Woefully under-purchased

 I am housesitting again.

And when Simon took me for a grocery shop, because he was paying, I woefully under shopped so as to not take advantage.

Seriously understocked on junk food. 

It is not the mood (am I using that correctly - I know, I am too old for trying to speak the youth speak).

Apart from being in Simon’s house while he is galavanting, to keep his one eyed cat company, I have been up to very little.

Caught up with Midget for lunch last week after several aborted attempts.  It was nice.  Adjø may be a bit pretentious for me though.

Otherwise just pottering.  Playing some Dark Urge style Baldur’s Gate 3.  And having anxiety about stupid things.

Unexpected resolutions

After spending an hour on hold with Orcon trying to get things resolved just to get disconnected without having talked to anyone, I made a complaint on www.tdr.org.nz (which I had assumed was probably utterly toothless).  Seems it must actually have some teeth as in less than a day it led to Orcon not only fixing what I had asked for but also offering a refund that I had not even considered asking for.

So that was a pleasant surprise.

Otherwise my day of cleaning before my flat inspections tomorrow has followed tradition by failing to include any cleaning….

BG3 completed in the least satisfying way possible

On Monday I had a medical appointment following up o my blood tests from last week.  Congratulations on how good my results were.  Blood pressure also good.  Weight down a bit more, definitely the lightest I have been in a decade.  Some flummoxed responses when discussing what lifestyle things I had done to achieve these results.

Go my stupid body and weird borderline paradoxical responses to my terrible choices.

Today my very poorly managed playing through of Baldur’s Gate 3 reached the end.  After messing up many parts I got to an ending where I seem to have bypassed the big final battle that I assume is normally there, by having my love interest go suicide bomber… which is not the most satisfying way for a game to end.  And then on the docks after two of my party members caught fire, one burning away fatally.  So a bit of a bummer ending all around.  Combined with how terrible a job of saving people I had managed in general, I have to consider it a rather unsuccessful play through.

Also contacted my old psychodynamic psychotherapist today to get a bit of history information for my current clinical psychologist, which was slightly weird.  Reminded me that I have an amount of sentiment toward my psychotherapist - I quite enjoyed him as a person.

Don’t use Orcon or 2degrees, they are bad companies

Last weekend I found out Orcon was still billing me as if I hadn’t left.  I messaged their automated system that said it would be sorted in one working day.

Come Wednesday I realised it wasn’t being sorted so I rang and after a long time on hold spoke to someone who sounded like he was getting it sorted.

Though just as I had to leave because my building fire alarm went off said that I had to return my router to them as it was leased.  I recall that when it was sent to me I was explicitly told it was mine to keep, but apparently retroactively declaring things leased is a thing Orcon/2degrees is becoming a bit infamous for.

Then come Friday I got an email showing that while I was not being billed forever into the future anymore they were still billing me for almost a month after when I stopped being a customer, as if I had been using their service through the day of the phone call complaining about the inappropriate billing.

Being that their customer portal would no longer let me look at my own usage history from the very day the change over happened, some of their systems definitely knew I had left correctly.  This is an error of their billing system.  They are also blocking me from deleting my automatic payment information, so I am going to have to contact my bank and see about blocking Orcon at that end.

I am very unamused.

So, stay away from Orcon/2degrees.  They screw over customers for shits and giggles.

How much of the last couple of days I have spent lying on the floor not having enough motivation to do anything suggests that my depression is being more actual depression than usual.  I do not approve.

I have Baldur’s Gate 3 that I intend to be playing.  But effort.

 Blood tests results have once again shown that I shouldn’t bother trying.

Having given up caring about my diabetes and eating extremely badly over the winter, yesterday’s blood tests show my HbA1c has dropped by 21 since the start of April.  It is still high but is much closer to where is is supposed to be, in complete disregard to my utter lack of healthy choices.

This following after it constantly climbing the whole time I was eating sensibly.

Hrm

 Have realised that I am not doing okay.

I spent the whole ride home from dinner with Simon, Joe and Firmin ranting at poor sweet Firmin about stuff.  Significantly about how my therapy is going.

I have got very in my head about what a bad patient I am.  Client? Patient? Whatever the modern terminology is for the crazy on the couch is.  Having spoken to the guy every week since March, the amount his report seemed to need to crib off a letter from a psychiatrist who had literally only met me once has me feeling I have been doing it wrong.

