My office job is going really well. It’s taken me a while to say that because I’m afraid of jinxing it but… It is? I also feel a huge sense of achievement when I remember that the office is located a street over from the fire-hazard deathtrap of a flat I lived in in 2010, and opposite the hotel where I was once a very bad waitress. Now I have a stable job and a house. I’m so insanely grateful.
I was told by a therapist that my OCD has improved a lot.
I was told by a mental health professional today that although I still have a lot of anxiety, my OCD improvement has come on in leaps and bounds. And looking back over the past few years, I… see it? Blows my mind in some ways. You can barely tell I have it now. I just wish I could go back in time and erase all the horrible, gross situations it caused.
On the first day of Hannukah, 15 people including a child and a Holocaust survivor were killed for being Jewish. A Muslim man intervened to save lives which is good but the situation is still horrible, horrible, horrible.
On the second day of Hannukah Jewish-American film director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele were murdered by their own son. More horror. “President” Trump reacted to this with a post so obnoxious, crude, nasty and egocentric it boggles the mind. Nothing will happen, and he will face no consequences.
I had a busy weekend. I gave most of my old Barbie dolls to a child of my acquaintance (kept Mermaid Barbie), saw The Muppet Christmas Carol in a historic building, put the Christmas Tree up. When I was a kid my family used to celebrate Christmas over several consecutive days, which I think was a leftover from the Hannukahs my mum used to have. But who knows?
I wouldn’t have been able to go anyway, of course. I wrote too many anti-trump articles as a journalist. But this final nail in the coffin breaks my heart. I keep telling myself, wait until the fascist regime is over and then you can return to New York, the city you’re so in love with. But what if that day never comes? What if I never see New York again?
Today I ticked an item off my bucket list and went to Alton Towers, the most popular (I think?) theme park in Britain!
I am a big fan of theme parks! I love learning everything possible about them and I follow many theme park vlogging channels on YouTube. (Theme Park Worldwide is my favourite.) Trouble is… I don’t actually like rides very much. I don’t like being too high up or too fast. And I used up all my thrill ride mojo when I rode Thor and Gold Rush on a rainy trip to Drayton Manor last week.
So I mostly stuck with the down-to-earth attractions at Alton, notably the aquarium!
My favourite thing here was the starfish (not actually fish, as it turns out). You could watch them very slowly feeding and you could touch them.
Honestly the aquarium was worth the price of admission on its own.
Forbidden Valley looks amazing! I would never have the courage to go on Nemesis Reborn but it’s STUNNING.
Toxicator is the ride that famously had a sewage pipe burst under it on its first day. It’s another one that’s a stunning feat of ride creation but I would never in a million years go on it.
In the gardens we found a mole! Just a mole casually digging holes in the daytime! I had literally never seen a living mole before!
The only thrill ride I went on (unless the Runaway Mine Train counts? It was very fun) was Hex. It’s based on the legend of the Chained Oak which I’ve always been fascinated by.
X-Sector is another part of the park that just blows the mind with its aesthetic. Here’s the Smiler and Oblivion, neither of which I would ever ride.
I did sort of want to ride Wicker Man. I’d read a lot about it and psyched myself up for it throughout the day. But unfortunately, the park closed at 4 (we thought it was 5) so it was closed by the time we got to it. It’s great to photograph though.
If you’re British you’ve probably already heard of the campaign to fly English flags everywhere to “protest” migrants being in the UK. It is deeply upsetting and upsetting the people around me as well.
Unfortunately one particularly obnoxious flag is now flying in my home village. I looked at it and I thought how desperately unfair it was that that flag is allowed to be plastered over every city as a “you’re not welcome” to migrants, while the victims of the Pulse massacre got their flag painted over as a warning to LGBT people.
So I found a small flag I got from the Leicester Pride event and wrote on it.
Then me and Dave, god bless him, went out in the dead of night and attached the Pride flag to the lamppost.
Went past the same lamppost today and the Pride flag was gone. I was disappointed but not surprised. I wonder what happened to it. Did anyone read the message?
what im learning from my “potentially traumatic event that didnt traumatize you” post is that everybody in the world has a story about almost drowning. hell personally i’ve got four of em. youd think this would make people want to go in water less but no. human beings love their wet and cannot be stopped.
reading this smugly thinking “*I* don’t have an almost drowning story” and then realizing in horror that I do have an almost drowning story and have thought about it in the very back of my mind on a regular basis for the past 25 years
I was once catcalled while wearing sunglasses and had to stop and ask them what they were saying. Very embarassing for everyone involved (probably more for them).
It’s the 20th anniversary of New Who today… and I’m still so sad about losing my job that I can’t make a gifset like I planned. I wanted to say at least one thing about it though. Doctor Who completely changed my life in many ways when it aired back in 2005, I’ll always love it.
Here’s what I looked like the year Season One aired. (Ignore the date on the camera, it was never right.) A lot has changed. As least my hair isn’t as terrible now as it was then.
