So! The Mothership has gone into hospital today for her hysterectomy (sp?).
And Guess who now becomes Offical Next Of Kin?
Just think of all the things I could sign her up for. Voicebox? Yeah whip it out while you're there she dont need that. Two legs? Bah thats just greedy!
Of course, the downside to this is she's out of action for the week and probably the remainder of the summer.
And The Brat, being unable to cope with this, has reverted as he always does to Incredible levels of Brattishness.
He has already informed me, that he doesnt not plan to do any of the housework or help when she comes out.
It was all we could do to convince him to take us to the QE, and he just dumped us at the hospital, and didnt come in or come to pick me up.
Unless he goes through a change of heart, I imagine the next time Mum will see him will be after I bully and hassle him into agreeing to come pick her up.
Brothers! Sheesh! Are they always this lazy and self-centred?

I've been looking after some duck eggs!!
A couple are duds but two look like they have little duck embryos in them, with little duck feet pressing against the shell as they move and ful of icky looking pumping veins.
I showed them to my brother, he was not impressed.

"They aint ducks! They're fucking aliens!"

I get assaulted at work!
Honestly!

There was these two guys who walked in bold as anything while I was serving on the till and picked up these boxes of protein drink and then walked out with them! I was watching them and although the other bloke left the shop before I could stop him, I was determined not to let the other guy get away.
"Oi! Drop those!" And me - being the smart idiot that I am tried to pull his arm away and grab back the box.
Unfortunately, while he wasnt much taller than me, his arm was roughly the same thickness as my thigh. So when he told me to fucking let go and elbowed me in the stomach there wasnt a lot I could do and I fell backwards landing on my arse.
I now have a nice bruise and am so fucking annoyed that I didnt have the presence of mind to kick him or try and trip him or something while I was on the ground.
And then!! My manager told me off for tackling him, apparently all we're allowed to do is ask "politely" that they put the items down.
Ha! told off for not tackling shoplifters and all I get is a telling off and several bruises when I do try!

2 Random phone calls yesterday..

The first was my Nan as in Dad's Mum, this is the first time she'd got in contact since the funeral, ignoring us since then, actually its the first time we've heard from any of their side of the family.
Like I've mentioned in the past, we've never had much dealings with them so not to hear from them hasn't really been a great upset.
This phone call was a pure cry for attention from her. Like when Dad got put into the hospice and she greeted us with. "Hi I'm dying from Angina."
Ho hum, she pretended to not know who I was, or why she'd called me. And then told me she's going to have a triple heart bypass for her angina. I know people do have ops like that for their angina, but I also know that her's is not that serious enough for it.
(Wont I feel bad if she's actually having one?! Actually then again we probably wont actually get told about it from any of them)

The second one was at 4am this morning, when I'd just gone to bed. Now there's only two people who even consider that calling me at that time in the morning a good idea.
"Hullo N."
"Charlton! I've just got back from Nottingham!.... ramble about a lampost..... When are you coming up again?.... operation? Bah thats nothing... two days and she's back to normal..."
And then the fucker made me play guess the tv show theme tune till half past 5 in the morning.
I'd consider turning my phone off but I need the alarm on it every morning and hanging up just isnt an option when he'll keep calling me back or ring my house phone.
Booo!

So in a week or two, the reason that I'm sticking about will come to pass, well Mothers operation.
And now shock of all shocks, I can start to think about MY future and what I want.
I realise that I'm gonna be here for a bit while she recovers and that, but when October rolls around, I could realistically start looking for a REAL job, in something I enjoy and get paid for and what all that uni lark was about.
Fuckit I can even leave London again *Lets off celebratory firework*
I might end up stopping until The Anniversary, but I will be free to leave, this prison sentence will be over!
And thats what it seems like, I dont regret a minute of coming home, the tears, the boredom, the mindnumbing lonliness and feeling of getting left behind, because I did it for the right reasons.
And soon it will be time for me!
I dont quite know what I'm gonna do when I finally realise that I can be me again. I still have that need to travel and explore, but it is also time to start thinking about a career, God knows I cant put it off much longer!
Yes its a long way off still, but there is a light at the end of this tunnel and its getting closer, day by day!

Oh and remember about March sometime last year I applied for that fishy job in the lab? 22k to look after some fish?
Well I've spotted it up again, same thing, all thats different is the people you apply to and the moneys gone down to 20k.
I thought about applying again and then decided against it, I'm not really down on the whole "animal testing for medical/genetical reasons" and lab work frankly horrifies me.
I'd rather carry on part timing it at the shop and the aquarium and feel good about myself for not killing and tormenting fish.
Pathetic? maybe? but I dont honestly care!!

I had the best customer ever, ever, ever today! EVER!

He was making a complaint about the lack of air con, on this the hottest day of the year so far, (we were heaving heavy boxes about as part of delivery day). My supervisor was in no mood to pander to him and let him know exactly what kind of cheapass cunting company we work for, and that we also wasnt supposed to drink on the shop floor and weren't entitled to free water.
So he asked us if we wanted him to pop over the road to visit one of Mr Whippys little vans to get 99's.
When we politely refused he disappeared, only to return 20 minutes later with tubs of M&S ice cream for us all!
What a legend! I was skipping amongst the Vit C display filled with joy at the thought of the ice cream to come!

And Oh dear Shaun!!

Things that have irritated me today.

1 - the nonce in the shop who after he had enquired about my family and found out that Dad had kicked the bucket, had the guts and balls to inquire if I missed him and then to ask me if I considered seeing a psychic. Cuntbag.
2 - Having a cold (yes a fucking cold) in the middle of summer.
3 - Being told that I am at work every day this week, meaning no aquarium and heaving boxes around on Wednesday - which is predicted to be a record breaker in the heat ness stakes.
4 - Having a miserable supervisor who hardly spoke a word to me all day and sat in the back leaving me to cope on my own virtually all day.

