Day 151…

Monday 29th January 2018

This morning I woke up feeling quite tired but I knew if I didn’t get up soon Joseph would come and wake me up anyway. So with that in mind I got up, went to the toilet and took myself through to the front room; only to find that Joseph and Nana/Mum had gone to her bedroom to (I assume) try and sleep. I continue to the kitchen and grab myself two Apple and Raisin Weetabix and make myself a brew. Plonking myself on the sofa, scrolling through my phone and then putting “Friends” on Netflix.

I sit munching my cereal and sipping my tea whilst “Friends” plays on TV. After one episode I decide to head to the bathroom to use the loo and shower. As I go through Joseph comes out looking for me, I explained I was heading for a shower and would join him in the front room soon. So in the shower listening and singing along to the beautiful songs of Timo de Jong. A lovely dutch friend of mine whom I adore very much. It has been a while since I listened to his music and I felt today I needed to. I needed to be flooded with memories from Convoi and other things, people and places. Out dried and dressed, time to crack on with my day. Joseph was quite hyper this morning, fully of energy and mischief.

Joseph helped Mum prep dinner before she put it in the slow cooker. Honestly you cannot do anything without Joseph when he is around; he wants to be part of everything. Which is both good and bad I suppose… good as it aids in his learning and cognitive skills, bad as he then just mucks about and it takes twice as long and makes twice as much mess.

It wasn’t long before we were sorting lunch, eating it and heading to group. We pull up and Nana/Mum say “Come on the Joseph” to which he replies “I’m coming Nana, chill your boots!” 😂😂 cheeky little monkey. Like always we were greeted by smiling faces and people asking us where we were last week, asking if Joseph is feeling better and whether or not he had a good birthday. Shirley then handed up a birthday card for Joseph, I put it in my back so he could open it later.

Group was really BUSSYYYYY today, as in there were no seats for us to sit on and they had to put the sign on the outside door basically saying no more kids allowed today. So with no seats Mum and I stood chatting to Leigh, then Rhian introduced me to her sister and niece. We then took a seat at the play-doh table and played with Joseph.

Joseph got an invite to a little boy from groups party in a couple of weeks, so hopefully he is free to go to that. Sipping at our tea Mum and I took it in turns to play with Joseph inbetween talking to some of the Mum’s. Graham and Marshall arrived a little later into group. Marshall is well away with his walking now, physio has clearly paid off. I stole James from Shirley for a quick cuddle but it didn’t last long as we had to leave early for Joseph to go to football. So we rushed our way out the door and round to Nursery, to get there and be told we are an hour early😒.

Are you joking me!? An hour early… we just left group early to be here on time haha. It turns out football doesnt start until 3.20pm not 2.20pm! Ugh. So we parked the car up at home, got in and I sliced up some Apple for Joseph. We sat playing with his many diggers and various other vehicles; then he opened his new toy clock. Just as Mum was explaining the different bits of the clock I realised it was time to leave! So yet again we rushed out the door at headed to football for a second time.

We took Joseph through to his classroom and one of the ‘Aunties’ came to take him out – but this set him off on a mini melt down. He was crying saying he wanted me to go with him, when I explained I couldn’t he asked if Nana could go with him – bless him. To be fair we were under the impression we could stay from the information we were told but alas we couldn’t. I managed to calm him down, then I explained to Joseph we needed to go and sort Jasper out and then we would be right back. I asked him if he wanted to put his wellies on and have a try – to which he agreed. So off he went quite the thing. Mum and I made our way to reception to pay for Football then we were told we could watch through the fence if we wanted.

Mum and I had a quick peek to see if he had calmed down or not, he was fine running and kicking the ball smiling; so we headed home. We were literally in all of 5 minutes before we had to get our coats and shoes back on to pick him up. It was raining cats and dogs for the short time we were indoors, but luckily stopped by the time we had to leave again. Football was only 30minutes, we probably wasted 5-10 calming him down and another 5-10 paying and peeking.

We arrived to pick him up and he was full of smiles! “Did you enjoy it spud?” to which he replied “Yeah, my scored a goal“… “Wooohoo, well done buddy“. We put on his wellies and walked home as a trio, chatting about his time at football. Homeward bound, we arrived home to find Uncle Adam was home😁. So we told him all about Josephs goal at Football before settling on the sofa with a cup of tea to watch Swashbucklers.

Nana left to go and get Datch, so Joseph and I sat cuddled up watching telly, well actually I was watching Ren Stedman on YouTube🙈. By this point Joseph was shattered and trying to sleep, but it was too late to let him nap; however trying to keep him awake was a challenge. With just me trying to keep him awake it was proving difficult. Nana and Datch were taking longer than normal – turns out they went to the pharmacy and there was no pharmacist so they had to wait but of course I didn’t know this at the time.

I tried keeping him awake by singing, by asking what was on TV, trying to use snapchat filters…

Nothing was working. Joseph kept nodding off and everytime I woke him he had a hissy fit, life with a 3 year old ay?

Anyway finally Nana and Datch arrived home, and they helped me jolly Joseph along. It’s much easier with two (or more) people to keep a toddler/young child awake. Quick question: Joseph is 3 now… so do I refer to him as a toddler still or a young child, or something completely different?

Datch and I played with Joseph until his parents came to collect him. Naturally when he heard them pulling up outside he ran to hide somewhere…

After a little bit of chatting Rachael, Chris and Joseph headed home leaving Mum, Eddie, Adam and I to plate up dinner. Jacket Potato with Chilli (con carne) well with Cheese and Beans for me! Yummy. We all sat eating dinner whilst watching ITVs The Chase on +1 followed by the usual aray of soap operas.

I was attempting to do some online banking but the app was down, so I clicked the link to see if everything was running okay or not – it said everything was working fine; which it clearly wasn’t. So I decided to load up my laptop and log in to internet banking from there – what a shock; an error message saying servers are down and they will let me know when they are up and running. Fuming! Although it seems trivial, since these new meds I have been even more snappy and short tempered; so yes it pissed me off big time. All I was trying to do was check my balance and maybe swap some money from one account to the other.

All gone tits up, so I plugged my phone into my laptop to save my photos on my laptop. This then lead to me looking through old photos and videos: old college photos, new born pictures of Joseph, friends, foes, exs – a whole aray. All I focused on was photos and videos of Joseph, oh how tiny and sweet he was😍.

Here is a photo of me with a lamb from one of my days at Farming World.

I stay up until after 11pm watching lots of videos I had recorded over the years, some brought back some great memories other not so much – but its all a part of my story and my life.

I enjoyed watching a few clips from my first Convoi de fête… still to date the best one I have been to.

I lay in bed wide awake again for an hour or two before dropping off. During that time I wrote some of this blog, spent some time on snapchat and thought alot about my depression.

Recently I have become so fed up of living with depression, it has been 8 long years; 3 years with professional help and I am still no closer to feeling happy. I hate the fact that Norman is who I am now, I am no longer ‘me’. It’s just so shit.

I am fully aware I should be happy and thankful that I am here to live another day; and most days I am thankful for that, but some days I am not and thats scary. Some days I know there is a light at the end of the tunnel, it might just be a very light fucking tunnel but other days everything is pitch black not even a glimmer of light.

Anyway enough of my depressive shit. I am thankful for the people I have around me, and the people that are truly there for me; few as they may be they are plenty for me.

Until tomorrow people.