Food and Drink #35

kachoochoo · Dec 9, 2022

20% off a "loaded chocolate slab" that looks kinda gross

bought a new bra though with yesterday's 20% off

just saw scarfolk mentioned here, i bleeping love it, but ive not seen them mention the council christmas boy yet this year. i always think, doesn't he look like freddie mercury?

goodnight!

MaineCoonMama · Dec 9, 2022

Winners of the Comedy Wildlife Photography awards, there are some real laugh out loud pics in this article.

Leaping lion cub crowned funniest wildlife photo of 2022 — ABC News

A rare moment of feline disgrace has taken out top honours at this year's Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards. Drawing thousands of entries from professional and amateur photographers from around the world, the competition aims to celebrate the hilarity of our natural wildlife. US photographer...

apple.news

heretoreaditall2019 · Dec 9, 2022

Thank you @traumatised sideboard for our Christmas presents, I went back like a greedy goblin taking an entire used saucepan to bed (

y) and took MANY gifts from the tree. The mini haunted wooden rocking chair scared me as it’s something I imagine my creepy neighbour has?

Here at 2am so naturally have to share a whinge, behind a cut cos I was

triggered

earlier re childhood abuse but it is just a v light passing reference nothing detailed -

Lord why am I awake and not just awake but theee most awake of awakes? I was home alone this evening (husband about just out socially so not alone now thank god!!) and something happened that was super triggering - we are both fine and safe but it was horrific emotionally and I whatsapped MIL group chat to say what had happened as she is my only elder to discuss all things child rearing with and she completely invalidated how I felt and I couldn’t call and tell husband as he was driving so would either be on a motorway or country lanes from hell so didn’t want him to worry or tbh not concentrate on driving blah blah blah anyway did baby bedtime and then just crashed sleep wise but where I had such an energy deficit I must have slept the best deepest most efficient sleep of my entire life so now it’s 2am and I’m so alert and worried about how tf I’m gonna be up in 5 hours ready to start another insane day of work, which in turn makes switching off mentally impossible?! And as has been shared on this thread by others being a working mum you constantly feel like you’re on a back foot re sick days as you take them for the LO so you’ve got to be declared medically dead before you’d take them for urself so I’m just gonna have to deal.

sorry I’m not even expecting any replies or asking for advice just truly have to whinge and get this out there I am sorry!! On the bright side if burger boy comes back for round two (with a side and drink this time the cheap bastard) I am here to capture it all?! 🫣

HotesTilaire · Dec 9, 2022

heretoreaditall2019 said:
Thank you @traumatised sideboard for our Christmas presents, I went back like a greedy goblin taking an entire used saucepan to bed ( y) and took MANY gifts from the tree. The mini haunted wooden rocking chair scared me as it’s something I imagine my creepy neighbour has?

Here at 2am so naturally have to share a whinge, behind a cut cos I was triggered earlier re childhood abuse but it is just a v light passing reference nothing detailed -

Lord why am I awake and not just awake but theee most awake of awakes? I was home alone this evening (husband about just out socially so not alone now thank god!!) and something happened that was super triggering - we are both fine and safe but it was horrific emotionally and I whatsapped MIL group chat to say what had happened as she is my only elder to discuss all things child rearing with and she completely invalidated how I felt and I couldn’t call and tell husband as he was driving so would either be on a motorway or country lanes from hell so didn’t want him to worry or tbh not concentrate on driving blah blah blah anyway did baby bedtime and then just crashed sleep wise but where I had such an energy deficit I must have slept the best deepest most efficient sleep of my entire life so now it’s 2am and I’m so alert and worried about how tf I’m gonna be up in 5 hours ready to start another insane day of work, which in turn makes switching off mentally impossible?! And as has been shared on this thread by others being a working mum you constantly feel like you’re on a back foot re sick days as you take them for the LO so you’ve got to be declared medically dead before you’d take them for urself so I’m just gonna have to deal. sorry I’m not even expecting any replies or asking for advice just truly have to whinge and get this out there I am sorry!! On the bright side if burger boy comes back for round two (with a side and drink this time the cheap bastard) I am here to capture it all?! 🫣

Guaranteed you will fall asleep half an hour before you need to get up. Also MiL is an idiot.

heretoreaditall2019 · Dec 9, 2022

HotesTilaire said:
Guaranteed you will fall asleep half an hour before you need to get up. Also MiL is an idiot.

a tale as old as time and 100% agree. Also yay night shift friend

Usually I’d ask husband to do nursery drop alone but de icing car is a recent awful task so won’t. I should have listened to him today re parking in garage I’m just worried about bleeping up

u live and learn. Apple Watch has just told me it’s time to stand - not now Steve Jobs (RIP)!!

