Just wanted to quickly get something off my chest. For all of us that apologise for venting, it's often the best thing and helps us to see things clearer, whether in the process we feel silly for over reacting or we actually start to support ourselves more. Even just writing it down on paper gets it out of your head and into a more concrete form where there is only one way traffic onto the page and not all the conflicting stuff that goes round in our heads. We can think about it from different angles but this way at least it's not all at once with the noise and confusion of everything else going on. talking on BB gives the opportunity to be given support and feed back and who cares if you feel a bit silly for getting it out there (no one knows you, but we do care about you).

It's the Saph posts and the Neptunes and Greenslw and all those ME posts that we say sorry for that keep us all so connected, looking at our lives and thinking about others. It's like Neptune said, you just get used to coping with your lot and accepting that's how things are but when given the perspective of outsiders you mightn't think it all looks so normal. I know people looking in on me seeing me coping and managing day to day with DH's (and my own) mental balancing act would think it's hard work and we should get help, but in my situation there's not much I can do except know the signs and support both of us to be healthy and he does the same too, he never milks his illness. To undo the trauma he has been through is to open a Pandora's box and life is too short to live in the past to fix things, so we work on the present and cope the best way we can without letting too much of the past haunt us. You can't block it completely and a buddhist monk once likened it to having to eat an enormous mountain of salt, sometimes you can add a teaspoon to water every now and then and reduce the size of the mountain. If we avoid it completely, the mountain will never get any smaller but sometimes he just has to drink some yucky salty water and that's okay because it's better than having no hope of it ever getting any smaller.

Maybe Neptune, your DH will take some salty water this weekend and he will need all of your support to help him get it down.

I really am meant to be working on my lab report so I will kick myself if I stay too long, but here is my very quick (yeah right!) run down of Townsville...yay, had a great time, my sis threw me a surprise baby shower at my Dad's who had a pig on a spit and mates and Victorian rellies drinking rum and playing silly baby party games in the bar by the pool. too cute to see your uncle, brother and father all playing games to win rattles and fairy cakes whilst drinking rum!! The little kids complained there were no games for them and the grown ups were having too much fun...aww come on, we couldn't p[lay baby bingo all night! Yeah so pretty cool. We got to watch our niece up from Vic playing in the national comp and she even got sin binned for showing a bit of sparkAll us family took up half the crowd and some were not as polite to the ref as you might imagine when our flesh and blood was sidelined the only downside to our time away was poor old DH had a bit of a setback but a few days at home with all things familiar and he is back on safe ground with the pups and me. we loved it though and it was mostly just what the doc ordered.

Okay, it's off my chest and now i can get back to work. I'm thinking of you all and JenC and MHB, hope its good news for you soon. Greenslw, you have a bit to work through and I'd be pretty upset too. Saph, ouch, some toddler training for you before this bub comes into the picture. Oh well there is still time. goodluck.xoxo