Oh Rudy, sorry to hear it's been so gruelling, but am very glad to hear that ds is doing ok. Thinking of (all of) you a lot. Keep on with the cake therapy!
Congratulations on becoming a manager again, CV!
I love grass snakes, and pine martens, and weasels - and please, Lalsy, let me come round and rescue your spiders! Don't hoover them up - nooooooo. We have a strict glass-and-postcard policy here for repatriating any of our 8-legged friends to the garden. Stroppdog doesn't approve of this sort of behaviour, so the only creatures that actually get rescued are the ones he doesn't get to first. I once had one of those massive house spiders wake me up by trampling over my face in the night. I knew it was living behind a chest of drawers in the bedroom and evicted it several times and took it to the bottom of the garden, but it was always back within a couple of days, so I gave up and just left it. I occasionally meet it on the landing carpet in the middle of the night when I am on the way to the loo. I know it's the same one because it only has 7 legs.
I am feeling meh about work and other stuff. I have not done what I was supposed to have done at this point. I am all worn out by dd. I wish she would just go off to university and face up to the fact that if she wants to get on in life, she is going to have to apply herself, regardless of her anxiety. I am vvv afraid that she will give up after 2 weeks. I actually don't think I can have her back her under the same conditions as now. AIBU to feel that if I can live my life dealing responsibly with MH conditions, she can too? It appears that no matter what support I provide, I just get abuse and aggression in return and she still doesn't appear to be able to move on with her life. Am beginning to wonder whether actually my parents attitude of telling me to fuck off, stiffen my upper lip, and just get with the bloody programme was in fact the right one after all (after approx 40 years of thinking they were cruel, unfeeling, emotionally constipated old meanies).
Rose, I love the purple dress. I am usually unbothered about being a short-arse, but when I see a dress like that, I do get how lovely it would be to be tall and be able to wear something like that. I am going through one of those not-infrequent phases where clothes buying appears impossible because my proportions are not those of a normal human female. Nothing I try on seems to fit. Everything seems to be too big in one place while being too small in another place. Does anyone else ever have this problem?