Must be harvest-time

So after a chaotic few weeks of slogging through administrative treacle, things are suddenly coming together.


1. Driving Test Booked

Firstly, I finally got granted an emergency driving test... for the end of September. Having to wait another month is crushing—not least because jobs have been popping up that I can't apply for—but at least I know instead of vainly hoping. Now I'm just dealing with the stress what-ifs of failure or a return to lockdown.

It's still embarrassing having to explain to various people that I can't drive at the moment. Everybody is too polite to ask, but I know the obvious assumption is that I have had my licence revoked. It was amusing when it was just my neighbours seeing the L plates, but when I'm talking to somebody in a more professional capacity, I don't want them assuming I'm a reckless driver! It's very awkward explaining the US licence though, since that requires further backstory. I'm still working on a nice pithy wording for that.

2. Back on the drugs

After a last minute hiccup of losing my prescription, the pharmacy managed to produce some ADD medication for me this week. A few days in, and I've got killer insomnia while my productivity's through the roof. I expect this initial dramatic effect to wear off, but it's pretty weird right now. Instead of being drowsy and having to push myself through the to-do list, I'm restless and keep finding more stuff to do. 

It's not a magic bullet, so I still can't multi-task, and I keep forbidding the children from talking to me while I'm on task, but I can stay on task without my brain fogging over after half an hour. Meanwhile, I'm averaging about four hours of sleep a night and my eyes are burning holes in my head, but I'm not yawning and nodding off throughout the day. Nights are hit and miss: I'm only sleeping a few hours at a time and then struggling to get back to sleep, so I'm firmly routining my body clock and hoping that will settle. I've got a follow up call from my doctor in two weeks to decide how it's going.

3. Return of the Course

Out of the blue, on Friday, I had a phone call from the early years training course I'd applied to, chasing up some outstanding documentation. The following day, they offered me a place for September conditional on the receipt of my last reference. As I had given up hope of that, this is incredible news. I'm a little concerned about how it will go due to the last-minute-ness of it all, but in these pandemic-times, that's going to be a recurring theme. It's a full-time (funded) course though, so I won't be working much if at all this year. As it turns out, it's probably just as well I couldn't apply for any jobs.

Despite the vagueness, I'm really, really happy about this. I'd been feeling very down about my complete failure to progress with the career stuff, but this is a definite progression. Not only do I get a vital qualification, but I'll be placed with different schools throughout the course, which will give me the local contacts I've been missing and, with any luck, might lead to a job offer for 2021. When I moved to the UK, I had a five year goal of achieving a steady job at a particular salary level. I feel like I'm on track for that now.

4. Et Cetera

Meanwhile, all the other variations on life are ticking over... like back to school stuff, particularly my son's switch to secondary school, for which the guidance keeps changing. But we've got a full set of school uniform now, he's got a bus pass and the information for the bus service laid on for this stage of lockdown, and since the government's last minute switch on facemask advice, I've got ten extra washable facemasks thanks to Amazon Prime. (He's required to have one for the bus and one for school every day.)

The house is pootling along at a quieter pace. I've had all the information on it to read through—including a wonderfully old-fashioned document from 1949, when it was converted from one detached property to two semi-detached. I'm told all the agreements in that document still apply, so I'm making careful note of my right to install a pipe in my neighbour's well (so long as it is not lower than his pipe).

The main issue with the house is that the surveyors are all over-booked. I had one surveyor cancel on me this week "due to unforeseen circumstances" which is useful cover for all eventualities from "somebody died" to "we made a mistake we don't want to admit to." Luckily, I was able to get another one, but as they won't be able to survey the house before October, I really hope they don't find anything.

The sellers still haven't found a house, and as they'll have the same issue with surveyors as I've had, I now think it's unlikely we'll move before Christmas.

And I haven't even mentioned dentist appointments, a car insurance issue (that turned out to be a glitch on their end)... Thank goodness for the bank holiday weekend! Despite the sunshine, we haven't really done anything with it, and I've spent a lot of time on the laptop. But it meant a three day break from phone calls and emails. 

 I think I'm caught up again.... We'll see what happens on Tuesday.

ADD progression

The children's father has finally managed to get to England through all the pandemic insanity, so they've gone off with him for ten days. Against my expectations, he was able to get an exemption from quarantine... which I honestly find deeply unsettling, since everything I read on the government's own website indicated this would not be the case. We were prepared for a situation where he came to the UK, spent two weeks quarantining with the children and then went home again. I don't know quite why he was given more freedom, but it makes you wonder who else the regulations were waived for.

At any rate, he's been left to his own precaution regime, and it's still going to be a weird and isolated break for the kids, but they get to see their father for the first time since February and they get a break from the four walls of our flat.

