A bit of Nelson in the rain...

Losing the food wars...

As I may have mentioned before, the Old Woman does the food shopping for the household. Mainly because she's retired has loads of time, the Man is at work all the time and I cant leave the house without him. And bloody hell doesn't she balls it up...

The Old Woman was born in the 1930s, (shes old enough to be my grandmother), and she still has his strange mental mentality that the boats aren't getting through. Now I'm not the kind of new generation kid who lives on crisps, chocolate and fast food, honestly, but I will still rather buy more food than I need rather than less. I honestly don't understand the point of buying less. I don't live in the 3rd world, I can afford it and most importantly I need it so why the hell not? Well apparently she does not share this new world view.

Most of the time shes quite reasonable, she gets the fact that the Man and I don't live in the 1940's and want curries, pasta and those strange bent yellow jungle fruit things. As does she herself, surprisingly. But quantity is a serious issue. She buys things on offer, things we don't even need, or more importantly wont eat, but when asked to go and buy cheese or cracker bread for example, she will come back with the cheapest, smallest amount she can physically get her hands on, which means it runs out ridiculously quickly, then she gets all pissy saying she "only bought it the other day, and didn't it go fast!" Yes it did, because it was a portion designed or an anorexic ant, not fully grown humans.

The Old Woman also has a very frustrating and yet hilarious motion that if SHE has been out and eaten "a big lunch" which I believe in her terminology consists of food that's actually been cooked, rather than placed between two pieces of thin bread, it means that WE have eaten too, and therefore only need "a light dinner". It is weird and funny and yet a really crappy ongoing problem because I only eat one meal a day most days (since I have such an irregular sleeping pattern), and then mix that with the very little food in the house that actually makes a meal and then imagine shes not cooking for all 3 of us, I'm stuffed, not literally.. Like right now.

There is barely anything around to make a meal for one. Which I would be quite happy to do if there was the ingredients around to do it.

I cannot go out and get food on my own.

I haven't eaten today.

The last ready meals were already eaten before I got up despite the fact that I told the Old Woman to go and get more only the other day, to which the reply was that she didn't need to do that because we were "OK for now".

And in response to my problem? Laughter. "Ohh! I thought there was a ready meal in the freezer outside! Ohhh dear!!" Giggle, giggle.

Yeah, its bloody hilarious that I might have to go without my only meal of the day...

Introducing, the acceptables...

I did promise that I would get round to explaining this eventually so here goes. There are perhaps only 4 or 5 people that I am socially comfortable with, and therefore the only people I talk to. But like with normal people too, my comfort levels, ability, and desire, to socialise or when socialising with even these few people goes up and down depending on my mood.

Firstly, there is of course the Man...

Who I live with and follow around like a lost puppy. But because he works stupid hours in central London, by driving into town, parking for the day and getting the rain to Paddington, most days hes just too tired or busy to do absolutely anything. Poor bloke. And I must note the only one of the acceptables who I trust to take me anywhere.

Trust (Not literally, just to not put me in awkward social situations) - 10/10

Social Comfort Level - 10/10

Then there is the Old Woman...

Who I also live with bu only technically because we don't see each other about that often being that I live in my bedroom, and shes always out. The Old Woman, as her may suggest, is old enough to be my grandparent and though "seemly" tries to understand my social phobia and the way my mind thinks, does not seem to understand the severity or the complexity of the problem. I do sometimes wonder if she either thinks I'm just being difficult or she still thinks its 1940 and I can be cured by hanging upside down on a Thursday with custard in my nose, either that or a nice padded cell. I have many arguments with the Old Woman. Most of which about her love of having many many guests over spontaneously, sometimes several times a week, which causes me to freak out completely, cry and hide. Something of which she still fails to understand in the slightest.

Trust (Not literally, just to not put me in awkward social situations) - 4/10

Social Comfort Level - 6/10

The Man's Brother, is another acceptable...

