Currents in Scottish Meanderings

And THAT my friends - was the corrected version!!

Those of you who, like me, are fully paid up members of the grammar and spelling police will understand the pain.

Current App: one called the 'Errands' app. It's an app designed to organise your life. I was using the Reminders app which came with the phone but there was a lot it wasn't doing that I wanted it to do so I had a search around for something fairly simple with a moderate amount of bells and whistles and finally settled on this one. It works really well for me although I still seem to spend the same amount of time shifting tasks around instead of just getting on and doing them!!

Current Fear: I had originally written here that it was that I'll never get back to work but I know now that it's actually that I'll never get my health back. I am still exhausted after very little exertion and have no idea where my breaking point is to be able to pace myself.

I can spend a day with the girls, come home, do a bit of hoovering, lie down and sleep for 3 hours then sleep all night as well and need the next day in bed or I can have exactly the same day and be absolutely fine.

I can have weeks where I can do very little and be absolutely done in and need full days in bed to recover and other weeks where I'm able to do twice as much with seemingly hardly any adverse effects.

I do know it's bad news to push myself when I'm starting to wind down - I can feel it when my body's struggling - but how can you plan anything like that? You can't suddenly stop your activities for the week when you've committed to stuff or people are relying on you - or you just need to get things done!! And how do you explain it to other folk? If this was 'depression', 'anxiety', or 'stress' as has been bandied about by the doctors, it would have improved by now after all this time off and although it is definitely better than it was originally, I'm still nowhere near fully functioning for someone of my age and fitness. It's just so debilitating and frightening.

Current Worry: very much the same as above. Last week I had an interview with our local University for a place on the Diploma in person-centred Counselling Skills starting in September. This would be the next logical step in training for my counselling but it costs over £6,000 in fees. I applied two years ago but as I wasn't actively counselling at the time, my application was declined so this year, because I've done the ACIS Counselling course and have now begun counselling, I knew I had a better chance of getting in. So I applied again and, although they were worried that I wouldn't manage the academic side of things because I haven't done a degree, I managed to somehow convince them I'd cope and was accepted to start this year.

Some of the girls who did the ACIS course with me are going on to do this course as well so it would be nice to know some people on it already, especially as it's a very intensive course by all accounts. It requires a lot of work plus training one day a week at the University so I think coping with that and a new job would be a bad idea and probably not feasible. But I might never get a job so I don't particularly want to hang around waiting for that to happen. On the other hand, the fact that the course costs so much is a big factor and if we don't sell Mam's flat soon (been a few folk interested but no-one making any offers), I'll have no money to live on and it would seem ludicrous to splash out £6,000 for 2 years' training when I have no income coming in and could have used that money to live on. My brother has offered to lend me the money for the fees then I can pay him back when we sell the flat so that at least I have that money to live on for now.

And just to compound things further, I noticed last night that my old job as Chaplaincy Secretary at the hospital is being advertised. When I worked there in 2004, it wasn't enough hours and also wasn't stimulating enough as a job for me at that time but I still enjoyed it and the people were some of the loveliest I've ever worked for. It's only 15 hours a week but I think both (job and course) would be too much with my health being the way it is which frustrates the hell out of me.

I could try for the job and delay the course for a year starting next September instead but I might not get the job so be back to Square One and also not starting the course this year would mean I'd miss the chance to share that experience with the girls I already know (which might help in support terms).

I just don't know what to do. I just want my life back so that these decisions don't cause me so much angst and agony. And utter exhaustion.

Current Guilty Pleasure: messaging someone on POF. Every so often I'll take a mad turn and scroll through the fish in the pond - this morning was one of those and this lovely face and kind smile stood out from all the rest. Nothing ventured, nothing gained as they say! (He didn't get back to me but someone else did so off we go on the mad merry-go-round once again ......)

Current Relief: Jane (Joel's mum) has finally admitted she was wrong to badmouth Nikki when she was pregnant with Lily. In a series of texts written when she'd had a few drinks one night recently she told Nikki how much she loved her and the girls and how much she regretted the way she was when she first found out Nikki was pregnant. (Basically she had said she wanted nothing to do with her and would back Joel to the hilt in making sure she didn't get a penny from him. But then Joel came round and began seeing Nikki & Lily a few months after Lily was born and Jane was left in a dodgy position trying to hang onto her pride. Eventually - more for the sake of Joel's granny who was missing out on seeing Lily this whole time - she ate humble pie and it all came okay but the whole thing has never been addressed or spoken about. Until now).

Jane asked Nikki to forgive her which Nikki did but the problem is Nikki can't forget the e-mails which Jane sent to Joel just after she first found out about the pregnancy. They were pretty awful (she showed me them) but of course Nikki should never have been in Joel's e-mail account in the first place so can't fess up that she saw them. And as we all know - once something has been seen, it can't be 'unseen'. Her own fault though.

They're all going off on holiday together for 10 days in a couple of weeks to Jane's villa in Spain so although I'm glad Jane is getting the chance to spend some decent time with the girls, I foresee I a lot of ranty texts from Nikki coming my way!

