helen-louise's journal

My life has been non-stop the past week.

I had to appeal my PIP, complete a PhD project plan for university and get it checked by my supervisor, and fit about two months' worth of socialising into a single weekend. On Friday and Saturday, Grant and I went up to Leeds to see PokeCharms people, play video games, and go to the Royal Armouries. It rained. A lot. We got upgraded from standard to first class on the train to Leeds because of a lack of wheelchair space (OVER AN HOUR's phone calls between me and LNER, who have been sucking particularly hard when it comes to actually following through with assisted travel bookings lately), and I really do need to make sure we always go in first class because it's the only way that Grant has enough room. He isn't just fat, he is WIDE - his actual skeleton is wide, and while he could reduce his tummy size, I don't think that trying to lose weight off his shoulders is at all practical.

On Sunday we saw Tim and Peter like usual, except "usual" hasn't been very frequent lately due to various people's illness and/or busyness. I feel very short of money after two visits to Pizza Express in two days, one of them WITHOUT COUPONS (the horror!).

Yesterday was a day and a half. Trains were non-existent for a couple of hours due to emergency services attending "an incident" between Clapham Junction and Surbiton, which basically stops the entire SWT network from happening. So we got considerably delayed. I realised I was out of the one medication I can't miss a dose of or my head will explode (venlafaxine) and had to call the pharmacy several times, each time getting their rather new and completely useless counter girl who wouldn't/couldn't put me through to a pharmacist because they were busy. Once trains existed again, waiting for a ramp at London Waterloo I managed to drop my phone and by some quirk of physics it bounced off the train floor and into the gap under the train. I did eventually get it back but that delayed us further.

We met stellarwind.livejournal.com in Russell Square and got to the museum to find it was closing early and we had 20 minutes to look at things. It's actually a tiny museum and you can get a good idea of "pickled things in jars" and "bones" in 20 minutes, but we'd expected to have at least 2 hours to look at everything properly. The early closing gave me more time to call the pharmacy. Two more times.

We had dinner at the very lovely little Vietnamese place Pho Hot (great for vegans and omnivores alike - I recommend their vegan pho or garlic tofu on rice, Richard recommends their garlic pork) and dessert at Cookies and Scream. This all went very well. After dinner we arrived at The Garage 15 minutes before doors opened for the annual Ginger Wildheart Birthday Bash only to be told there was a last-minute delay, so we had to wait in the cold for 45 minutes. We did, however, acquire a reasonable place to sit, which is good when you have a wheelchair user plus two people with sensory issues who might get dizzy and/or overwhelmed at any moment. The gig was great. However, I'm not exactly certain about buses in Highbury and Islington because when I'm with Richard we just walk to Caledonian Road (the nearest accessible Tube station), so we managed to miss our stop quite badly. This meant we then missed the direct train home and had to take a train plus bus combo with more waiting in the cold.

It was good to spend time with my Israeli friend who I've known for 15 years and talk to every day, but had never met in person before Friday - but OMG so much stress. I don't even understand how that could all happen in the same day.

Tonight, Richard and I are going to see Cheap Trick and Def Leppard while Grant sits at home playing Elder Scrolls Online (he didn't want to pay £55 for a ticket, which is entirely reasonable - at least Richard and I both get in for that price because he's my free carer). And then tomorrow I get to go and have some blood tests and SLEEP. Oh, and write Christmas cards.

I have been completely useless about asking whether anyone wants a Christmas card this year due to aforementioned busyness, so I am going to go with my usual list. If you have a new address or suddenly don't want a card, please tell me in the screened comment section below (comments which don't have private address information will be unscreened). Also if you aren't on my usual list but want to be added, let me know and I'll see what we can do.

I haven't managed to send Christmas cards to friends for the past two years, due to exhaustion. So I have a pretty big collection of them waiting to be sent now. Who wants one?

There are two options for cards: an amazing winter London scene supporting the Princess Alice Hospice (total: 7 cards) and a cute fuzzy brown bear in a jumper supporting the British Heart Foundation (total: 20 cards). My plan is to send the London cards to people outside the UK and the bear cards to people inside the UK, but this may be thwarted by the mismatch in the number of people I know in each location. I meant to add an option to the poll for people to say which card they would prefer if they have a strong preference, but I forgot - feel free to mention this in comments if you want to.

I do not send e-cards because my purpose for sending out cards is to prove that my imaginary internet friends are real, and e-cards don't prove anything.

[Poll #2059472]

All comments are screened so you can leave your address below. Please do it a.s.a.p. so the cards have some chance of getting to you :)

Please be aware that in asking to receive a card from me, you are NOT obliged to send one back. If anyone is able to understand low energy/disorganisation/a total lack of spoons, then I can. I send cards because I like to do it, not because you must reciprocate! Although if you do want to send me something, here's my address.

My generic holiday cards with an awesome BEAR on arrived on Saturday, meaning that it's well and truly Time To Get Organised.

If you believe the Royal Mail, it's already too late to send cards almost anywhere to actually arrive in time for Christmas, but the earliest I've ever managed to ask for addresses was 8th December. While my cards usually arrive by January 3rd even if they're going halfway round the world :)

The options are a generic holiday card with a photograph of a live yearling BEAR, or nothing. This is because my purpose for sending out cards is to prove that my imaginary internet friends are real, and e-cards just don't do that for me.

[Poll #1992192]

All comments are screened so you can leave your address below. Please do it a.s.a.p. so the cards have some chance of getting to you :)

Also, feel free to receive a card from me without feeling obliged to send one back. I send cards because I like to do it, not because you must! Although if you do want to send me something, here's my address.

Who wants a Christmas card?