I admit, I'm a little bit concerned about what I'm going to do with myself without human company for much of this ten days, but it's the first time since March that I've got a break from being Mum, that I've been alone in the house.... It's hot and sticky today with rumblings of thunder, so the first thing I did once they left was to strip down to my underwear and watch the documentary, "Howard", on Disney+. Nobody to whine about their turn on the TV or to be mortified at how much of my legs I'm showing!

(After such slovenly beginnings, I promise that I have put my shorts back on and am writing this to move towards productivity... or I'm procrastinating on putting the laundry away. One of the two!)

A Video Call

Before all the worry over how the kids' trip was going to work, I was intending to post about developments in my ADD diagnosis. The previous post, about my brain and its ruminating, was supposed to act as context.

Right before lockdown started, I had made it to the top of the waiting list for an appointment with an adult ADHD clinic. At the end of July, I had that appointment via video call with a consultant. I wasn't warned that the call would be two hours long. A little too ironic... I did wonder if I had failed the assessment because I lasted the full two hours!

It was definitely a far cry from my American diagnosis, where I filled out a single-sided questionnaire. On that basis, my GP in the States merrily started me on medication a week later. (We had great insurance in the States, so nobody was deliberately cutting corners on my healthcare.)

Doing this on the NHS in England has been a much longer wait, but it's also been more thoroughly done. They asked to see my old questionnaire for reference, but I filled out their standard one (multiple pages), and my mother had to fill out another one (slightly fewer pages) based on her memories of me as a child. In July's video call, I talked to a full psychiatrist who referred back to these questionnaires frequently. (I think it was November when I filled them out, so I couldn't remember what was in them!)

The key thing the doctor brought up is that you would typically expect ADHD / ADD distractions to be external, but mine were internal. He theorised that the ruminating might simply be due to depression/anxiety, but as my symptoms pre-date the end of my marriage, I think ADD is exacerbating my depression rather than the other way around.

While I didn't put it that succinctly in the call, I was very proud of myself—and relieved—for managing to stand my ground on that point, and not let my brain get confused by the new line of argument. We did discuss other options, such as the possibility that I'm on the autism spectrum, which I do think is entirely likely, but I was firm that my priority was addressing the attention issues.

At any rate, the doctor believed my statements that this were affecting my life and was a concern when I was driving. He logged off, saying he would need to review his notes to be sure I met sufficient criteria for a diagnosis, and I went and collapsed on the sofa for the afternoon.

A few days later, a letter to my GP was cc'ed to me via email, summarising the call in frighteningly thorough detail (right down to what I was wearing and where I was taking the call!). I have been officially diagnosed with ADHD, inattentive subtype (and social anxiety).

The benefit from my US diagnosis here is that I have already tried a couple of different medications and was able to report their effects to the doctor. While I thought that the one I was using wasn't legal in the UK, it sounds like they can prescribe that for me, especially in the knowledge that I didn't have any side effects. The next step was a cardiac assessment by my GP, which I had on Tuesday, just to tick the right boxes before they prescribe me anything.

Fingers crossed, I'll be on medication again by the time the kids are home. Lockdown doesn't really require a lot of focus, but the ruminating mind isn't helping the emotional state.

The storms never broke, but clouds and showers have passed steadily across the sky and the temperature has dropped to something much more bearable. Time to go through the dutiful motions of adulthood: tidying up the laundry and eating leftovers for dinner...

Losing my Writing

I don't write as much as I used to. I miss it, and that's why I make the effort to keep up this blog, recording my progress in Life, but I don't write anything else anymore. I'll still get an idea for something I want to write, and I'll tell myself that when I'm at a loose end, I'll write it... but I never get the compulsion anymore.  Instead my brain goes back to the things I don't want to write about, the things I'm trying to distract myself from.

Life with My Brain

Ever since I was a child, my brain has enjoyed words. It would fixate on things, and words were a way of articulating the obsession. My brain ruminates, thinking repetitively and often unproductively—at absent moments, the same sentence can recur to mind for years at a time, like an in-media-res first line of a story. It's nothing profound or clever. Take a preadolescent example: "She screamed." This was simply the trigger for a pleasingly dramatic imagining of why she screamed. What led her to the traumatic situation? How did she escape? The general events remained the same each time, as I fine-tuned the dialogue and struggled to achieve a satisfying ending (always the most elusive part of the process).

As a child, I built fantasy worlds and dreamed up epic stories that I kept in my head. As an adult, I learned to touch-type and discovered the joys of writing out and sharing my feverish thinkings, both fiction and philosophy. (Unlike many writers, I don't enjoy writing by hand... I'm slow, awkward and ultimately self-conscious with a pen.) 