Sigh.

Walking home from the Aquarium. I passed a car, a posh rover effort on a tow truck.
There was a 6 foot feathery wing sticking out the sunroof.
Another big wing slammed into the broken wingscreen.
And as I walked past it, what looked like to be a head, sliced completely off of the neck and half straight down again into the dashboard.
At first I truely thought it was some horrific accident and then sense came to me, as if they'd bung a body onto the tow truck?
Where were the ambulances?
And the guy in a suit on the phone to the AA seemed a little puzzled.

"Yeah. I mean there these Wings! Just like hanging out of the car."

I wonder if an angel really go joy riding?

I had to be at work (in the shop) by half 8 this morning!!

What the hell's that all about?

Jimmy Floyd!!!

Who'd ever, ever ever have imagined that?!

Sometimes in the Shop I play "guess the sex"

My score today was 0. Everyone who I thought was male turned out to be female.

So Pirates of the Carribbean?

Very funny, not as good as the first but still and Kiera Knightley dressed up as a man? She's very sexy.
Orlando Bloom though and Johnny Depp! Wheeeee!

I have duck eggs! 4 to be precise! I'm hatching them, in an incubator, so fingers crossed that when I candle them in 5 days time we'll see little duck embryos in there and they'll all hatch in a month!!

I have quails!
They're so cute and gobble like turkeys, they're pretty tame too and I've been petting them most of the day.
Getting them was a bit of an adventure, had to travel down to Ashford and we got to the village ok but was then told to look out for "A Big Sign for the Darling Buds of May" Well we travelled all over that village and repeatedly rang up asking for help and eventually after circuling the village several times we found it.
It wasn't that big a sign so boo to them!
The farm was great though! It had raindeer! And goats! And piglets! And Ducks! And geese! I love farms.
So I'm now the proud owner of Quentin and Quaver (I love alliteration in names!) quail.
I'll put a pic up on here shortly when they've settled in, they're quite young so look a bit scrawny and have no feathers on their back but that'll all grow back. I'm considering making them little wooly jackets to wear until the feathers grow.
They make the coolest noise too! They sound like robot turkeys!

However when we came back Satan Cockatiel was in a right state. One side of his face was covered in blood, a mask all over his face.
One of the budgies had blood on his beak so I'm not sure if he attacked him or whether he caught himself on something.
But the budgies have laid eggs so maybe he stuck his beak somewhere he shouldnt have and they were defending their eggs.
I had to catch the bird and try and clean him up with some damp cotton buds, so I'll keep him indoors for a week till he recovers and some of the blood scabs fall off or something.

So thanks all for your lovely kind words!

Today was not my best day at the aquarium. While taking a group of 6 year olds round a fish inconviently decided to die in front of me.
Bastard thing.
I managed to pass it off by telling them it was going to the Fishy Hospital to be made better, so unless those 6 year olds are reading this now, I think I've got away with it!

Secondly while doing my first ever "Amazing Life of the Coral Reef" Talk, I managed to completely forget to mention the coral.
I cant believe that, however I did mention everything else with a few giggles.

Tomorrow Mother is taking me to Ashford to get my quail! And possibly to see Pirates 2 so I can drool over certain Misters Bloom and Depp!

Oh and play my game!

6 months ago.

Sometimes it seems like a lifetime ago, sometimes just like something that happened a week ago.
Sometimes customers ask about me, ask what I did to end up in the shop or ask about my folks and I tell them. I'm not looking for sympathy or anything.
And they tell me that they're sorry and you smile at them and thank them politely but inside you feel like shaking them and screaming in their face.
They're not sorry! How can they be? They have no idea about any of it. They have no idea who we are, its just names to them. They dont know him, they dont know us. About what we went through, the things we never speak of, not to each other, not to our closest friends and family, stuff that I've never even put in here but yet is always in the back of my mind. You wonder how much you can talk about before they mentally drown you out or start avoiding you.
And They don't know what we go through now.
How Mum is odder than ever, how she panics when either of us is even ten minutes late home. About how her Brothers are all bullying her to do more with Nanny and Granddad, how we should sell our house and move in with them and care for them so they don't have the burden of it all.
Did I ever tell you guys about how my Uncle J suggested that to my Mum just a few days after the funeral?
So far she's resisting but how long?
About how she greeted pretty much virtual strangers on holiday with "Hi I'm.... and I'm a widow.." Thats not coping surely?
About how she's already putting the pressure on me to not move back out, or to take her with her.
About how much she relies on me. "Her Rock." I dont want to be anyones rock anymore.
And the customers tell me how selfless I am. How much of a big heart I must have and you feel like screaming at them. "No! I'm not! All I did was what was right. What everyone expected of me."
And I think of now and how its affected me. How I find it hard to sit still for a few minutes, with out the need to do something, to occupy myself in some way, but yet how I can't concentrate on anything.
How I lie awake for ages after I finally give in and go to bed, and how you miss him so much it physically hurts.
and of then, and how much I hated and resented being trapped with them, in that situation, when being at home was the very last thing I ever wanted to be.
And how much I'd give anything, do anything to have him back with us, even in that awful state he was in the last month, and that's not being selfless at all.

I have a webcam!
Wheee look at it all webby and cammy!
I dont really know what to do with it now, it took me a while to get it going, after pulling out the wire to the internet while plugging it in.
Now I have an eye and a green light staring at me, what if its on already? what if someone is staring at me?

Maybe I'll need to get it a cover for when I'm not actually using it.

Football!

Fucking Hell!