This week has just been super stressful. We had the interview process for the new headteacher for Maendy Primary School, plus an emergency school closure due to coronavirus - nothing helps you remain calm and professional for long virtual meetings like a five year old poking you in the ribs and hissing 'MUM' every 10 seconds - and a bunch of other meetings on various topics. The main problem is that my anxiety has been through the roof, magnifying everything into a major crisis.

I had a telephone appointment with the doctor mid-week, so they upped my medication to the maximum dose. Hopefully it will help.

We put the Christmas tree up yesterday and today I promised Marianna her elf on the shelf would be arriving. So of course I can't find it. I've turned the spare room upside down to no avail so we've had to use the 'stuck in the TV' trick and order a new one on Amazon while Santa attempts to free him... (Anthony went in every shop in town but no joy.) 

At least the school is open again tomorrow. 

On the blog I posted a guide to Yaboom's Westlife dolls, Anthony's Christmas Gift Guide, a Friday Five looking at the Shroud of Turin, and a Mini Mart review. The new Tots100 scores came out and I fell from #40 to #129. It seems symbolic of this entire week to be honest!

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Deal of the Week -

I'm sure I did stuff this week, none of it is springing to mind as particularly memorable... 

Today we've been doing some Christmas crafts with Marianna. I can't believe the big day is only a few weeks away. Which means that Brexit will be here in 40 days. What a depressing start to the new year... What really galls me about it is that as much as I was against the idea of it, it could have been, well, not great but not awful if they had dealt with the negotiations and preparation competently. Now we just have yet another total shambles to heap on top of our struggling economy and Covid death toll. 

Further afield, I've been really enjoying Kenyan cartoonist/columnist Patrick Gathara's alternative US election coverage in the style of western reports on elections in African countries. It highlights a) how important language is in shaping our views, and b) just how low our expectations of politicians have fallen...

#BREAKING In a message conveyed by their political wing, the Republican party, white extremists in the US vow not to lay down their arms if moderate white opposition leader, Joe Biden, is declared president-elect of the conflict-prone nation, a haven for armed terrorist groups.

— gathara (@gathara) November 10, 2020

On the blog I posted a guide to Hasbro's S Club 7 dolls, Anthony's mention in the Guardian, a review of Maroon Mamma Miniatures, and a Friday Five looking at some of Anthony's 'hilarious' pranks.

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Deal of the Week -

I reached #40 this month in the Tots100 parent blog chart. I think it's the first time I've been in the top 50 - fingers crossed for the top 20 one day, I guess! I really need to blog more often; this week my charger stopped working. This was the replacement charger for the one Molly chewed through. Third time lucky, huh?

In other good news Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain have left Downing Street, though I remain dubious that they are actually gone and not just orchestrating some new media drama. Still, if Carrie is taking over as PM, here's to hoping the baby is going to take over from the Cabinet. Maybe Larry the Cat could take over as chief Brexit negotiator while they're at. He certainly can't make a worse job of it.

We had a bit of drama on Tuesday night. Marianna and I stayed at my mum's, and about 12:30 I saw Anthony had tagged me in a post about depression on Twitter. It worried me because, in all honesty, it read like a suicide note. I tried texting and ringing but got no response. Eventually - spurred on by the crime drama I was watching - I decided to pop around our house and check he was okay.

When I got there I couldn't get the door open because the keys were in the other side of the lock. After lots of knocking at gone 1am I was seriously panicked, and eventually rang the police for help. Thankfully I managed to wake Anthony up before they had to come out but, I don't know what he'd been drinking, he was in a total state. Collapsed like a sack of spuds three times on the floor, one time so hard I thought he was dead for a moment.

Looking back he was obviously just drunk and I was overreacting but, omg, I really thought I was going to be walking into a nightmare. :(

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Deal of the Week -

It's been a strange week - Marianna was back at school, but with firebreak lockdown still in full swing it didn't really feel like half term was over. I had a few online meetings and training sessions, but outside of work mostly did lots of reading, writing, and waiting for the US election results! I was beginning to feel like it was never going to end yesterday but, thankfully, common sense has prevailed. The fact that the Trump campaign did their big press conference from a landscaping company's car park was like his entire presidency summed up - a bit of an embarrassment.

Here's to hoping we can give our own 'physical and emotional clone' the boot some time soon.

Other than that it was a week of housekeeping type stuff. I cancelled our TV licence because, as much as I love BBC4 docs, we just don't watch enough TV to justify the spend. Plus the election coverage really highlighted how toothless the BBC is now; it was always seen as this great home of accountable reporting but, yeah, watching CNN was an eye opener. I also joined YesCymru, and the Fortean Times were having an awesome deal of three issues for £1. 

I've been in quite a Fortean mood lately. This week I read a bunch of stuff on the Mothman and the Rendlesham Forest Incident. The truth is out there and all that.

I've stopped coughing this week which is awesome, but I still feel breathless and tired a lot. The worst thing has been an ongoing phantom smell of cigarette smoke. Sometimes it's so bad I want to be sick. Today though, for the first time, I can smell other stuff alongside it all the time. I read an article that people have had these weird phantom bad smells for up to six weeks after coronavirus, but hopefully this progress means it won't last that long.

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Deal of the Week -