Lol thank you re MIL. I’m lucky in that she’s largely brilliant and I’m grateful to/for her in so many ways but yikes it doesn’t take much to just say solidarity comrade and leave it at that - I guess on the plus side it shows how far trauma/MH awareness has come for subsequent generations. Thank god!

Captainmouse · Dec 9, 2022

@kachoochoo your water main is on the news

Grizzlybear · Dec 9, 2022

heretoreaditall2019 said:
a tale as old as time and 100% agree. Also yay night shift friend Usually I’d ask husband to do nursery drop alone but de icing car is a recent awful task so won’t. I should have listened to him today re parking in garage I’m just worried about bleeping up u live and learn. Apple Watch has just told me it’s time to stand - not now Steve Jobs (RIP)!!

Lol thank you re MIL. I’m lucky in that she’s largely brilliant and I’m grateful to/for her in so many ways but yikes it doesn’t take much to just say solidarity comrade and leave it at that - I guess on the plus side it shows how far trauma/MH awareness has come for subsequent generations. Thank god!

Hope you are ok HTRIA, I feel like the older generations way of dealing was “oh don’t worry about it/be silly/you’re exaggerating,” ie minimising things?

I’ve had a lot of convos where I’ve explained that isn’t helpful, and the answer is always that the intentions are good but they’re trying to get you not to worry. Like I’m already worried and freaking out about it, this is the wrong answer

so glad we are more aware now.

Anyway hope you are ok now and work isnt too wild

kachoochoo · Dec 9, 2022

Captainmouse said:
@kachoochoo your water main is on the news

just saw it! mr kcc actually knew edna when he was growing up!

we are in the "it will take longer than the weekend" area

zetta buttons · Dec 9, 2022

Sorry you had that to deal with HTRIA. Sometimes you just need someone to say “I know, it’s tit. What can I do now or what can I do tomorrow that will help you?”

Validation means so, so much.

In recent years, both Mrs T and I have had MH struggles to the point that she is on medication and I have left my career. My mother cannot understand this at all. She frequently tries to get me to get her to come her off the medication. Obviously, these conversations end very badly.

She could not understand why I was so ill a couple of years ago and even now frequently tells me that she cannot understand why I, as a person who “only volunteers” and therefore should have nothing to worry about should still get ill.

We never mention the eating stuff. I suspect some of it stems from her, some from uni. But even when it was at its worst and very obvious, she never acknowledged it.

Is it generational? It is that parents don’t want to see that their children are in pain or that they struggle when they know they can’t do anything about it? It’s hard to pick it apart.

Kach, are you still getting the £65/day or is there another payment if it goes on longer? Is your shower electric and can you go anywhere at the weekend to keep warm during the day? A library/warm space etc?

Falkor · Dec 9, 2022

Grizzlybear said:
Hope you are ok HTRIA, I feel like the older generations way of dealing was “oh don’t worry about it/be silly/you’re exaggerating,” ie minimising things?

I’ve had a lot of convos where I’ve explained that isn’t helpful, and the answer is always that the intentions are good but they’re trying to get you not to worry. Like I’m already worried and freaking out about it, this is the wrong answer so glad we are more aware now.

Anyway hope you are ok now and work isnt too wild

That's so true.

In the mid-90s my dad's car was crushed by a lorry that jack-knifed and he died of his injuries three weeks later, aged just 60. I was 18 at the time and was sent back to university for my second term pretty much straight after the funeral with nothing more than a bottle of antidepressant tablets from the doctor 'to get you through the next couple of weeks'. Earlier this year I was talking to my mother about that period and said that I was surprised, looking back, that no one had suggested she and I get some counselling or bereavement support and she looked at me in genuine astonishment and said, 'But why, darling? People die all the time.' It genuinely had never crossed her mind that it might be needed.

Grizzlybear · Dec 9, 2022

Falkor said:
That's so true.

In the mid-90s my dad's car was crushed by a lorry that jack-knifed and he died of his injuries three weeks later, aged just 60. I was 18 at the time and was sent back to university for my second term pretty much straight after the funeral with nothing more than a bottle of antidepressant tablets from the doctor 'to get you through the next couple of weeks'. Earlier this year I was talking to my mother about that period and said that I was surprised, looking back, that no one had suggested she and I get some counselling or bereavement support and she looked at me in genuine astonishment and said, 'But why, darling? People die all the time.' It genuinely had never crossed her mind that it might be needed.

I am speechless! I’m so sorry @Falkor

EddieBeds · Dec 9, 2022

Tunnelly Buttons you’re right - validation is so important alongside just wanting someone to sit next to you with whatever those feelings are.