For my entire adult life, my primary hobby has been writing to the internet, I'd gleefully delve into the minutia of a TV show or book series with likeminded fans. I'd write longform (very longform!) pieces on whatever I was currently passionate about. I'd collaborate with other writers, indulgently sparking off each other. I'd record my life, for friends, family and my own memories.

Often, this worked to get the words out of my brain. It didn't necessarily make it any more productive as it would just switch to a new rumination, but it gave me satisfaction that I'd expressed my feelings.

The Dark Side of Rumination

Psychologically speaking, rumination is often a consequence of depression and anxiety, where you will worry about something you can't change over and over again. When I did a cognitive behavioural therapy course at the beginning of the year, that taught us to distinguish between productive worry (when you can address and solve a problem) and rumination (when you can only dwell on what's wrong). We learned coping mechanisms to distract us from the rumination and push through it.

My life has generally been very sheltered so my rumination was almost never on bad things. Even when I went through difficult periods, my brain was at least as likely to ruminate on more pleasant fantasies or trivia. I could sit at my laptop, writing my obsessions and escape the worries of the real world for a little while.

It was only when my marriage ended that my brain fixated on the source of my depression and anxiety. For over two years, absent moments have triggered thoughts of him, what-if memories, anger at others and loathing of myself. True to the habits of a lifetime, I've tried to write the ruminations out of my head, but everything's failed. I've kept a private journal for myself, I've poured my heart out on this blog and I've cried on the virtual shoulders of friends. That gave me some satisfaction for six months or so, but I became disillusioned as I grew aware that neither my feelings nor the situation were changing. 

I stopped writing, and the feelings bottled up instead, until I had to vent either to friends, or on here, or—far worse—in desperate emails to him that were met with either silence or mortifyingly short and trite responses.

I still have to vent occasionally, but I'm getting better at distraction. It keeps me out of depression holes and allows me to function relatively normally. I've started to view myself as a happy person again. But distraction also doesn't change the situation or my feelings about it, so that's still what my brain returns to.

Death of an Author

That's why I can't write, and it's also why (or perhaps one reason why) I never quite feel like myself anymore. I've lost a few associated habits too. For example, I always enjoyed doing jigsaw puzzles which helped focus my mind in its ruminations and work through writer's block. Doing a jigsaw puzzle now is liable to put me in a funk.

I'm not quite sure if I need to redefine who I am or wait until something finally takes my brain to a different track. Either way, the right path is to carry on going through the motions of Self-Care and Progress. They have a real effect, even if my motivation is sometimes forced.

There are days when I don't care. I just miss writing,

Bad News and Hopes

Along with the good news in my life, there's bad—or at least, worrisome. A global pandemic does rather shift the relative view of 'bad news'.

Driving Delays

After passing my theory test, I got back in touch with my driving instructor to prepare for my practical. Those tests were due to reopen on 22nd July, so I was hopeful that I could take one within a few weeks. But that date came and went, and the website wouldn't allow me to book a test, saying first priority went to those who had had their tests cancelled.

I talked to my instructor about it, and he told me that there was a backlog of 210,000 tests nationwide that had been cancelled during lockdown. While tests had reopened, not all examiners were back at work, due to shielding, childcare, etc. I had assumed that it would work like the theory test, but I hadn't given thought to how the practical test was inherently more difficult to safeguard against covid.

(For those wondering what pandemic driving lessons look like: I'm learning in my own car, so my instructor and I have to both wear masks, and I have to deep-clean the car beforehand. This is doing wonders for my car interior which had not seen a vacuum cleaner since I bought it.)

Only a third of the cancelled tests have been rescheduled so far, and my instructor's best guess for when I might get a test was September / October.

I had never seriously considered that I might not be able to drive for months. That I might not be able to drive by the time the kids go back to school, i.e. when I can go back to work. That I might not be able to drive when we close on the house...

The effect of this is to write off our summer. We can't really go anywhere, so we're basically stuck in the house for the next five weeks, going to Bude once or twice a week. I'm going to have to analyse the bus timetables and see if I can work out a daytrip somewhere else, using connecting buses.

I'm worried about how we can manage the move without the car. I'd like to move a lot of our stuff myself, but we can probably work around that. What will be more difficult is getting my daughter to school every day. She's too young to ride the bus independently, and if I escort her in, I'm likely to find myself waiting an hour for the bus back. The same goes for picking her up at the end of the day. This would make it all but impossible for me to work as well.

My best option is to find somebody she can carpool with or we might end up with a situation where we buy a house, but have to stay in our rented place until I've passed my test. Suffice to say, I'm now hoping for some delays before we can close.

