Rhionnach's Ramblings

I've just spent some time going through some of the stuff I brought from my parents' house. Most of it is simply photos, I managed to save very little else as I had some thought that I would be able to get mementos etc from the house after the will was sorted out (at the very least). Well, I was wrong and so all I really have are the photos I was able to find before the Evil Bitch changed the locks and subsequently emptied and sold the house.

It was something I had been putting off doing as I knew it would upset me to see old photos of family members from several generations, to look at photos and realise that of all the people in the photo I am the only one left. I found old holiday snaps, of myself and my parents before my sister was born, then photos including my sister, and then photos of my parents on some of their cruises and other holidays to far flung locations. I had indescribable feelings on opening up a box with large portrait photos of my parent from only a few years ago and looking once more into their eyes.

I need to not dwell on the past but I think I am entitled to being a bit upset today.

I had one of those dreams last night where you find rooms you never knew existed through a door in a place you used to live. This time, however, it was my parents' house. The odd thing was that I was dreaming about it in its current state where all the rooms had been cleared by the Evil Bitch. I've never been in the house when it was like that. The only time I recall it being empty was when we first moved there, with lino on the floor and a hall carpet of an odd shade of orangey-red.

This time it was as I had seen it in the photos I had accidentally stumbled across in May when I discovered to my horror that the Evil Bitch had already cleared and sold it without giving me the opportunity to get any mementos. It's all gone now, the candlesticks that always sat on the sideboard, the delicate little glasses that my parents got out every Hogmanay, the many, many things that I recall from my childhood, including things that belonged to my grandparents. Wee bits and pieces which would mean nothing to anyone but myself. All gone, courtesy of the Evil Bitch.

I found myself upstairs in the house and instead of a door to other rooms it was more of a shift in the way you looked at certain parts. Sometimes you would see the entrance to other rooms, sometimes not. And it wasn't just one room, it was a whole suite with a lift going between floors. In these rooms I found the things that the Evil Bitch had overlooked. I was trying to put them into a rucksack when I became aware that she was downstairs. In order to leave the house I had to get back into the real one from the other rooms and of course I couldn't allow her to discover me nor the other rooms. I could hide in the other rooms and watch where she was. I did eventually get out but was aware that (as in real life) I had left behind any number of mementos that I couldn't take.

I guess this dream was sparked off by my finding a footstool in the street yesterday which was the same as one which had been in my parents house. I decided to adopt it as a useful footstool. I remember my grandfather giving the original stool to my parents and now I have one to replace the one disposed of by the Evil Bitch. I'm also using this weekend to work through and clear out the shite in my flat which has been getting in my way and annoying me for several years. I've been going through boxes which haven't been opened in years but were simply dumped in odd places. Some things are simply useless and are binned, some things are useful. But I won't know what's what until I go though it all. it's difficult, given that it's so hot but I am doing what I can and I know I will feel better for it.

As for the situation with my mother's will etc, that's all getting to the last stages. Evil Bitch cleared and sold the house before finding out if I was being given legal aid to fight her. However, it would appear that she is not getting the house either as my mother had named two charities who will receive donations from the sale of the house. I am claiming my legal rights. And the Evil Bitch isn't getting the car either, which was the first thing she had informed me she was to get on the day I was called to the hospital. So it's not turned out as I had hoped, nor as my father would have expected, but it's not turned out the way the Evil Bitch wanted either.

I may disagree with people over a number of issues but at least I don't cut them out of my friends list simply for expressing their opinions. I'd only do that if it was a personal attack directed at myself and so far there has only been one person I have had to delete because of that sort of thing. So I have to say I am a bit annoyed at some people for taking umbrage at people expressing their opinions on Thatcher's demise.

It's only a few days to Eastercon and I ought to be looking forward to going. I am looking forward to it but I keep having all sorts of Things To Worry About that pop into my head and annoy me. I know I need the break, I will enjoy it once I'm there but my brain is determined to make me worry.

