Well that's us celebrating 6 months since the (then) housing officer turned up at our door and the ball began rolling on our "really urgent" house repair job. To be honest it's actually 2 1/2 years since they were meant to actually carry out the repairs but I thought I'd be kind.  Anyway,  as a sort of  tribute to the incredible efficiency, general competence and all round professionalism of Wheatley Homes and their obviously top quality and well trained staff (and for those of you new to this whole sorry saga) here is a timeline of the story of us asking for a leak to be fixed.... Enjoy.  Oh and I've cut down on the sarcasm this time around for a change.    This statement may not be accurate. 30/05/24 – After nearly 4 years of waiting – and thanks to our local MP - repair work begins on the house. A new toilet is fitted and a large piece of wood is nailed to the kitchen floor. Alongside this a huge hole is left in the bathroom wall and paneling is removed...

Huzzah! After over 2 months of telling them that it's full and that the kids (especially Cassidy) are slowly going stir crazy because they can't go in the garden the skip has finally been uplifted! Regular readers will remember that we were given it in March to help us get ready to move in April (to the house that we aren't allowed to talk about) but like everything else pertaining to our move/repairs it ended up just getting ignored no matter how many times we asked/begged for it to be picked up. The main reason it couldn't be moved was truly bizarre - it seemed that because someone in the street had put rubbish in it (as always happens) it couldn't be moved till the guilty party had taken the rubbish out. Housing even sent letters out to the neighbours ordering them to remove the unauthorised junk. Seriously, the letter about misusing a skip was more of a priority to them than actually picking up the thing, so in the meantime the girls haven't been able to hav...

Not done a house update for a few weeks because everything is going so well. Not really, it's still a bit shit.     I think I may have hit the I really can't be bothered being civil with housing point right now (to be fair it has been going on since February), we've gone from them being very nice since Social Work got involved to in the last week them phoning SW (our allotted worker is on annual leave) because we hadn't rung them back straight away to now adding seemingly random policy rules to our promised move. A house (not ours) for illustrative purposes. We seem to have gone from "we'll find you a suitable property" to "if you don't accept the first property you're offered that's it because you only get one choice" which under the circumstances seems a wee bit churlish seeing as not only had we already accepted a property that we were subsequently told we shouldn't be offered (and are snapped at when we mention it, I just lo...

A quick real life catch up as it's been a wee bit mad here at the moment. First up, apologies to anyone who missed my dulcet tones on the radio Tuesday , turns out they'd overbooked the amount of English males they needed so I unfortunately got dumped from the panel. I did managed to randomly add a few comments near the end but due to timing they skipped the punchline. Story of my life.  As a (self congratulatory) aside the visuals I produced for the inaugural  David Byrne themed Byrne's Night in Dumbarton seemed to go down a treat!       And on another bright note it looks like there may finally be some progress on the whole house situation that wont have to involve legal action and/or government intervention. Or any more Autistic meltdowns.  Which is nice.     I can't say too much right now except that having such a high stress level every day for almost 4 months certainly takes its toll. My head feels like someone has set a huge bag of firework...

  Been a wee bit quiet on the whole house moving front at the moment, partly due to having absolutely no idea what's going on but mainly due to the fact that there's probably going to be pretty harsh legal consequences to how it's been dealt with by the housing officer so reckoned it was best to keep quiet and make notes in the meantime. However all that seems to have changed a few weeks back when we received a phone call to tell us that the housing officer had left their job suddenly for a new one (who knew there was a huge job market for sociopaths?) and that we needed to get a meeting regarding the house move as she'd not done the job handover or put anything in place. Obviously we then kinda assumed that we wouldn't be getting the keys on 1st April as promised and wouldn't be able to start moving stuff. But as a plus point we now don't have to deal with what was probably the most vindictive, manipulative and downright rude person I have ever encountered ...

  Spent the day dealing with housing, the police, social work AND all whilst having to get Amelia and Embeth to and from college (at different times) plus shopping, finishing up artwork and entertaining Cassidy. Bloody hell and it's only Monday. more when I've actually processed this. And I'm less angry obviously.  And here's me thinking things were going well.   

Lazy day at Autastic Towers today, the girls are away at a dance performance so Cassidy and myself have a boys weekend (well boys day and a bit) to look forward to. No rushing to get set for college and acting as an (unpaid) personal assistant (thanks Social Work) and no stressful rush hour journeys to contend with. We've had a day of shopping (planned by Cass), Playstation (chosen by Cass), tidying (he offered) and finally a snack and relax whilst watching various episodes of the Sylvester McCoy era of Doctor Who (which is quite honestly THE best era of the classic show. Fact).   Doctor Who (back when it was good).     And best of all this fairly easy going week means that my Psoriasis doesn't feel like hundreds of tiny blades slashing my skin for the first time in about 6 months. And I actually slept more than 5 hours last night.   You see, we've had a bizarre turn of events since Cass started college way back in August - he's now walking hands free (mostly), chatt...

 Well hitting the end of what's turned out to be a fairly interesting Autism Acceptance Month (I'm being kind) and realized that I've not felt this burned-out (both physically and mentally) for years.     Then it hit me that I'm actually just coming to terms with the fact that nothing has change in regards to the ongoing issues we're dealing with (from housing repairs to Social Work woes and a complete lack of any support - you can read about it here ) alongside a few new ones thrown in (up?) for good measure. Yes, we're still having to escort the kids to and from college (and in Cassidy's case stay with him all day) but now with the added stress of the girls college completely fucking up Embeth's application for next year and none of the staff involved appearing to actually either turn up at work or be able to answer emails. And they say we have a communication problem. It's just another thing in the whole 'death by a thousand cuts' situatio...

I don't want to jinx it but it appears that things are looking up in 2025 as it seems that 8 months after cancelling Cassidy's DLA due to the new Scottish system not recognising that you can have more than one disabled person living at the same address(!) that his Adult Disability Payment is finally back on track! Absolutely shocking length of time to be left attempting to sort it out - and yes, there's nothing in place to just reinstate it when it's a mistake at their end because reasons - but I have to say that if there was one shining light throughout this whole administrative shitstorm it would be the fact that every single staff member I've dealt with at Social Security Scotland has been an absolute star. So cheers to them at least. Especially the staff member who came round for Cassidy's 1:1 interview over Christmas, lovely guy. Now that's off the list there's just housing repairs, why Social Work actually exist and what it is they actually do exce...

Well it's been a packed year here at Autastic Towers so thought I'd do a quick overview of the highs and lows of 2024 with a special mention to those who deserve extra credit. Warning tho' there'll probably be some time jumps (a bit like Doctor Who when it was good) as some of the stuff is either ongoing or linked plus expect heady amounts of swearing. And slight sarcasm. Enjoy.     Bizarrely looking back I spent most of January coping with my (stress based) psoriasis hitting my ears again and going very deaf with sensory nightmares and throbbing headaches ahoy...imagine being drunk without the fun bits. In a lovely bit of symmetry I'm sitting typing this in exactly the same situation, albeit now with the pesky psoriasis now also covering my legs and back. Joy. Also in January  we had yet another new social worker assigned to the Cassman seeing as he was almost 18 and they've left it so long he was moved over to adult services - which means we need to start t...