Sorry if I’ve shared this before but I think this really struck a chord:

I have a parent who says the dreaded ‘at least….’ Or my old favourite ‘so and so experienced X and look how well they’re doing’ as if we’re all robots who all process things the same way. I’ve come to the conclusion that with my parent it’s a control thing - they like everything to be neat and ordered and therefore anything that sits outside of this niggles them as they want to tick off some list they have in their head and on that list is that I’m ‘sorted’ and can’t or won’t understand trauma/mental health isn’t a linear thing.

I can clearly see how things that happened in childhood/how I was responded too didn’t help as I was always considered the problem for being too sensitive or over thinking. Don’t get me wrong there are other reasons for my anxiety and trauma besides that but it certainly left emotional scars.

zetta buttons · Dec 9, 2022

EddieBeds said:
Tunnelly Buttons you’re right - validation is so important alongside just wanting someone to sit next to you with whatever those feelings are.

Sorry if I’ve shared this before but I think this really struck a chord:

I have a parent who says the dreaded ‘at least….’ Or my old favourite ‘so and so experienced X and look how well they’re doing’ as if we’re all robots who all process things the same way. I’ve come to the conclusion that with my parent it’s a control thing - they like everything to be neat and ordered and therefore anything that sits outside of this niggles them as they want to tick off some list they have in their head and on that list is that I’m ‘sorted’ and can’t or won’t understand trauma/mental health isn’t a linear thing.

I can clearly see how things that happened in childhood/how I was responded too didn’t help as I was always considered the problem for being too sensitive or over thinking. Don’t get me wrong there are other reasons for my anxiety and trauma besides that but it certainly left emotional scars.

That is so pertinent. Thank you. It is lovely to see other people’s perspectives.

I just want to edit my post. I didn’t mean to assign 2 causal factors to my eating issues. That was reductive and irresponsible of me. I should have known better. What I meant was that I can see now that a very stressful university experience paired with seeing unhealthy eating habits at home could have triggered (in me, an already controlling, stressful person) a tendency to control food at a later date when things became uncontrollable.

I certainly did not want to blame my mother or my university for what happened. I apologise.

emm · Dec 9, 2022

MaineCoonMama said:
If any of them could draw it would be Thor. He has a feather-on-a-stick toy which usually lives in the lounge room but if he's craving attention he'll bring it into the bedroom for us to admire and thank him for. Funny bugger, he is.

@skronkywildcat I had to look up Scarfolk and now I'm intrigued! It's on my to read list now.

My little girl had thr same toy until she pulled it apart totally, she used to bring it in the bedroom in the morning to make me play with her when she was a kitten

Smol Pixel · Dec 9, 2022

I hope you don’t feel too rubbish today HTRIA.

And god I hope you get some heat soon KCC!

My mum has always been quite defensive about my MH issues (lots of “you can’t be depressed, don’t you know how bad other people have it” type responses. But! She has had a lot of therapy herself and is gradually starting to acknowledge things that were traumatic for me. (Things that happened because she had no other choice/emotional tools to deal with) It’s a slow process but the validation means so much although there’s still a long way to go and I don’t know if I’ll ever get to the point where my first instinct isn’t just to protect her feelings, but I do appreciate what she’s doing.

I got 20% off a mini planted Xmas tree today. Ffs M&S.

Cariad · Dec 9, 2022

Falkor said:
That's so true.

In the mid-90s my dad's car was crushed by a lorry that jack-knifed and he died of his injuries three weeks later, aged just 60. I was 18 at the time and was sent back to university for my second term pretty much straight after the funeral with nothing more than a bottle of antidepressant tablets from the doctor 'to get you through the next couple of weeks'. Earlier this year I was talking to my mother about that period and said that I was surprised, looking back, that no one had suggested she and I get some counselling or bereavement support and she looked at me in genuine astonishment and said, 'But why, darling? People die all the time.' It genuinely had never crossed her mind that it might be needed.

My dad died at home very suddenly from heart attack 2 days before my 21st at the end of June (1985) just before my final year at Uni - I'd gone to work at my holiday job and mum had come back to kitchen and found him collapsed on kitchen floor
She had to come and collect me from work and then I had to phone all my friends to tell them my dad had died and my birthday party was cancelled...I just went into auto pilot - his was the first funeral I'd ever attended and the GP just gave me some diazepam to "get through the day
I then had to spend the rest of the summer holidays writing up my thesis and returned to Uni none of my lecturers knew about my bereavement- this was the 80's and I never thought to tell them ...counselling was never suggested
Consequently I didn't perform as well as I should in my finals and got a 2:2 which ruled out post grad studies so instead I decided to retrain as a nurse!
I never could talk to my mum about what happened to my dad , it was too painful and it still haunts me 35 years later and I still feel numb on my birthday

BubbleDuck · Dec 9, 2022

Sending love and healing thoughts to everyone who needs them

I do think a large amount of attitude to mental health and trauma is generational. My mum had bipolar disorder and was hospitalised on and off during her life , and I remember hearing my grandparents talk about it like it was some big shameful secret , especially when she was on medication . My grandad especially had the attitude that nothing that my mum was going through could be as bad as what he’d seen/experienced during the war so why was she making a fuss , which was ironic considering a lot of her ( and my) childhood trauma came from him and his coping mechanisms.

