Party in the Park

Wednesday was all about playing at being a tourist. Thursday was all about real life. I’m never not keeping it real.

Derek started the day strongly by throwing up gourmet salmon cat pate all over the cream carpet. Every, single day I question why anyone would put a cream carpet in this boat and worry about something terrible happening to it. That day came and it was as bad as expected. I spent forty minutes on my hands and knees scrubbing foul smelling mess out of the carpet and it’s still not right, three scrubs later.

The majority of the day was taken up with working and trying not to expire from heat stroke. In the afternoon I had a gp appointment. My new practice is very efficient and I had to go for the first part of a multi part appointment so they could make sure that I am a functional human being.

I find it really stressful to go to the doctor’s, even when it’s routine. I spent so long being ill and not getting the support I needed from people who were supposed to help me, it is very difficult for me to trust that things will be different going forward. This appointment was particularly stressful because they wanted to weigh me and take my blood pressure. I don’t weigh myself anymore since I spent months living with Tallulah’s anorexia and I never take my blood pressure because it’s something everyone screams at me about to such an extent I have a full blown phobia of it.

I walked down to the surgery early, so I couldn’t accidentally on purpose be late for my appointment. I bought an ice cream and went to sit in the park next door to calm myself and spent an extremely enjoyable half an hour watching small children be just exactly themselves. Two school boys were fighting over the ownership of one bike with one of them shouting: ‘Get off the man’s bike’ and ‘It’s not your bike, it’s the man’s bike.’ He also called the other boy a ‘fat prick’. That boy was definitely not the man.It was very strange to hear a twelve year old referring to himself as ‘the man’, because he most definitely was not a man and it is never not weird to hear anyone talking about themselves in the third person.

Some kids were having an excellent fight with water pistols. One woman learned the brutal economic truth that trying to save money buying one water pistol for two children was going to cost her more than money as they screamed at each other over who turn it was to shoot each other. One kid nearly wiped out a toddler coming down a zip wire too fast and a woman had to do an impressive dive to save him. It was all going on in the park. It made me very, very grateful that my children are grown up and can take themselves to the park.

The gp appointment went much better than I expected. I saw the nurse practitioner. She listened to my concerns and actually responded sensitively without being dismissive. She was also properly helpful and I left after forty minutes feeling tentatively hopeful that I might actually get some support. I have more appointments next week, so we will see if it continues but it was good to get at least one appointment out the way without adding to any existing trauma. I celebrated by buying myself an avocado on the way home. I know how to party.