seems like I can never be happy for long. Something always upsets me and bring me crashing down.

Ingress

Join the Resistance

Lacking in details/ seeming confused about what to write

The reason I faff around a lot making vague references and not saying much about my personal life is because I can't decide how much of my personal details I want to be out on the Internet.

I am also very bad at putting all the words floating around in my head down in writing.  It always sounds much better in my head...

I'm trying to edit out any identifying information as I go which prevents me getting into the flow of writing.  I'm not using any pictures that have faces of me or the kids.  I'm not using our real names (I think my about me has the name details). I don't mention any locations... etcetera etcetera
Then I wonder if I'm being silly because what exactly is there to hide?  I don't know but the Internet has a long memory so I'll keep my anonymity for now.

I also once had people I knew/know in real life following my blog so I was/am conscious of an audience that knows more about me than what I write.