…and a ridiculously busy and hellish month.  My life is not that interesting to divulge all here but I felt I needed to “check in” as it’s been a few weeks since I last posted.

The month started in a pretty standard way, and the first weekend saw me attend my first “proper” hen weekend [n.b. my own hen do was VERY low-key because I knew that the usual shenanigans weren’t for me and I am a bit of a control freak and did not want to relinquish responsibility to someone else].  I was borderline petrified because I went into it really only knowing the bride-to-be and her soon-to-be sister in law, and was pleasantly surprised when I found that I got along really well with most of the other attendees (there was one girl who had a serious grump on the whole two days and I gravitated away from her), especially one of the bridesmaids, the bride’s sister, and the honorary “rooster” – a good friend from Sixth Form who happens to be a guy.  He got fully into the whole thing, wearing custom t-shirts, a hot pink tutu, fishnet gloves and a hen party headband with springy boppers on them.  It ended up being a lot of fun… we started off all meeting up in Bath and having a spot of lunch, then a ridiculous uphill walk to the hostel where most of the party were staying (the rooster and I were both going home and coming back the next day), getting into our tutus and other gear, then going back into Bath town centre for a crafty session making fascinators (for those who don’t know, they’re delicate hair decorations which women in the UK wear to weddings).  After beautiful fascinators were made, we went for a drink then dinner at a Thai restaurant and finished the night off at a pub with an open mic night.  The next day we had a spa day with half hour treatments and time spent in the pool and sauna, followed by a late lunch at Prezzo before parting ways to end the weekend.  I was looking forward to the wedding even more following this weekend because I would know more people there and knew that we’d have a great time.

The wedding was yesterday, and even the officiant said it: “I’ve never seen a couple more excited about getting married.”  The bride and groom were both bouncing with excitement and absolutely radiant.  The ceremony was beautiful, the meal was delicious, and the evening entertainment was fantastic.  The groom’s dad’s band played a few cover songs to warm the crowd up, followed by Paul’s band (the groom is the drummer) playing a few songs with the groom himself on the drums, later filled in by the drummer from the first band so the groom was able to enjoy the evening entertainment with his new wife.  It was just a super fun evening from start to finish and I’m glad I’ve got a quiet Sunday to myself today – Paul’s gone off to watch the F1 with some mates.

We’re still not done with the remortgage either… though finally the solicitors seem to have gotten their act together and are speaking with each other.  Annoyingly, we’ve been sent through loads more paperwork for the Land Registry, a lot of which required our signatures to be witnessed… again.  We had loads of paperwork initially to do for the solicitors which required witnesses, and it just boggles my mind, that if all this was going to need to be done anyway, why were we not asked to do all this at the BEGINNING of the process!?!  It’s just so frustrating.  I’m so over all of this and I need it to be done sooner than later.  It looks like at this rate I’ll be lucky if we get this sorted (including the work done to MIL’s flat before she moves in) by my birthday in November!!  It’s been a very long process and I’m just exhausted and sick of it.

OH.  And I nearly forgot.  So, back on the 17th of July, I finally mustered up the courage to take my ‘manifesto’ to the GP to request a referral for an assessment for Asperger Syndrome.  The same day, I was called back by a lovely receptionist to say that my GP agreed to refer me and that she had a form for me to collect, fill in and return.  I went back the same day, filled it in, and returned it on Monday the 20th.  Amongst the paperwork given to me, it said that first contact would be made within four weeks.  Back in my post on the 8th of August (Am I or am I not?), I mentioned about the anxiety I was feeling about chasing up the referral… even though it was only three weeks into the four since I had returned my referral form.  Finally, after six full weeks (4th Sept) I emailed the NHS email address indicated on my paperwork, asking if I could have an update on my referral, only to be told that it had not been received.  My heart sank.  I tried to keep myself calm when ringing my GP surgery to find out what happened, but my voice cracked and I ended up starting to sob.  The receptionist asked who I contacted and I gave her the details, and she said that she or a colleague would ring me back before the end of the day to let me know what’s happened.  Fair play to her, it was sorted within the hour.  The surgery still had my referral form on record, and it appears that the assessment team never received the fax (because we’re *still* faxing in 2015?!), so they verified the number and sent it through again, and verified also that it was received at the other end and phoned me to inform me of this.  So, talking about “recalibrating” my mind on things like I did in my last post, I’ve now got another minimum four-week wait… of which I’m already two full weeks into.

There has been so much going on, as you can see, and my poor little brain has found it all difficult to cope with and I’m desperately trying to stay on top of everything (I’m not even going to get into all the malarkey going on at work), but when I’m feeling particularly overwhelmed, I just shut down and go into “power-saving mode” (I find I use computer analogies a lot to explain how I work).

I just hope that contact is made for my referral soon, because I think the sooner I get this sorted out, the more relief I’ll feel.