Xmas and lists about things

Posted On December 28, 2016

Firstly, here is a list of recent pictures:

Getting excited.

Freya’s inconvenient foot.

I’m so funny just all the time.

Bless them.

Stag pin (from Kadek a while ago, not an xmas thing).

Conchiglie!

Wearing the super light green mascara I got for my birthday. I don’t think it shows up so much, but I still like it.

Great food.

Planner stickers.

Stickers for bins are now erroneous because the bins are the wrong colour on this strange new planet of Andover.

I had an excuse to dress up when I went to dinner with Will and his colleagues.

First night.

Soufganiyot!

A picture of my doorbell for no good reason.

The best dog toy I have ever seen.

I MEAN SERIOUSLY.

AMAZING.

Two things will got me from my list! I’m already halfway through The Andromeda Strain.

SO AMAZING.

Xmas dinner by Will.

So gorgeous.

3rd night.

Hanukkah and Christmas overlap this year, so I get to be super festive! We haven’t even managed to watch all our planned Christmas films yet but so far we’ve seen Jingle All The Way (a mandatory classic), Scrooged, Die Hard, The Hogfather, I’m sure we’ve also watched other stuff but I’ve gone blank on it right now? We haven’t gotten around to Bad Santa yet which is a bit of a travesty.

We’ve basically been having a nice snuggly Christmas. I still need to get people some things in January when I will hopefully somehow have money.

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Now I need to have a ramble about something that drives me barmy. I had the same ramble on an older blog but now I need to have it again.

So, I am very much against the idea that people should just be thankful for whatever they are given and whatever money is spent on them. If you turned up at someone’s house like “here is some random junk I am giving you to take up room in your home, and you should be thankful since you are getting it for free and I thought of you when I was getting it!”

Sorry, but no. Some things are just inappropriate choices and I should not thank you for having wasted your own finances by procuring them in the first place.

My family remain guilty of getting me utter bollocks even though I quite literally BEG them not to. I have a wishlist for people close to me to look at, and if they aren’t comfortable getting a present from that list, then of course they don’t have to get me anything! Buying presents is not actually mandatory!

And of course, for people who know me super well, there are exceptions when they spot something they know I would love but might not know about. E.g. Will was SPOT ON with that dinosaur lamp this year! And Beckoi got me a tote bag recently that has Halloween pumpkins and spoopy sheet ghosts on it! Kadek always manages to get me something lovely because she just knows me.

My family, though, I just don’t bloody understand what goes through their minds sometimes.
This year, I have a cheap bottle of a brand of perfume I like on my wishlist, because I ran out of proper perfume a while ago. My family went out of their way to get a much more expensive gift box version. While lamenting the lack of money they have to spend on as many presents as they’d like.
It’s nice to get a candle with the perfume that also smells quite like it, but I already had a much cheaper bottle from the same brand on my list, and they just went out of their way to spend extra money on the version I didn’t ask for.

I also had a calendar on there, same as last year, with pictures of chocolate Labradors. They went out and bought me a different calendar, a Family Guy one, which is tacky and narrow and doesn’t actually have a lot of room to write information on it. It’s insulting, it makes the statement “No, you will hang this in your home instead.” To see that I have asked for a specific product and to say “No, this one is better, I am getting you that,” it’s just really shit actually.

The only thing I can think to do with the Family Guy calendar is to maybe hang it in the bedroom, and then I might be able to plan what needs washing if I can see that an event of some sort is coming up, even if the writing for it is barely legible.

One year my Mum bought me a framed picture of Mulder and Scully from the X-Files. A framed picture. Yes, I like the X-Files, but I was dumbfounded. I don’t need a framed photo of two actors on my wall. It sat in a corner getting dusty until we gave in and just shoved it into a bin bag. What an utter waste of money.

The point is, I could have received gifts I actually would have loved and wanted for the same, if not less money, or people could have just kept their money if they refused to buy anything other than the inappropriate item. 

