The title of this post is taken from the song A Long December by Counting Crows and seems to sum this week up perfectly although, now I have started thinking about it, I realise there have been some nice moments.

I have been ridiculously busy at work, feeling overwhelmed and it seems that my email inbox is like the fairy tale The Magic Porridge Pot, it just constantly refills. For very email I deal with three more seem to pop in. I have come to dread the accompanying chime. My shoulders have been hurting because I have been tensely hunched over my desk, working at the speed of light, for seven hours at a time. I am not very good at taking breaks but I need to get up and stretch every now and again before I completely seize up.

I had a day off on Tuesday and was looking forward a a little rest but my husband had booked a man in to clean the carpets, he was due to arrive at 8am. Groan. Obviously the rooms had to be cleared of clutter (thank goodness for my March decluttering efforts, see my post So Much Stuff! ) All the windows had to be left wide open all day even though it was freezing. I messaged my friend to have a moan and she invited me over for a cup of tea. How lovely to have a friend who knows you are chilly and proffers a heated gilet as soon as you arrive.

My dad called me later, in pain with toothache. Having had the most awful, ongoing dental infection a couple of years ago I have great empathy for anyone suffering like this. My parents can no longer get to the NHS dentist and have started using the lovely but very expensive private dentist in our village. Fortunately she was able to fit Dad in for the following day and I arranged to spend the afternoon sitting with Mum. I had some numbing gel that helped while Dad waited to be seen. Poor Dad, he really looks after his teeth, flossing and using interdental brushes but has been beset with problems for years. The dentist extracted the tooth, the second in six months. It was at the back of his mouth so he doesn’t have a visible gap. Mum didn’t really want me at their house and kept telling me to go home which can be a little hurtful but I just have to remind myself that she doesn’t mean it. Or perhaps she does, I hope not.

I then received a letter from the NHS telling me I was being fined for not paying for my migraine mediation months and months ago. I have paid for my prescriptions my entire adult life but the pharmacist mistakenly put my migraine meds in with my HRT which I had pre-paid for. How I was supposed to know this is a mystery. My husband had collected the sealed paper bag and I didn’t open it for weeks. I tried explaining this to the NHS appeals team but it was like speaking to a brick wall and I paid the fine which was around £50.

My daughter came home from university for a week yesterday. It was lovely to see her although as soon as she was through the door she said her laptop isn’t working well. I am hoping that a replacement battery will do the trick. We have been spending the evenings watching a documentary on Netflix called HellCamp: Teen Nightmare. Parents spent $16,000 in 1989 to send their wayward teens off to hike in the Utah desert for months at a time or to be stuck aboard a boat for a year. Some children were used as slave labour . The most famous participant in one of these programmes was Paris Hilton. Thousands of American children still attend these camps despite the recent bad publicity. It is nice to snuggle up with my daughter and watch something together, usually while eating a giant bag of Chocolate Buttons.

So not the best week but, looking back, nothing majorly bad has happened. There are so many people in the world suffering terribly at the moment and my trivial problems are inconsequential in comparison. I have just been feeling tired, cold, headachy and a little frazzled. I have probably also been watching the news too much. The spring will soon be here and it will be nice to feel the sun for a change.

Thank you for reading

Samantha

Cover Photo by Dagmara Dombrovska on Unsplash