Hot Chocolate Anyone ?

not yet @Former-Member but we are now cut off , you can not go south or north at the moment

Thank you @Smc for understanding. Yes we gave money for the poor people overseas too. At that time I was very idealistic and did not realise that my sister and both brothers would pass so young.

My extended family have good qualities, but inclusion and being appropriate to us is not part of them.

They had all sorts of other far more important things to do. Especially keeping clean and fancy houses in ever more expensive or expansive real estate. A psychiatrist once told me off and said I had to forgive, but I really was not that unforgiving. I had extended family camping holidays. They laughed at my love and affection and attempts to pull family together. Their kids appreciated it but became conflicted as I was the poor rellie kick bait. The truth is closer that the family saw me as representing those embarrassing failures (being a sibling of suicides and the excluded big sister/ widow and poverty issues.)

These are the people without so called mental illnesses, but I see it differently. They successfully imposed themselves in their new world and were very diligent at sweeping things under the carpet.

I have to stop wanting to have a family as being a piece of dirt aint much. There is only my son and I.

I have a friend who has dutch heritage from before the war and jewishness and is active about stories of the holocaust. It took someone like her to actually understand me at all and see through the scariness and scandal of the suicides. She was cleaning out her house moving into a nursing home and gave me the book about Tulipomania.

It has taken a long time for me to connect with things that represent beauty as I was struggling with the fear of being evil ...as put about by my mother and then hinted at .. here & there ..by others ...I also did not realise how severe our circs were compared to many other people ... eg my ex husband had it so cushy. My sisters' boyfriend told me off about WWII! Nobody actually asks me what I understood at what age. They are all too scared to know the answers. Its part of the cycle of shame.

Anyway I cant have done better than I did. You give it all, then thats it. I think its best I take a little break and begin to limit my time on the forum again. Thanks for all being here for me. Keeping me going.

@Determined, our town isn't in much danger of being cut off by floods, but after parts of it flooded twice in 2010/11, there are people who are really on edge whenever we get heavy rain. Post traumatic stress stuff. Is hard.

LoL @Shaz51, I have thought that

All best @Appleblossom, take care of yourself.

@Smcduring a big flood we get can get cut off for days to a week or more, on all four sides.
We usually get days and in some cases more than a week notice when that is going to happen though so no need to panic.

Silly thing is even during a minor flood shops are still open and being restocked people still go stupid. even without a flood warning but the river looks a bit high after a rain event people go mad lol.

@Determined@Shaz51, I try to keep a full pantry of non-perishables, but a relatively basic fridge and freezer. There's all sorts of reasons why a power supply could be lost, and I like to know that if that happened, the perishables could be eaten before they went toxic, and the pantry would keep us going for a bit after that. We wouldn't need to top up on too much supermarket stuff.

@Appleblossom

Our biggest challenge with now power @Smc is no water as we are on tank only and the tanks are a fair way below the house. We keep bottled water under the sink for flushing toilet and washing.

@Determined We've got two small to medium tanks, one for drinking water and one for the garden. We've also got mains water though, and being at the bottom of a valley means we're the last to lose pressure if the mains break. If we lost that, we could bucket tank water into the house.