It's a bit like when you are trying to get to sleep and the weirdest things come into your head, like do birds have knees, or why can't you see the dark side of the moon, etc. I've got things that pop into my head which sit there and annoy me, things to do with the flat, or to do with the ongoing will situation. I'll see something in the house and it niggles at me, getting me all wound up. I have a plan to get the flat knocked into shape but still things niggle at me. If I am occupied at work or buried in a book I'll forget about it so it's something that can be kept under control by keeping busy.

I guess it has a lot to do with the fact that it was the Thursday before Eastercon that my mother went into hospital last year and never came out. She had a scheduled appointment with her consultant who decided she ought to go in. I wasn't able to take her to the appointment that day as I had already booked to go to Eastercon and so I was informed she had been kept in while I was on the train to London. So there's all the memories of last year on top of all the shit I have subsequently been having to deal with.

Then there's all the shenanigans of Madam upstairs and her galumphing about. She's been strangely quiet so I'm waiting on her next lot of antics. I guess I am worried about that as well.

I do need the break. I just keep finding Things To Worry About.

There's nothing I can do over the next couple of days to make things any better than they are as with the whole shitty situation over my mother's will. The only thing I can do is to make things better for myself. With that in mind I am going out to walk in the fresh air, enjoy the countryside and meet up with people I know.

I have had a number of counselling sessions which have helped me greatly, otherwise I would not be in a very good frame of mind. I have been able to see that I did do what I could for my mother, that I can mourn (and I do), and that I can get on with making my life better.

When I was travelling up and down to Saltcoats every weekend I acquired a netbook in order to keep in touch with what was going on in the world. I haven't really been using it so much of late but it occurs to me that I can and should use it as a writing tool. My handwriting has become so atrocious with constantly using keyboards at work and at home so using the netbook would be a better idea. I have already put Open Office on it and I think it would be useful for me to see what I can do. I used to do a lot of writing until I got distracted with other things and it's something I've always had a hankering to return to. At the very least it will get ideas down on pixels and out of my head where they simply roll around gathering speed, winding me up, doing me no good.

So last night after unkinking and stretching my back out after spending too many hours in the one spot in front of a PC I tried to watch some TV. I had the second episode of Game of Thrones and a few other things. However, my inconsiderate moron of an upstairs neighbour decided to add an extra soundtrack to the TV. She's been spoken to about this before. she's had the police at her door when she refused to pay attention and I had thought she had learned her lesson as she has been keeping the music down a bit. However last night she didn't. So I called the police again.

Eventually, when the happy hardcore began, I decided enough was enough and went upstairs to complain. She didn't come to the door but a friend of hers did. This friend didn't like me shouting at her ("Don't you shout at me!") and actually had the cheek to try to order me to go! She pointed down the stairs and said "Just go". Unbelievable! What a cheeky midden. So I didn't and shouted at her some more. She then slammed the door and I heard her saying to her friend to deal with me. Which she didn't, she didn't show her face at all, the coward. However the music was switched off and I think they all left.

Apparently the police had in fact been at the door. I was unaware they had turned up as they never got in touch. I asked her why she didn't turn the music down then and she didn't reply. The explanation she initially gave was that it was someone's birthday. And that clearly makes it OK to annoy people.

So I called her letting agent and left a message on their answermachine. I am fed up with her. Why can't she learn that she can have her music as long as it isn't loud enough to be heard in other people's flats? What is so difficult to understand about that?

It was work Xmas night out. The decision had been taken to hold it in a casino. Not my choice of venue, I thought it would be a tacky venue and a big mistake. In my opinion it was.

It didn't start well when I entered the building and was directed to the wrong place by a guy who didn't appear to listen to what I was saying. Then I found where I should be and then discovered that the cloakroom was all the way back downstairs to the reception area where Mr Cloth Ears was.

The meal was quite nice although the casino had scored nil points by not being able to give a vegetarian option back in February when we were being asked to decide on a venue. Come on, it's 2012, vegetarians are not exactly uncommon, so why was it such a big deal to tell us what could be offered? I was eventually told a couple of weeks back that it was a choice of aubergine and something cannelloni or ratatouille. I figured the cannelloni would be better than a heap of chopped veg in a tomato sauce (that's an accompaniment, not a main meal!) and so I got cannelloni. It was nice. It came with goat's cheese so that was OK.

