Well there's no point pretending it hasn't been shit since I last wrote here.

YD did her back in by sneezing as she bent down to take her shoe off. Something clicked and she was in agony, poor soul, but I was transformed from She Who Needs a Rest to Only Functional Adult in a flash, running about finding pain-killers and cushions and generally building up good dollops of resentment and weariness that I thought did passeth all understanding, but I'd hardly started then. A few hours later her BF called to tell her he'd heard from the landlady who has put the whole house up for sale and they have two months to get out, which upped the ante all round and continues to do so.

I put stars round the next bit as it was the silver lining:


**GS came home from his pal's and was grand - very relieved at his ability to live in the present and milk opportunities for happiness.**

YD was due to cook dinner but she couldn't and GS and I wouldn't so we ordered in a curry. He had chicken korma and special rice, but he didn't take much rice, just a big bowlful of lovely gloopy sauce. Which he managed to put on the sofa in the exact perfect place for YD to sit on/in, and so she did. Fucking hell, liquid can travel. Still we all pissed ourselves laughing, which was good, but then muggins had to wash her down blah blah, moan moan.

Friday we drove up to ED's care home and hung out there for a bit. Still gut-wrenchingly awful, my poor darling girl, to see her like that, so lost and alone in her broken mind, but hey ho, it is what it is, we stayed a while then off we went, me and YD, straight across London into the Friday rush-hour.

She got grumpy pretty quick, what with her bad back and her sister and becoming homeless and me keep wanting her to tell me the next road I had to look out for every ten minutes as I kept forgetting. And it was stop, neutral, start, first gear, second gear and stop, start, on and on into infinity, up and down on the clutch, not really caring just numb with the horribleness of everything, crawling across London in the midst of thousands of others, inching forward, soaked in despair.

Was meant to be staying at YD's but she was too grumpy to be borne, so back onto the motorway for the third time, slowly slowly, though by now all the traffic was gone, listening to mad Claudia Winkelmann on the radio, through the miles of roadworks, into Clacket Lane Services for a nasty sandwich, more roadworks, but finally up and over the hills and back down to my little sea-side home and the parking gods smiled on me and left me a space just round the corner.

And now Mz Em is gone, and has taken her own life and I have no words for that sorrow.

Today I am grateful for: being alive; having daughters; and a son; a roof over my head; still here and wanting to be here

Sweet dreams