He comes by occasionally from town where he lives to discuss computer things, taxes, and mostly his financial and family situation. Sometimes to borrow things (that are his anyway, and live in our garage due to a space issue of his) or garden things, like chop down dying trees. He is currently in the process of divorcing his wife of 20 (?) years, since she continuously stabs him in the back and takes all she can from him, she has been stealing for many years. They haven't been happy for a long time but him getting another women pregnant clinched it. His 3 daughters aren't much better. All teenagers, two of which (the eldest and the youngest) have babies, but neither are still with the fathers. The middle one is a bit of a party animal but that has calmed down a bit since she found out she was diabetic and now has to take insulin every day. To top it off, he owns the Inland Revenue a stupidly massive sum of money into the hundreds of thousands. And the women he got pregnant is keeping the baby, but they aren't together, and so now come February he will have another one to worry about. You can't help but feel bad for him. (With no mean to sound like I'm on any kind of high horse, I do tend to find the man's brothers family rather chavish. Or very chavish actually, and you can sort of see why...)

Trust (Not literally, just to not put me in awkward social situations) - 3/10

Social Comfort Level - 5/10

And then there are the Man's friends, Fixy Man and Football Man...

Fixy Man lives in the same street in town near the Man's Brother with his wife and three teenage sons. He, as his name suggests, is a mechanic and he fixes things for us, cars, lawn mowers, motorbikes...etc, for free. (We try and pay him but he doesn't let us.) Another lovely guy. Unfortunately he recently has had an operation on his leg and has been out of action for a while. He was under the impression that the operation would cure his problem and he would recover but it doesn't look that way anymore, so fixy mans fixing days may be numbered.

Trust (Not literally, just to not put me in awkward social situations) - 0/10

Social Comfort Level - 4/10

Football Man we see less often. He also live in town with his wife and triplet teenage sons. he comes here mainly to drink beers and watch football (actual football, not American football) when important (so I'm told) matches are on. I am a nice enough person about stuff like this; I think its sweet that they get together and have a little play date to watch games, so there's no whining from me about such things.

Trust (Not literally, just to not put me in awkward social situations) - 0/10

Social Comfort Level - 1/10

All of these people are quite a bit older than me, and all but one of which are male...bizarre I know, but older males seems to be the type of person I'm comfortable with. Yes, I'm aware of the creepiness that it suggests, but its for these 4 reasons.
1. I'm frightened of teenagers and people my own age...I don't know why.
2. I generally find females rather bitchy and harder to be around.
3. The relationship with my mother was fraught with difficulty and hate, whereas with my father love and ease.
4. Being that my main social companion is the Man, and I have no friends, and most of his friends are men, it just happens to have worked out that way.

So, no creepiness I can assure you.

Good news, Nelson returns!

Bad news, I didn't get any good footage of him. The only two videos I did get only lasted 2 seconds each and I have no idea why. So here's a still image of him instead that I've cut slightly to fit the page...

What I have learnt about life this week...

I have recently been going back over my family tree on ancestry.co.uk, which I had abandoned previously last year, (out of boredom if I'm honest), but for some reason its perked my interested again, and I'm back in the game...with all the retired women desperately searching for something to do with their lives. (No offence to anyone who does enjoy that sort of thing, I mean I do it myself for gods sake, but it does seem to be mostly women in their later years on those sorts of websites for some reason, I suppose most people my age have a life...but I digress). Before I could start myself up again, I had to log in, which I hadn't done for nearly a whole year. I couldn't for the life of me remember my password...or my username...and not even which email I used to register (I seem to collect emails) so, if you understand the basic function of a situation like this, IE forgot username, they will email it to you, forgot password they will email it to you, you will understand I seemed pretty screwed.

