I'm getting really pissed off and also quite scared at the level of exhaustion I'm living with. It's probably because my acupuncturist has gone away for a week and I haven't had my usual calming booster. I had to give up the art class as I didn't have the energy to concentrate enough - I mean, what the fuck is that all about?

Perhaps today's grumpiness is partly due to being woken up by Grandson and YD bursting in and not having my usual slow creep out of dreamworld into this life. Who knows?

We went to visit the baby - Niece is so cool and relaxed, which shouldn't surprise me as she is almost thirty, but I still half see her as Sis's baby girl so am inordinately impressed and proud. YD then went off to stay the night with her pal as did GS with his, so here I am back in my own peace and quiet until the morning.

Channel4 - the other channel (than the BBC) having some kind of public service remit - now has a series of short films that pop up between the ads, on the subject of rape. On the one hand they are brilliant as at last they're aimed at blokes (scenarios where consent is patently absent and voiced as such, however nervously, and sex occurs with something like grim resignation, pointing out that this is rape) but each new one gives me the heebie-jeebies the first time I see it. They're the type of events that get no further than rape crisis centres, usually years later, because we've formed some kind of relationship with this bloke so blame ourselves and would have no chance of getting a conviction anyway, things being as they are, but still they haunt us for decades, the feelings, the sounds, the nightmares, the fucked-upness, until in the end we finally realise that it wasn't our own stupidity, but an act of violence against us and that it's called rape. I hope they're making a difference.

I can see why 'consent' is the determining factor legally, but I think as a general rule 'enthusiasm' is a better guide, don't you? I only came across that suggestion recently and at once it struck me as perfect - it speaks of two people doing something together rather than one doing it to the other. And any fool can see when someone is enthusiastic, so if you're not sure, then you fucking check and if you're still not sure, then that ain't no enthusiasm, baby.

Well, I didn't know I was going to write about that.

On a brighter note, look how my beautiful Tibetan prayer flags held out through all those storms while the fence gave up and died (yes, I did read the job description of being an old hippy):




ED's mother-in-law now has a computer and a facebook page and we are now 'friends'. I've had a few days of being weirded out by this as we have had a very (ahem) limited kind of a deal over the years ED and SIL have been together, until very recently - like this last year. I've always considered her a narrow-minded, judgemental bigot, no matter how much she loved ED and the very sight of me made her purse her lips, so we kept things brief, civil and to the point. Now though - well, we've had chats on the phone and now private FB messages. I felt a bit disconcerted about her browsing through my pages - there's my language for a start, to say nothing of my festival pics or my taste in music - I posted this earlier tonight after hearing him singing 'Such a Night' on the radio and finding the lyrics uncomfortable, to cleanse my Dr John palate, as it were:



and yesterday's photo-a-day prompt of vegetable had this running through my mind, which I hadn't thought of since 1970, I'm sure, so posted it because it made me laugh:




She hasn't posted much yet, but I wonder if it means we're going to learn to understand each other and become friends?

Grateful for: a bit of 'erb to unfrazzle my mind; music; social media - if I lived alone alone I'd have topped myself by now, I kid you not; having enough money to get by; a roof over my head

Sweet dreams xxx