Something to Pin Hope On

That's worst case scenario. Well, no. Actually, worst case scenario is that I have a bad day, fail my test, and can't get another one scheduled for months. But best case scenario is that I can get an emergency test as a critical worker. I was rejected for one earlier in lockdown because the focus was on people in healthcare. These days, there's a lot more attention on the school issue and getting the schools ready for September.

The guidelines for schools are that children can't move across bubbles but adults can. So when I had a job interview recently, one of the available positions was working in a year 5 bubble in the morning and an early years bubble in the afternoon. Let's say someone in the year 5 bubble tests positive for covid: I would have to stay home (along with everybody else in the bubble), and the school would have to find somebody to cover in the early years bubble.

In other words, supply teachers are going to be needed. I'll have to wait and see if the government is already thinking along those lines.

I never heard back from that job interview, which makes me pessimistic. I don't think I did well: there was a moment when they asked what strengths I brought to Early Years Education, the most obvious of questions and one I know how to answer—and my brain just couldn't shift gears from the Special Needs conversation we'd been having before that. I'm pretty sure my reply was vague and generic.

On the other hand, I have a habit of remembering myself as being more inarticulate than I actually was, and my CV covers that very question, so maybe that's just paranoia. But equally, I haven't been able to get hold of the online course I was supposed to be taking, and I have nothing lined up for September. It seems I'm no further ahead than I was this time last year.

Random fun fact: a Montessori school advertised for a nursery assistant. The exact job I was hoping to find. But they're too far away. I'd need to move to a different part of the county, the local school isn't great—and I'd need to be able to drive.

It's one of those things where the vision doesn't work with the reality. It's bittersweet... yet I don't mind too much. The kids like it here, and I like the life I can give them here. I like the life I'm giving myself here.

So, yeah. I need to rethink the employment thing. I can carry on as supply, and I can probably get more regular work than last year if I stop holding out for early years. Maybe it's time to stop worrying so much about reaching the career goals I was working towards before my entire life changed. To be more open to the opportunities that are coming up in my new life.

Most importantly, my cats are still cute.

Eventful Times

Last weekend was eventful! (Is that why it's taken me a week to recover enough to write about it?)

On Saturday, we went to see a house. There are, of course, pandemic rules for house viewings:

• Only two people; no children.
• Only fifteen minutes.
• Masks and gloves must be worn; no touching anything. (The agent was permitted to open cupboards, turn on taps, etc.)

I took my mother, because if you can count on her for one thing, it's to find what's wrong with something. I wiped down my passenger seat and she masked up to ride with me. The children gave me orders to do a video walkthrough so they could see everything.

In short, the house was lovely. I really want a spare room so people can come and stay with us, but I'm trying to buy a four bedroom house on a three bedroom house budget. This house was far and away the best I've seen—its price brought down by a less desirable location but one that's convenient for us.

Because of the stamp duty holiday, we were buying in a competitive market, so I offered the asking price for the house as quickly as possible—the only thing I negotiated on was asking them to leave the cooker. It's possible the sellers would have sold it for less, but I would rather pay more than I strictly needed to than risk losing the house because somebody else offered the asking price.

Somebody else did offer the asking price, which led to a fairly frantic Sunday of me proving my finances to the agents in every way I could think of. The kids' Dad even emailed them for me. I have to say, as much as I struggle with our estranged relationship, I'm inexpressibly grateful that I can count on him for this sort of support.

Fortunately, while the other buyer was in a better position than I was, they wanted the house for a second home, and the sellers preferred to sell to somebody local. Once they were satisfied I could definitely afford the house, they accepted us, as announced thus by the estate agent:

"Well, the bad news is... that you've got to pack everything up in a few months!"

I could have cheerfully killed him for that, but as there's a big gap between accepting an offer and exchanging contracts, I refrained from homicide. One in three house sales falls through after this point, so we're touching wood while the seller looks for a property of their own and while my conveyancer checks that there are no hidden issues with the sale.

But for Sunday night, we could celebrate our own news, although the stress didn't end there. My brother and his wife were supposed to be having a baby on Sunday or Monday, but it wasn't until Tuesday night that they brought their son into the world. They're still all the way in the States, so I don't know when I'll get to hold my new and ridiculously cute nephew, but I'm officially an aunt again!

Celebrations all round! And a much needed pick-me-up for the start of a summer holiday where I wasn't sure what we would be doing. Now, we've got a project to focus on. After the transatlantic move last year, this move of five miles down the road seems like a fun little time-killer—and when the stress hits, we have a steady influx of adorable baby pictures and videos to coo over.