Things Katy does.
I'm absolutely furious.
…is the sort of thing I'm likely to say any day of the week. About a week ago it was particularly appropriate, and occasioned by the start of term at uni and receipt of the timetable for my subject. The timetable is quite sparse, consisting of a single tutorial a week and the due dates for assignments. Ordinarily it causes no distress until I approach one of those deadlines.
Took a promethazine early last night, as I was too exhausted to do anything useful with my evening, and it was upsetting feeling so useless. As usual, this led to being out like a light for ten hours and at least one weird dream.
So I was on a coach trip; some sort of school excursion deal, and in the seat next to me was Peter Davison.
We had a long conversation about acting and television production. And it turns out that he is every bit as lovely as you would expect.
Anyway, as you do on long coach trips, we got a bit tired, and as we'd become firm chums by then we had a bit of a snuggle. Nothing inappropriate; just a perfectly innocent, congenial, arm-in-arm, head-on-shoulder snuggle. That's a thing isn't it?
It turned out we were going to some workshop, and I ended up on a table full of strangers where we did the usual icebreaker thing. I couldn't see any reason not to say that I was currently living in Havana.
A couple of weeks ago I was cleaning the flat and unpacked some of my boxes of books and things. Not to finally properly move in after two and a half years, just to douse the boxes with cockroach spray and repack them again. It's a glamorous life.
In amongst the things I've not been able to throw out, there's a high school report from July 1987. I've no idea why this is in my possession in the first place; I assume my mother has the rest of them, along with other cherished reminders of my childhood triumphs.
I think I must have seen it at Mum's place decades ago and pinched it for it's entertainment value. According to Wikipedia, ADHD (then called ADD) was known about in the 1980s, but clearly the Australian education system wasn't equipped to identify it. Here's a selection of insights into my temperament as a callow youth:
… poor attitude has been detrimental. - Year master
… lacks the competitive spirit… - English
I haven't had a good month. I have to decide where to focus my energies when I don't really have any energies, and nobody's much interested in me anyway.
I was feeling pretty low last night, had drunk as much wine as I could usefully drink, and had taken a promethazine in the hope that I'd be zonked out for 12 hours, and might resurface with a more positive attitude.
Then I got an email from Darrell, the convener of my local #U3A philosophy group. I'd left it too long to enrol for the new year, so I missed out on a place in the class and was on a waitlist.
He invited me to come along anyway as an "Illegal", in the expectation that people will drop out, so I might as well be there from week one.
It was such a kind and thoughtful offer that I burst into tears.
Of all the things I've done in the last couple of years, talking about caustically controversial stuff with other dotty old people once a week has without question been the most fun.
It was the first time I'd been back to the house in which I was raised since The Before Times. Being back there always gives me the willies to some degree, but I wasn't overly worried about it. However my mother had led me to believe that my three siblings and their families were all keen to see me, which was a bit daunting (not to mention implausible).
I'd vague intentions of visiting Sydney for some time, with a view to spending a couple of days with family, and then a couple more staying in the city and catching up with one or two old friends as a feeble gesture toward making amends for years of neglect. But chronic spoon depletion led me to scale it back to a couple of nights at my Mum's house.
I don't know how it's possible for life to keep getting both harder and better, I just know that it is possible.
I don't mind, particularly. I'm a stubborn old bird, and as long as the quantity of the better keeps rising in proportion to the harder, I can maintain my equilibrium. 2024 was a bit over the top on this score, though.
For the prior few years I had been cocooning. It's a luxury I had available to me by virtue of the fact that I had already sleepwalked into a situation where I was living in near-total social isolation. So when I packed up and moved a thousand kilometres to a city where I knew nobody, with no particularly well-developed plan for what I was going to do with my life, I can't imagine anybody thought it odd. Well, no more odd than anything else about me.
Damn it! Every other time I have curry for dinner I end up with a dollop of yoghurt in my lap.
This was a new skirt. Well, not new, but new for me.
I tried paper towel, but the skirt is more absorbent, so I was just working it in, then I tried a damp sponge. Now I'm just cold and damp in the groinal region, and have no idea whether I've done the right thing.
I did woodwork and metalwork at school. I've never needed, in any intensive way, to work either wood or metal. Bless you if you have, but even in the 80s these were not so much preparation for adult life as initiation into a culture.
I popped the button on my nice pinstripe trousers recently and I've not sewed it back on because I'm an old lady with poor eyesight and unsteady hands, but also because I was never initiated into the practical arts and I know I'll make a dreadful mess of it.
Update, 20/12/2024: I shouldn't leave my audience hanging. A few weeks after writing this, I had a working phone, but there was a snag with transferring my old number over. As this was now at the pointy end of the academic year, I hadn't the time or spoons to deal with this, but I could at least make and receive phone calls. A few weeks later, my assignments all submitted, I finally got that sorted. Numerically, I'm me again!
Granted, I knew this was coming. I'd heard from better informed people than myself that although my phone works on Vodafone's network, which had switched off it's 3G support in January, it would not work on Telstra's network when it came to decommission it's 3G.
After months of waiting, the authorities still haven't granted my GP the necessary permission to prescribe dexamphetamine, so a couple of weeks ago I went back to the psych who diagnosed my ADHD for a top-up from his prescription pad. He's a delightfully charming and intelligent young man, so despite the expense, I wasn't entirely heartbroken about this.
As would any self-respecting hypochondriac, I took the opportunity to ask further questions, including whether he he could recommend any resources to help manage ADHD.
He just gave me a blank look, as though he didn't understand the question.
He's such a sweetie that I didn't want to embarrass him by pressing the point, so I moved on to complaining about other maladies.