My dad supported her as much as he could , but still doesn’t really know how to respond helpfully to mental health stuff . I opened up to him recently about struggling and how the state of my home was making things even worse and his response was to keep chipping away and to keep my head up

which was not at all helpful. But at the same time , I know that was his way of trying to be supportive .

I was lucky ( not sure if that’s the right word) because when i went into care full time, my social worker pushed to get me counselling , partially because they were trying to get me to disclose more stuff to build a criminal case against my grandad but mainly to try and help me . I know plenty of people who would have benefited so much from therapy during their formative years who are only just now accessing support , after decades of internalising stuff . Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a bit of a mess mental health wise but it’s pretty much “ just” the bog standard spicy brain burnout kind these days

I’m playing a fun game I’ve decided to call “ body, bowels or babies” . It’s quite a simple game - I have to guess if my back/stomach ache is general chronic pain, digestive issues or pregnancy related . I’m not doing that well tbh- so far I misjudged fart cramps as a braxton hicks contraction and thought a duckling must be laying awkwardly when it turned out to be general joint pain

my fort of binbags has just been collected and I’m trying not to get demoralised how bad everything still looks

I probably could have bagged up quite a few more binbags of clutter and rubbish for the size load I paid for but I massively underestimated how much I would physically struggle to do it. When I make plans in my head I still think I’m the me of 5 years ago when I was in generally good health and not pregnant and forget that these days I need about 4 parts recovery for every 1 part of effort/action .

zetta buttons · Dec 9, 2022

BubbleDuck said:
Sending love and healing thoughts to everyone who needs them

I do think a large amount of attitude to mental health and trauma is generational. My mum had bipolar disorder and was hospitalised on and off during her life , and I remember hearing my grandparents talk about it like it was some big shameful secret , especially when she was on medication . My grandad especially had the attitude that nothing that my mum was going through could be as bad as what he’d seen/experienced during the war so why was she making a fuss , which was ironic considering a lot of her ( and my) childhood trauma came from him and his coping mechanisms.

My dad supported her as much as he could , but still doesn’t really know how to respond helpfully to mental health stuff . I opened up to him recently about struggling and how the state of my home was making things even worse and his response was to keep chipping away and to keep my head up which was not at all helpful. But at the same time , I know that was his way of trying to be supportive .

I was lucky ( not sure if that’s the right word) because when i went into care full time, my social worker pushed to get me counselling , partially because they were trying to get me to disclose more stuff to build a criminal case against my grandad but mainly to try and help me . I know plenty of people who would have benefited so much from therapy during their formative years who are only just now accessing support , after decades of internalising stuff . Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a bit of a mess mental health wise but it’s pretty much “ just” the bog standard spicy brain burnout kind these days

I’m playing a fun game I’ve decided to call “ body, bowels or babies” . It’s quite a simple game - I have to guess if my back/stomach ache is general chronic pain, digestive issues or pregnancy related . I’m not doing that well tbh- so far I misjudged fart cramps as a braxton hicks contraction and thought a duckling must be laying awkwardly when it turned out to be general joint pain

my fort of binbags has just been collected and I’m trying not to get demoralised how bad everything still looks I probably could have bagged up quite a few more binbags of clutter and rubbish for the size load I paid for but I massively underestimated how much I would physically struggle to do it. When I make plans in my head I still think I’m the me of 5 years ago when I was in generally good health and not pregnant and forget that these days I need about 4 parts recovery for every 1 part of effort/action .

You are carrying ducklings. You can never, ever underestimate that.

AnnRKey · Dec 9, 2022

Lots of love to everyone who needs it today

Smol Pixel · Dec 9, 2022

zetta buttons said:
You are carrying ducklings. You can never, ever underestimate that.

Having carried my own twin pixels, you have allllll my sympathy, @BubbleDuck . Be kind to yourself.

Finally got through to DWP this morning.
Me: Hi, I just need you to send me another copy of my decision letter.
Her: Okay, I’ll get a copy of your entitlement sent out today.
Me: Great, thanks.

2 mins later. *phone rings*
Her: Hi I just spoke to you about sending a copy of your entitlement letter out but your claim was disallowed so we don’t have a claim open for you.
Me: I know, that’s why I need a copy of the letter that says that.
Her: Oh, right, your decision letter.

As though that isn’t what I’d actually asked for, ffs.