Here's my annual poll about such things. The options are a paper card (with either BEARS or a picture of London on), or nothing. This is because I never, ever get round to sending e-cards. My main purpose in sending Christmas cards is to send and receive proof that my Invisible Internet Friends are real - which I don't get from an e-card.

[Poll #1947953]
All comments are screened so you can leave your address below. Please do it a.s.a.p. so the cards have some chance of getting to you :)

Also, feel free to receive a card from me without feeling obliged to send one back. I send cards because I like to do it, not because you must! Although if you do want to send me something, here's my address.

Apparently, last year, when I was really ill with chronic fatigue and didn't know it, I managed to send the grand total of 10 Christmas cards. That's quite appallingly awful.

This year I have 22 cards to send. Update @05:39: I have 2 cards left, speak now if you want them. It's already past the last posting date in the UK (and several weeks past the last posting dates for anywhere else in the world), but if you don't mind getting a card in mid-January, please fill in the VERY FAMILIAR poll below:

[Poll #1804331]
* This year's cards say "Happy Holidays" because they were bought from an American charity. They have BEARS on them. Two live Ursus americanus.

All comments are screened so you can leave your address below. Please do it a.s.a.p. so the cards have some chance of getting to you :)

Also, feel free to receive a card from me without feeling obliged to send one back. I send cards because I like to do it, not because you must!

Blah. I have various people that I'm supposed to be emailing or otherwise contacting, and I don't have enough energy. I'm sitting on irc watching conversations happen because I don't feel up to saying anything.

One of the things I need to say is this:
If you are a person who would normally buy me a Christmas present, don't bother this year.

Normally I love buying presents for people, and matching the present to the person; but I'm so short of energy that it'll eat spoons I don't have available. Also, I'm really short of money at the moment, and I want to spend what little I have on a holiday because I desperately need a break.

I know it's sorta rude to put this in livejournal instead of in personal email, but I'm just Too Tired right now. And I think it's important to tell people as soon as possible, because some of you have to start budgeting for Christmas several months in advance.

I'll still be doing Christmas cards, probably late as usual :)

Also, I should get in the post the various things that I've been meaning to send for weeks/months :/

Something cool I discovered today: Waitrose have walking stick holders on their shopping trolleys! How awesome is that? I'm used to having to balance my stick over the handle and hoping it doesn't fall off as I go round the shop (because I really don't want the end that touches the ground lying in the trolley alongside my food). I expect they also work for umbrellas - some shapes of umbrella, anyway.

Richard and I had an "argument" last night about the number of Brussels sprouts that a person would consume at Christmas, given all the other vegetables we are preparing. I thought that 4-6 would be the right sort of number, my mum thought it would be more like 6-8. Richard won by pointing out that the number that a "normal" person would consume is zero.

[Poll #1503127]

If I was feeling more brain-full I could extend the questions to ask about other cabbagey things (I personally love white cabbage in raw or cooked form, and red cabbage raw, but don't care for cooked red cabbage or any kind of green cabbage), but that would take Effort which I should probably be spending on tidying up the house before our visitors tomorrow. We have decided not to make it TIDY (because that is impossible with the time available), but there needs to be enough chair and table space for everyone, and currently all conceivable surfaces are covered with books, tv and video game controllers, plushie toys, cameras, bits of circuit board, screwdrivers...

Last call for Christmas cards - I'm sending them tomorrow. I notice that about half the people who wanted a card last year haven't said they want one this year. If that's because you can't afford to send me one, don't worry - I'm not bothered about reciprocity. Just let me know that you want one and I'll send it :)

If you hate Christmas and/or don't want a paper card this year, there is the option on the poll to say "No thank you" or "I prefer e-cards".

I'm rather annoyed because the vegetarian roast I wanted for Christmas Day has been discontinued. If I'd known they were going to discontinue it, I'd have stocked up... but I've actually been trying to stock up on it for months now. Just couldn't find it in any real-life wholefood shops, and I'm rather leery of online ones. (Principally because a lot of them don't have their online ordering system linked to their stock information, so you can order something and then find it'll be out of stock for the next 2 months). So I'm going to have to find something else to eat, and the other seitan roast I know of is 20% fat for no apparent reason. I might have to... make one. (Possibly more effort than I can be bothered with considering we're already going to be cooking a lump of meat and as many different types of vegetable as possible).

The rest of this post is almost exactly a copy-and-paste of my post from last year. Yay, livejournal tags!

[Poll #1496033]
*Most of this year's cards say "A Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year". But they are super-awesome and have a beautiful wolf on them. One that I have actually met in real life :)

I like getting cards at least as much as I enjoy sending them. But I don't care about reciprocity - if you can't afford to or don't have the spoons to send a card, then I'm happy to send you one without you needing to feel guilty about not sending me one.

I am rather amused that last year I was posting on 12th December to say how very behind I was with the sending out of paper Christmas cards. This year it's taken me until today, 19th December, to get organised enough to send out paper cards. It is to laugh.

I shall attempt to plough through the past few months of my best-friends-on-the-internet's journals to find out what you all said about sending or receiving cards, but really, that will take more time than I have available. Personally, I love paper cards with their accompanying acknowledgement that the people I've met on the internet are as real as the people I've met in my walking-around life. Of course, I like getting cards at least as much as I enjoy sending them. But I don't really care about reciprocity - if you can't afford to or don't have the spoons to send a card, then I'm happy to send you one without you needing to feel guilty about not sending me one.

Last year I offered to send e-cards as well but didn't get round to it. Um... I'll try to send some if people want them?

[Poll #1317957]
* Note that most of the paper cards I have this year do in fact say "Seasons Greetings" (Season's? Seasons'? Hmmm) so are appropriate whichever festival you are celebrating or trying to avoid.

Oh yes, and it's perfectly fine to give me a URL to a post with your contact details in.