OK, so where shall I begin...?

Probably at the end and work backwards... Starting with my 84 year old mum who's just called to say my elderly Dad is "playing up" again and she wants to come round to let off steam (he had a seizure in November resulting in delirium; to all intents and purposes he seemed to have made a reasonable recovery but now he's snapped back into old behaviours and making things impossible for her...) Preceded by my back agony which has been hellish all weekend... Preceded by the fact my M-in-Law wouldn't even look at me, let alone talk to me by the funeral yesterday. Why? Because I'd deliberately kept a low profile all weekend, much of the time keeping Ben (and as a result H) away from the chaotic emotional hot-house that was my sis-in-law's house where everyone else was staying because the whole situation was having an horrendous "trigger" effect on Ben's eating disorder behaviours and risked messing up the entire weekend for everyone - yet I think my in-laws probably took this as me being rude and keeping Ben and H at arm's length on what was a very important family weekend. A textbook case of not being able to please all of the people all of the time and ending up pleasing none of the people all of the time...


Then there was the eating (hotel meals, restaurant meals, family meals, breakfast, lunch, dinner, you name it...) ... then there was the "fight / flight" potential kicking off from Ben with me taking him on walks to talk things through and calm him down... then there were the endless trips to the supermarket... The only saving grace was having a pub/restaurant opposite the hotel that served a rather nice large glass of Chilean Merlot wine with the evening meal...

More on the above later when I've got my thoughts together...