CAB

Okay, I realise I've not really posted anything for a while and I probably should. Here's what's been happening:

Friday afternoon I went to my cousin's house to see if she was okay and if she needed anything and if there was anything I could do and to just generally give her hugs and try to make her feel better. Spent a few hours talking about everything under the sun except my aunt as she wanted to be distracted as much as possible. Then in the evening her uncles and aunt showed up - her mother's brothers, which means more Irish than a stereotype could possibly be - and we went to the nearest pub and drank and laughed and reminisced about what a wonderful person my Auntie Mary was. My ribs were hurting from laughter by the end of the night and I could barely breathe. May sound insensitive but it's what Mary would've wanted. For instance, we're under strict instructions that nobody is allowed to wear black at the funeral - there will be bright colours, happy music, and much drinking and laughter.

Saturday I got two letters in the mail - one from the gas company telling me I owe them £250 in arrears. I thought gas bills were on a direct debit, but if they're not, this is the first I've heard of money owed. They've not been sending me monthly bills, just this 'you owe us money, we're gonna turn your gas off' letter. Fucking great.

The other letter was telling me I owe £750 council tax and they're taking me to court. Again, this is the first I've heard of it. I'm not meant to pay council tax anyway. My council tax benefit states that I have £0 council tax to pay. But my sister was living here at the time so she had to pay some of it. She's since moved out, informed people of it, taken her name off the council tax, but apparently none of this evidence is good enough for the housing & council tax benefit people and they refuse to believe she no longer lives here. So my housing benefit's been at the same low rate as when she was living here but I'm paying full rent. Making things so incredibly difficult. I'm not sure I can afford food for the rest of this month and that's not even taking the gas bill into account. Screw the council tax that I'm not even meant to be paying.

So we went to the CAB on Monday. We've been trying to make an appointment with them for months but we've trying to do it by phone and it's impossible to get through. Eventually said screw it and spent a tenner (that would've gotten SO much food - gonna have to scab food off my dad this month) that we really couldn't afford on bussing over there just so we could make an appointment to come back next Monday. Which is Valentine's day. Gonna spend all the spoons I have going to that appointment. Kind of sucks. I rarely get to have sex because it takes so many goddamned spoons, and I was kind of hoping that on Valentine's, of all days, I could have enough spare for it. Oh well.

Anyhow, CAB are gonna help me sort things out. Hopefully. Although I still think it's ridiculous that I had to go all the way down there and then wait for two hours (in the noisiest waiting room I have ever been in - so many levels of sound my head was constantly feeling like it was going to explode) to see someone for all of two minutes so that they could do an 'assessment' so they could give me an appointment.

Further Update

She passed away a few hours ago. I was going to go see her in a couple hours. I didn't get to say goodbye.

Update on the Update

Following on from this update:

It's progressed a lot further than we thought and the doctors say that treatment's no longer an option. She has a few weeks left at best, so I need to scrape some money and spoons together to go visit her soon.

Short Update

My Aunt was diagnosed with breast cancer over a year ago. It was in early stages, responded to chemo and went into remission. Apparently she found another lump just before Christmas and it was confirmed that it had returned but she held off on telling anyone until after New Year's so she 'didn't ruin anyone's holiday'.

All I can think is how horrible her holiday must have been trying to deal with this all by herself. Suffering in silence sucks, big time, and I just wish she'd have told us when it happened so I could have given her a big spoonie cuddle and made sure her Christmas was extra-awesome.