Ferrrr burfumpt schumblerp.....

Ever felt like that? Like your whole brain ( that I actually typed as bnria, so muddled is mine) is a big old fluffy mass of uselessness? You open your mouth to say something intelligent ( or at least hope to) and complete nonsense comes out, or crying. Crying comes out when I think I am about to ask the time.
" Excuse me, do you have the ......." wail, burp, cry.
" Would you pass me the, um, that...er, that round thing you put your sandwich on?"
I haver reached the point where when asked a question that is too difficult to answer ( like say, What's your name?) I just give a hopeless look and say, with all honestly " I have no idea, I can't speak anymore, stop talking to me"
I am falling desperately short on most everything I need to function.
I might even type this and NOT correct it so you can see just how fumblingly stupid I am at the moment. Maybe just a paragraph, so you can get the gist of my idiocy.
Sophie is here, well in the vicinity. Having given her notice in at her job ( and home of course) in 2 weeks she will lvea ( that should say leave but my brain farted in fear and made it come out like that) and then what? Oh, we'll be on our holidays ( having been on a plane and stayed on it for TEN HOURS) so ....it'll be Christmas too and she will be.....
It's ok, SHE FUCKING KNOWS! ALRIGHT???? That's OK then. We'll see the dcotor ( quaint that I typed that wrong, makes him seem as real as the rest of us to be a dcotor) on monday and he will help one of us, preferably me because Sophie...she's ABSOLUTELY FINE, for God's sake shut up.
I went out with my friend today, I did ask her ( Jane, my friend) what I would do without her because we get stuff off our chests, she has TWO teenage girls, not quite as mad as Sophie but every bit as teenagerish and mouthy, she has a stupid ex husband and she can tell me about him as often as she likes, I can cry and tell her everything...and when we got back from shopping and were waiting in the car we played a new game. It's the game with no name as yet, but it starts with me going.." OW!" and then pulling up my right sleeve and saying
" WATCH!!!! LOOK!!! Feel it, no really ( I insist!))...FEEL it, ARGH look! !" and she does because she is my friend and she is polite. Then we watch and feel my arm as it changes shape and colour and as it gets HOTTER than hell. This one is painful and ugly and itchy and so sore. Poor me.
Sophie has ( she says) found a place to live, just 12 hours showed us both that there is no going back, she can't live with us, we would all be insane within days ( hours /minutes/ at the very idea) She will find work but who can tell how long it will last. I think it helps me a little to know for sure that she can't help many of the things she does. An example, she called yesterday ( as she does) to tell me how proud of her I would be. Here's why.....
She works in a large, old, somewhat grand hotel, she cleans. She was cleaning on the 2nd floor and by some quirk, apparently, if you are in one particular spot in floor 2, you can hear, as clear as a bell, people on the first floor, talking. ( you know what's coming, right?) So she was cleaning and she heard 2 girls she works with talking, on the floor below, about her. Not singing her praises or saying anything nice. Oh dear.
So..here's the bit. She didn't go and smack them in the mouth ( YEAY!) She just opened her mouth and yelled ( from the 2nd floor of sort of almost grand but already expensive Hotel)
" I want you to know I can hear every fucking word you bitches are saying about me!!!!!" ( I should type that in caps but the F word....let's not shout that one)
" Sophie" said I " what do you think the guests thought about that?"
"Oh they wouldn't have heard me"
Then she went on to say how she made sure that the rest of the staff knew about these girls, and that she made sure they knew, without a doubt that she was not pleased. Then she came here.
She is amazed that since she handed in her notice, no-one has given her a hard time at work, no more nagging or correcting or anything....fancy that!
( I can almost hear them counting down the days until peace is restored and calmness is once again commonplace in the work force.)
The thing is, she has no clue, not even a hint of anything being amiss. She honestly thinks that all this is perfectly fine.
I have wept and howled over this the past few days because every mother wants her child to be loved and wanted. All I see is the Sophie effect. When she was 5 she would run into the playground and it was like watching the reaction you get when pouring dish soap onto a pan of oily water.......those kids scattered in fear at the sight of her. She still has that effect......it's terror, or something. Even when she is on a high it is exhausting, when she is angry it is breathtakingly terrifying.
Lately I have been able to see the glory that is Sophie, she has the most endearing qualities that are clearer to see and easier to appreciate from a distance. When she lived with us it was a relentless battle, every day, every night was like being slammed into a wall. I couldn't wait to see her last night and when she arrived I was so afraid of what could happen I froze. When she snuggled on the sofa, having been fed and given a hot water bottle ( source of much comfort did you all go out and buy one yet?) she said, in her dear voice ( when used at level 4 and under) " You have no idea how good it feels to be here, in a home, instead of that place"
And the thing is, I DO know. I WANT her to feel like that and I want more than anything for her to be able to live here and be a part of this family, to leave only when she is going to be married and settled. I am so sad and so angry that this one girl of mine is struck with this curse that makes it impossible to be here with me. I have to turn her out and make her face the world because she is unable or unwilling to compromise even a little.
Whatever the cause, it just is this way. My doctor sat and said over and over again that I must not give in and let her come home. I have to keep repeating over and over that SHE has made herself jobless and homeless. She HAD a place to live and was safe and fed. She HAD a job ( two actually) and now she doesn't. SHE chose that. When I asked her why, after being told repeatedly not to hand in her notice until she had a new job and a new place to live, when after promising to save every penny for a deposit on a flat, she had frittered every penny away, she had no answer, except " because I can't bloody stand it anymore"
The thing is, I can't either. I can't keep picking up the pieces and handing her another life to smash. I have to stand firm and keep repeating myself. The fact that she is 18 makes it marginally easier to stick with it. Not much though.

The new car is ready. £230 ..which is still much less than fixing the old one would have been, it will cost much less that the old one to run, it's just £80 more than we got for the old one and then we need another £60 to tax it.

I haven't secured a way to get to the airport yet ( 4 hours away, probably the bus) I haven't secure a way to get from the airport in LA to the hotel yet, my brain is farting and my heart is flagging. I need a fairy Godmother. Or a holiday to give me the strength to arrange the holiday! Other than that it's all just hunky dory.
Do you want to hear about my thanksgiving dinner of the mutilated kind? Maybe another day, I'm all written out and ready for a nap.
Before I go though, these make life worth living again.....I have never quite been so enamoured of a pair of slippers...

But these are a little piece of heaven on my feet. I love them.