General update.

Hi! I know it's been a hell of a while since I last posted anything here... I've been pretty busy lately. I had my end-of-year exams to complete my school year; it was pretty brutal, but I got through it and I'm now an unemployed bum, ha ha. I haven't got the results back, won't till December, so I've basically got to wait around till then.

Lately I've been taking care of my mum. She had a hip replacement due to ongoing degeneration of the joint site, basically leaving no joint left. As a result of her surgery, a complication has come up, known as drop foot. Basically, this is when the nerves are damaged or in shock in the foot, and they don't transmit messages to and/or from the brain, meaning the patient is unable to lift their foot up. The doctors believe it happened because she elected to have an epidural to undergo surgery; the needle may have accidentally made contact with the nerves running into the left side of the leg. They reckon the nerves are shocked because they did an MRI and nothing turned up; pretty much, mum has to wait until the numbness in her foot goes away and she can stand properly, without a brace or a walking frame. Her new hip is doing just fine though.

To be honest, I'm a little pissed off. Now that I'm at home and out of school - and I don't have the means of finding a job - I'm basically her full-time carer. She doesn't deal well with losing her independence, so she's spent the last week basically taking out her situation on me. And I have to do basically all the chores around the house; if it were just me and mum it would be fine, but I've seen my dad and my brother sitting on the couch watching me do jobs while they do nothing. Its like, now I'm home I suddenly have to do everything - take care of mum and do all the work. It kinda pisses me off. Even on the weekends I have to do all the work. Like, would it really kill dad to help mum then so I can have a break? Right now, she's driving me crazy. He's shown no interest in her since she got home, and to top it off my brother has continued to be a little shit around her, despite clearly being told to shut the fuck up around her.

I had a bit of a depression relapse the other week. That explains my last post. Me and dad had a fight; I was in the right, but I went right back to how I used to be - weak and useless - and backed down. It put me in a head space I really didn't want to go back into, and in a fit of manic sadness I took my razor and I cut all down my hip, from my waist to the top of my thighs. There was a lot of blood, and it kinda freaked me out. But I've talked it out with my psych, and I'm moving on from it. I still haven't told mum and dad the extent of my issues, because I feel like they just don't care. What's the point in wasting breath on something when I won't get jack shit in return?

Anyway, that's the heavy stuff down. As to the happier stuff - I've sorta moved on from classic novels for now. I lost interest while trying to read Sense and Sensibility again (why did I try???), and I was also watching my show which served to distract me even further from the classics. I've been watching The Tudors lately; not accurate, I know, sensationalist, I know, but exciting, I know. I just really love this series; I cried when Natalie Dormer's Anne Boleyn died. I've started watching season 3, but I'm finding it hard to move on after Anne, she was what made the show really. I'm really trying to like Jane Seymour, but she' so... boring. Too nice. I also binge-watched Showtime's series The Borgias - I was so angry when I found out they never finished the series! I mean, come on! Another ten episodes. Been sorta watching Reign, but I'm finding it hard to get past the blatant lack of respect for the historical narrative. That and the actress who plays Mary - I love her, I think she's brilliant, but Mary is supposed to be pale and have dark red hair. I can't get past it - finicky, but Mary Queen of Scots was the first ever historical figure that fascinated me.

Anyway, I got off track. I'm now reading historical fiction. Yep, history is taking over my life at the moment. I've always sort of been a Tudor history buff, but I'm really trying to expand my learning now. So far, I've read some novels on the Wars of the Roses, and I read Margaret George's Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles and Jean Plaidy's Royal Road to Fotheringhay. I really enjoyed Plaidy's interpretation of Mary Queen of Scots, but I definitely now prefer Margaret George. I cried for fifteen minutes after finishing her novel, and it was massive - I really went on a journey there, and I felt this profound loss once it was over.

I'm going to be posting some reviews soon on the books I've read so far. Whether they'll be on here, on my Goodreads, or both, I don't know. Maybe I'll do a mix. Does anyone have any recommendations for historical television shows or movies you really enjoyed? How about historical fiction? I'd be really interested to get into them.

Thanks for reading!