Being in the room with workmates was fine, and if that had continued to be the case it would have been fine. But we had to go out into the casino for the bar or to find the toilets, not to mention the stupid gaming tables. The casino was quite simply Bizarroworld, it was a culture shock. It seemed to be filled with sad losers,no hopers, and desperate singles gathered to throw away money at various weird games or to dance to a karaoke-level singer in an odd dance area tacked onto the bar.

Unfortunately the ceilidh band we had wasn't very good and the room wasn't really big enough for a proper dance area so a lot of people went out to Bizarroworld. I don't think that was very good as it split the group and the night lost focus. We would have been better to have gone back to the Piping Centre where we were last year. I enjoyed it, and it was the venue I voted for. I certainly didn't want to go to a shit venue like the casino and that's why I'm now home having left about 11.00 pm as I had had enough instead of continuing on till 2.00 am as had been planned.

Feeling a bit vulnerable and a bit weepy as I've been writing something up in connection with the ongoing dispute over my mother's will. I've had to go back over some events and it's stirred up stuff that I thought I had under control. I was wrong. It's been sitting under the surface sealed up in the little compartment I had put it in while I try to get my life back into some sort of normality.

I guess I need a bit better way of coping with things other than putting things away until they need to be dealt with.

I'm still living in limbo, waiting to see what is going to happen with the application for legal aid to challenge the whole will situation. I've not heard anything from the evil bitch that is behind this whole pile of shit that I'm having to deal with. I worry over when the word will come - yea or nay. My anxiety levels are raised to the extent that I have on occasion jumped on sighting a woman bearing a resemblance to her. I don't know why I'm reacting like this, I'm not the one in the wrong.  I'm not the greedy money-grabbing bitch who talked my mother into changing her will. I'm the one who has been cheated by this scheming bitch.

I've not just been cheated (so far) of my inheritance, I've been cheated of the last year of my mother's life. My memories of my mother are forever tainted by thoughts wondering if she really didn't like me, if she really did mean to cut me out of the will, of wondering what she really thought of me. Others (family members and the like) have said to me that this was not the kind of thing she would have done, that the Evil Cow had got her claws into her, but short of holding a seance I am never going to know for sure. And that's upsetting, to say the least.

I've not been wanting to talk about it but I think I ought to. And yet I don't want to keep rehashing it. It might stop the black thoughts from getting to me so much. I do try to catch myself and stop myself from going over and over it but it's hard.  I just find it all so very upsetting. And yet, I worry that I am not as actively depressed as I was when DC and I split up. Have I just got so hardened that I am now incapable of being depressed or upset anymore? It took me a long time to climb out of that depression. I don't want to be that depressed ever again but I worry that I am numb, that I have lost the ability to feel. Or is it just that I am still in limbo and when I get the go ahead or the knock back it's all going to hit me like a ton of bricks? THAT'S worrying. 

I want to share this with you. Last night, after the Mabon ritual, I dreamed about my parents. The last time I dreamed about either of them was of my mother in the days leading up to her death. Then it had been an odd conversation with her talking about how the Crohn's disease had ravaged her body.

Last night, however, I dreamt I was standing in the living room of the family house, but it was as if I wasn't seen by either of them. The living room was also more the way it had been many years ago. In the dream they were dancing with each other. I noticed that my mother looked pale but my father was tanned and his hair had regained its dark brown colour as opposed to the white it had been of late. They were both a lot younger.

It stayed with me, this dream. It wasn't until I was slogging away on the rowing machine in the gym this morning that I began to realise certain things. Doing a repetitive thing like rowing allows your mind to tick over and process things. My mind can mull over a few things in this sort of situation. Today, it struck me that the reason why my father was tanned was that he has been in the Summerlands longer than my mother. Of course he would be tanned! My mother was pale as she hadn't been there all that long. When this hit me I nearly fell off the machine.

I think I got a wee glimpse of the Summerlands last night.