I can be a bit passive aggressive to support service people (online obviously, I wouldn't be able to speak to them by phone or in person), but then who isn't? The point of you being in a support service section of any company or website is usually that something has gone wrong. Yes, they like to pretend that people ring them up or email them to say what a wonderful service they are providing, but really, no one ever does that. No, you talk to a support service person for negative reasons, which makes you angry and frustrated before you've even started the conversation. But I thought I was quite polite, pity that it didn't seem to get me anywhere though.

This is how the email played out...

Customer

Is there anyway you could help me access my account by reminding me of my password or the email I used without me remembering either one?

I have many many emails, and many many passwords for different things, and since I haven’t used this account in a while, I have no idea which email I used, which password I used or what my username was. I tried several I thought I might have used, but no luck.

I can give you my name, my address, the last digits of the debit card I used previously when I had membership to this website, answers to any questions I may have selected when I set up the account. Anything, just not the email I used, the password or username. Please help me. It took me a very long time to make my family tree and I’ll be gutted if I’ve lost it.

Now remember, I DO NOT KNOW which email I used...which is what I have actually stated above, and therefore obviously are using a different email to communicate with...

Member Solutions

Ancestry.co.uk

We appreciate your message.

I unfortunately could not find an account under this email address or name. If you have signed up with a different email address or post may I ask you to send it to me so that I can help you further. You can also call us at 800 404 9723 and we would be glad to assist in resolving this situation.

If there is anything else with which we might assist you, please let us know.

To which I replied with...

Customer
My message was either not read correctly or ignored completely. There is no sense in telling me there is no such account under this address, because I don't know what email I used, that's the point...
Could someone actually read my initial message please.

I did not get a reply in the time it took me to go through all the emails I could remember, with no luck and then attempted getting into as many old Internet accounts as I could think of, one of which had my old email address in my account information, which I then got into and found my ancestry registration. The reason I didn't do that before was because I stupidly thought it would be much quicker to just politely ask ancestry for some help accessing my account.

I know for most people this will be the most boring post in the world, as they have to deal with stuff like this continuously on a daily basis, but as a young person who doesn't generally have to deal with support services of any kind, I have learnt a valuable lesson, comedians aren't aways making crap up to sound funny, some of it is real.

How ironic...

...that given what I said in the last post about him returning every night, nelson didn't return last night. Well he may have done, WildCam's Cammy senses were tingling but I didn't actually get any shots of him...


Oh well, now mousey video as promised...

...and I thought I may as well post the really blurry video of nelson taken from the other day in case anyone is interested...

I think perhaps tonight I will move the camera back to the compost heap. I have a feeling that's going to be a better place for it to be in this weather.

He returns time and time again, if only I could actually get a decent shot of him...

Well Happy New Year I suppose. Actually it wasn't horrific. For the last two years I've been completely alone for New Year, at home, doing nothing. The man and the old woman (the other person I live with) usually go to the man's brothers house for New Year (which I just cant do because there's just too many people and I panic), but once again, as I said at the end of the last post, hes in it up to his neck at the moment (and again i promise i will expand on that at one point) so no new year at this this time. So they stayed here and I wasn't alone, but still nothing exciting happened.

Any-who on a much more bouncier and joyful note, I shall update you on the goings on of WildCam. I abandoned the idea of putting the camera in the trees facing the lane...it caused  too much stress, stress of it being stolen or spotted by paranoid neighbours thinking I'm trying to spy on them, and it was a bloody nightmare trying to get it attached to that particular tree. So bugger it, its back down the garden now and because of the bizarre weather at the moment, WildCam's lens keeps getting wet and blurry and there doesn't seem to be much I can do about that. But foxy woxy continues to return each night. I have dubbed him with the name Nelson. (If anyone else watches Mongrels on BBC3 they will know where the seemingly random name came from). And not only that but we also have a new addition to the WildCam clan. A mousey. Ok, perhaps not the most exciting creature in the world, but it was a very pleasent surprise to get a little English feild mouse bouncing along in the grass. I will post that video tomorrow, hopefully Ill get some better shots of Nelson by then too.