And from there the spiral of blame and self recrimination.

Because I do me.

Mostly haven’t had the motivation to do anything, or the mental space to take much in.  So watching YouTube.  Mostly reaction videos about Nimona so I can agree with good takes, judge bad takes and then forget all of it within minutes….

Such productive use of time.

Oturehua happened

Thursday the 3rd I had an unpleasant surprise of a stranger letting himself into my flat through the slightly dodgy lock.  It was unpleasant.  Would really help if other tenants actually left the security doors shut so people couldn’t just wander the stairs in the first place.

On the 4th I got up early for Baldur’s Gate 3’s release to get a bit of play in before heading off to Oturehua in the afternoon with Oliver and his lot for his annual birthday trip.

We got past Ranfurly, and ran out of sunlight, before there started to be snow on the ground.  We got there to it being very cold, the house having been empty since March and having fairly demolished rat poison in every room and semi-mummified mice in traps all around the house.

The weekend was too many people in too small a mud brick cottage.  It has two bedrooms.  On the Saturday night there were 15 people, though six of those were small children (a two year old, two three year old, two five year olds, and a six year old).

It was a bit much.

Too many people.

Far too many miniature people.

Too much political discussion that I tried to not be involved in and which involved people being very wrong, including an old friend revealing herself to have a secret right-wing underbelly she had been hiding. And choosing very weird political views to go all in on the defence of…..  left me less convinced of her smarts than I always had been before.

After three nights of discomfort on a fold out couch I got home on Monday night.

Since then things have mostly been Baldur’s Gate 3.

I did have a Clinical Psychologist therapy session, mostly just to go over that fact my assessment for ACC was done.  Diagnosis was very last couple of sessions heavy, which left me wondering if I had done an extremely bad job of opening up in the months of earlier sessions.

Also looking like it isn’t likely to get approved.  Not sure if that suggests the psychodynamic psychotherapist was seeing more trauma symptoms than I have, or if I had just done a better job of actually letting him into the garbage noise in my head.

Thursday this week I took a break from listening to the audiobook of  Red, White, and Royal Blue (because it is the viable was to reread a book while simultaneously playing Baldur’s Gate 3), to go to the birthday dinner of Jerm.  Someone I was sort of friends with a decade ago and have not had much to do with since.  I did not know any of his other friends, though semi-recognised a couple of faces.  It was all awkwardness.  I do not like group outings even when I know people, and new people are the worst.

On the walk home I decided to restart BG3 as time thinking made me realise I was too angry at my character and that I take computer games too seriously.

Also, slightly racy audiobooks make me very uncomfortable.  Out loud, raciness becomes unseemly smuttiness very quickly.

Friday night roleplaying, my character Exalted.  Went Solar, which was not what I was planning but is probably for the best - and I have to decide what his angelic left hand looks like….because mild body horror.

This evening, back when it was still the 12th, I went for dinner with Simon, Joe and Firmin.  And we watched the newly released movie of the previously mentioned racy book.  It stuck fairly close, just slashed out all the subplots and many side characters.  Also, the actors were a bit older that Red, White and Royal Blue’s 22ish year old protagonists.

Awkward

Somehow I forgot my clinical psychologist is currently the only reader of this thing.  Making the recent entries way more accidentally passive aggressive than consciously intended.

My weekly appointment was bumped forward a day and ended up being significantly affected by last weeks entries on this thing.  Bit of a fail on my part.  Avoiding conflict backfires if done in a way that the person finds out about…

Having chatted about it with a couple of friends who are therapists, but as friends will very much never be my therapist, I am willing to say I was being a touch unfair.  Both mentioned my tendency toward ‘masking’, which is apparently a thing (as I mentioned in the last post).  Trust mental health professionals to pathologise putting on a cheerful face.

Also, neither agreed with my entirely blaming myself, which is how I know they were being wilfully wrong.

Haven’t done much, but my role playing games were back on so have at least had a couple of nights out being social with nerds, and also a night out for dinner with Simon, Joe and Firmin (we did Speight’s, it was nice even with one of the kitchen staff being awkwardly overly friendly at me due to his having been friends with Shitlord back in the day).

Oh, and I had to edit the November 2004 entry on here to remove neopets imbedded pictures as blogspot had decided that they were malware.  Which was weird.