People who don’t know me enough to be privy to my wishlist still manage to get appropriate stocking-fillery things, but my family are just incapable. I had a conversation with them earlier this year wherein I literally begged them to just not get me anything if they weren’t happy getting cheap wishlist items. Well, they did it again anyway. It’s at the point when getting to my family’s presents under the tree is actually stressful because we know they will almost definitely go straight in the bin and we will be infuriated at the waste of finances.

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Here are some lists of stuff

Goals for the year that I completed ☑️:

1. Got a tattoo, finally!
2. Got a new wheelchair
3. Kept the house at a base-level of clean (e.g. didn’t live in piles of trash for too long)
4. Enjoyed Eurovision
5. Had a barbeque in June when Jane came down
6. Got a 2017 planner from Paperchase
7. Got a grid paper notebook to use as my next one (have ordered, because my current one is almost out of pages)

Goals for the year that I didn’t complete ❌:

So, the stuff I didn’t get done outnumbers the stuff that I did 🙁

Things that made 2016 a bit of a bummer ?:

1. Got to spend some time in a lovely house but only had to move in the end.
2. Damaged Freya’s glow in the dark collar in the wash.
3. Dyson stopped working.
4. Had to sell Calpurnia because she was too big for the house.
5. New chair’s motors aren’t as good as Calpurnia’s were.
6. Had to abandon my 5-year plan because everything has changed direction.
7. Got a sofa on Gumtree that only broke and spent the year ripping my hip tissue.
8. Couldn’t get a Disabled Facilities Grant for a ramp and stairlift because they wanted us to contribute thousands of pounds we didn’t have, so I continue climbing stairs with my butt.
9. Couldn’t afford to go camping with Ben and Jane.
10. I went a bit more deaf by the time I got my Audiology referral.
11. After almost 4 years of waiting I was finally denied a Canine Partner for what ultimately came down to me living 0.8 miles away from the dog exercise field, which it takes about 10 minutes to get to on “foot”, but this is too far for them, and apparently they had this concern about my previous house but just didn’t feel like fucking telling me.
12. Continued not independently leaving my house.
13. This year’s Halloween was undeniably not as good as 2015’s.
14. Had two major Psychotic episodes involving seeing people in my house.
15. Got scammed by multiple applicants who lied about having disabilities, and had to get the police to intervene about one of them.
16. Have still not found certain things despite 2 moves.
17. Current vacuum cleaner now not sucking as much.
18. Spent my birthday alone and surrounded by clutter.
19. My phone broke and our new landline wasn’t installed, I have no way to call 999 in my house right now.
20. Had to move 30 miles away and even though I know it was necessary, I’m lonely as hell.
21. Managed to stain the carpet 2 days before we moved and have probably cost us the deposit.
22. It looks like my dog is starting to go blind.

Also a whole bunch of celebrities died, most recently George Michael and Carrie Fisher. I’m really not a fan of the latter since she faked having an Assistance Dog, he even did a shit on television live on stage and she’s just like “well he’s my service dog lol”, what a really shitty thing to do, our dogs are really well trained and not going to crap everywhere, how fucking dare you.

Things that were good in 2016 ✨:

1. Got to live in a nice house for a while.
2. Got a new wheelchair, despite its problems.
3. Saw Jane at both the summer BBQ and at Halloween.
4. Will and his friends helped to build me a ramp for my front door.
5. Got hearing aids.
6. Our charity got a registration number.
7. Our charity was quite well supported on Crowdfunder by people we knew.
8. Didn’t attempt suicide for about a year.
9. Didn’t have a horrible dog living next door.
10. Sewed some cool stuff.
11. Had some lovely trips to the Common with my friends.
12. Saw my friends move into a nice house all together.
13. Got the first house we tried for when moving!
14. Got two free sofas on Gumtree which are perfectly fine!

And I apologise if there’s anything I’ve forgotten.

My general plans for 2017 look like this ?:

Things I hope to do in 2017 ?:

So, yeah, we’ll see how that goes.

Cease to do evil, learn to do good. Devote yourselves to justice: aid the wronged. Uphold the rights of the orphan; defend the cause of the widow. 

Isaiah 1:16-17