Current Annoyance: that I can't keep on top of my e-mail. I used to try and keep my Inbox manageable and wouldn't let myself have too many e-mails sitting in there - say around 20 which had been read and were waiting further action - but I find myself spending more and more time each day deleting half the Inbox and constantly trying to unsubscribe from stuff I've never subscribed to in the first place - which of course only validates your e-mail address so makes the situation worse. If anyone can tell me how to get rid of these annoying e-mails for ever (sending them to Spam doesn't work, blocking them doesn't work, blocking the domain name doesn't work) I would be eternally grateful!

Current Delight: that it was dead easy to claim £62.80 worth of damaged food from my home insurance company when my fridge freezer died recently. You can claim up to £500 worth and I almost didn't do it because I thought I'd have to pay my excess but apparently it doesn't apply to freezer food. The actual food which I had to throw out was more like around £40 worth (if that) but when I was pricing everything I decided to go 'virtual shopping' in TESCO instead of my usual ASDA as it's generally a lot dearer :) I would have loved to have used Marks & Spencer but thought if they worked out that I stayed about half an hour's drive away from my local M&S it might have looked a bit dodgy! And I knew that they often asked what kind of fridge freezer you had to make sure the food you're claiming for would actually fit into your fridge freezer so I was careful not to exaggerate too much but when I told him the amount he said "Oh that's no problem - we'll get a bank transfer set up for you for that amount straight away!" so obviously I was a tad too careful and should have chucked a couple of sirloin steaks in there as well!!

Current Struggle: health is obviously the main one but I'm also having a bit of a hard time getting started with a counselling client. I had my first one 2 weeks ago and was faced with a male who had difficulty opening up and talking things out which was causing problems at home. As you can imagine, to come to the agency was like torture for him and he very definitely didn't want to be there (his wife had made him come). He only lasted half the session but seemed okay about coming back - however I knew I wouldn't be surprised if I discovered he'd cancelled.

Sure enough I got a call from my supervisor, Jackie, last Wednesday afternoon saying he had so I had a new client at 12.30 the following day but she would be available to have a chat at 12. I wasn't sure what we were going to have a chat about but as I'd planned to be at the Agency at 12 anyway, it wasn't going to affect my plans.

She was late and arrived breathless at 12.15, took me into a room and like an express train without drawing breath, told me that what had actually happened was that he'd phoned up and asked for a different counsellor as he'd found our silences excruciating and hadn't gelled with me!! Way to knock my confidence on the floor just before seeing another client!

There's no reason to suspect it wasn't true but if I'm being honest I think it was probably an excuse he came up with to explain to his wife why the session hadn't gone well and he hadn't been able to talk. I was fairly confident I hadn't done anything wrong as I had talked the session through with one of the more experienced counsellors afterwards and she said she wouldn't have done anything different (and I had tried to ensure we didn't have any silences as I knew how uncomfortable that would be for him but I think just the natural pauses between us were enough to give him the heebie-jeebies!). Anyway I'm just glad he's come back albeit to see someone else but it was a fairly shell-shocked Marg who ran to the loo at 28 minutes past 12 to try and get herself together before facing someone else. Then after all that the new client never turned up!

As the whole situation is burdened with the general fear that I'm crap at this, I'm hoping this Thursday will see me getting a proper start at it and having someone who will both talk and like me!

Current Excitement: I feel terribly sad that there's just nothing I can put in this category. Every plan or achievement these days is tinged with worry that I don't have the stamina to pull it off, or have to cancel it, or have to pull out of something altogether. It's always there in the background threatening to bugger things up.

Current Project: to watch a programme put on by BBC Alba (Gaelic channel) called ME: The Toxic Tiredness again. It features several people who have the symptoms of ME or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and describes what life was like for them when it first appeared and what it's like now and how much it's affected their lives and that of those around them.

I want to see if I can contact the folk involved and get details of how to get referred to a specialist (yes I know - you'd think all you'd have to do is go to your GP - sadly not) and also find out just how they manage their lives with this illness, how they support themselves, how successful they've been in claiming disability (the government don't recognise any illnesses with fatigue and exhaustion as their main symptoms as debilitating - basically you're classed as being lazy. Same goes for mental illness pretty much) and how they cope with planning for the future. I feel like I need to have control of this thing and get on top of it somehow.

I've made an appointment to see the Doctor on the 15th August and I'm hoping I can somehow persuade her to either refer me to somebody or to give me a proper diagnosis - something other than 'depression and anxiety' or 'stress' because that gets me absolutely nowhere and is patently not the case anyway.

Current Realisation: that you can't mix Markdown and HTML when writing an entry in here. I really miss all the stuff we used to be able to do with the way we wrote an entry in OD and have been experimenting a little bit with layout when I've been writing on here, having seen others do fancy stuff with their entries but after several frustrating attempts I'm realising that I can't seem to mix the two styles of writing or at least some things work and some things don't.

It's so stupid to let stuff like that annoy you but it does. Not being able to justify text in an entry has been bugging me for months! However I've also just realised that this is a really positive thing because for a long time it took all my energy just to be able to write at all in here so if I'm now finding the energy to faff about with all the extra bits like this, that must mean I'm getting better!

There's my Pollyanna thought for the day :)