Sun, sand, sea and soreness

Hello again Internet people. Back to reality after the best holiday of my life to date and I am nicely chilled out.

After a few of the worst months in recent memory, we were stressed and in need of a good holiday, damn we got it. We flew to Heraklion airport in Crete and were drove across the island to Rethymno were we were at a 5star all inclusive hotel. I say we being my lovely boy, my wife (The Mighty Rosie) 14 guests and my sister in law (the unstoppable Heva) with her fiancée, we were there for their wedding. 19 Of us checked in, another 5 came in a week later. There were two proposals, some drama on different nights, some fantastic  food, some ok drinks and lots and lots of sunshine.

The Mighty Rosie was maid of honour at Heva’s wedding, which went really well. The hotel staff were lovely (one of the ladies in the restaurant called Artemi actually kept talking to my son, there was a lovely playfulness between them) and other staff faced the wrath of several of the family and yet were fantastically helpful.

There was a knob-head of a musician that tried to prevent children dancing ON A DANCEFLOOR! There were complaints, we got the manager involved and then got a 19 person gourmet meal out of it. Then at the wedding, this same knob-jockey did it again, let me repeat this part of the show.. AT THE WEDDING! Needless to say, children danced anyway. On the last night there, my son (one of those told not to dance) danced across the square where he was performing and before we left, stood in front of him and did the monkey dance, eyeballing him the whole time. (Love that boy)

For my wife’s birthday, we went on a tour of pirate caves on a pirate ship and that was pretty awesome and before we left I had a go at paragliding. Yup, went flying too. Three minutes of terror (What am I doing? What am I doing?) and the rest of it was THIS IS AWESOME…..THIS IS AWESOME. I’m the furthest from a thrill seeker, but would recommend that to anyone.

Yup, that was an awesome couple of weeks, sun sea, sand and sunburn (even blistered early on) surrounded by relative strangers and relatives and spent two weeks with my favourite people, no work, no family and no stress. Even for someone and non-social as I, it was nice being around so many people who were having fun.

Glad to be back, but I enjoyed this so much. Two weeks of feeling good, of doing right by myself and my loved ones. I don’t want it to end, so I won’t.

Time to be happy again.

Have missed you internet people and happy times are here again.

Not much of point to this post, but to be honest have missed blogging and wanted to get right back on the horse.

Ttfn for now

 

 

 

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Entertainment n Stuff 2

With the dust of the last couple of months trevails dying down and a holiday beckoning, I’ve been finally able to start enjoying stuff again. With both my self and my lovely wife (the always on my mind Mighty Rosie) working full time jobs and devoting our weekends to our son (the Miraculous Samuel)  often the only time we get together is collapsing on the couch for a couple of hours in front of the tv during the week days.

As a result, we get picky about what we watch, since neither of us wants to waste the little time we do have watching soaps and sport (sorry fans of either, but it is what it is) and so when we find quality, we jump at it.

Here’s some stuff that we’ve been enjoying.

Fringe:

A fun little series of more thoughtful science fiction, with a light and fluffy side to it, heavy on character and consequence, have recently started the fourth series on Netflix and have been enjoying it tremendously.

iZombie:

This is a glorious find with an interesting and distinct take on the walking undead. Here final year medical student Liv is scratched by a zombie at a party she attended at her fiance’s request. She passes out, waking inside a body bag with a streak of hair turned white (soon joined by the rest of her hair) and a hunger for human brains. This version of zombieism is different in that the zombie retains their human personality and faculties, they’re just pale and hunger for brains. The brains often cause flashes of the brain donor’s life in the zombie’s head. This leads to the zombie temporarily acquiring new personality traits. Liv ends up working in a morgue with no real interest in doing anything other than eating brains, but falls backwards into helping a rookie detective solve cases using what he thinks are psychic vision, but are actually brain related side-effects. The series then follows her rebuilding her life, searching for a cure and allowing the search for justice to help her sleep at night.

It’s well acted, funny, bonkers in places and incredibly accessible. The cast is varied and very good with stand-out work from David Anders as sort of bad-guy zombie Blaine. If you have Netflix, watch it, if you don’t first month is free, just saying.

Community:

I realise that I’m a little late to the party on this little gem. Fraudulent lawyer is found out and has to do 4 years of community college, meets a girl and fakes a study group to get into her knickers, she invites others and the group ends up becoming a reality. There’s a mix of race, culture, age and gender and it’s an interesting character piece, with some silliness, quirks and snappy dialogue. One of the characters (Abed) suffers from Aspergers and relates everything via the filter of tv and film. He views the place he is like it’s a show he’s watching, which can get quite meta. It’s 20 minutes per show, so it’s a nice easy watch and now I am in the swing of it, am enjoying it tremendously.

(Podcast interlude: Unjustly Maligned:

Found this beauty of a podcast recently, definitely worth a luck for anyone who feels their favourite book/film/album/comic gets unfairly slated. 

https://www.theincomparable.com/ump/

One host, one guest one topic from Cricket, to the Eurovision Song Contest to Tron .)

Captain America: Civil War:

As will surprise none, I am a big fan of the marvel studios movies and this has been one of my favourites. I’m not going to do a full review, just wanted to say it’s enjoyable, fun and has a great cast. In what may be his 6th modern appearance in a movie, Spider-Man is finally recognisable as Spider-Man. We get a Black Panther worth seeing and every returning cast member is clearly having a ball.

Good stunts, good action and a fun experience, can’t ask for more from the movies can you?

 

Enjoy what you like.

Enjoy what you do.

Enjoy one another.

A friend once told me, “We’re here for a good time, not a long time.”

Whatever you enjoy, as long as no one is hurt, or infringed upon, who cares?

Take care internet people, I’m off on me jollies.

 

PS: iZombie is really good.

Feelings on a Friday 10: It’s the final countdown….

I am going on my holidays….. Woo and might I add Hoo

After the shittiest April/May at work in several years, after the start of the year filled with 12 months of grief shoved into 4, finally there are some good things heading my way.

I’m flying to Greece to celebrate my sister-in-laws wedding along with my awesome wife and incredibly exciting son. The reason I am saying this, won’t really be able to do much blogging over there. So I’m putting a pause on Munky on Merseyside until June.

I’ve been looking forward to this holiday for months and months and cannot wait to get my ass to the beach/pool/5-star hotel.

I hope that all of you are ok out there in internet land and know that I shall return.

 

Shut up Monday, no one’s listening to you

 

I don’t want to be in work today, but not for the usual reasons, I’m just exciting for an upcoming holiday and I want to finish the final bit of packing. After friday’s bitch-a-thon post, I was hoping that the weekend would offer me something a little different.

Yeah it did.

Saturday morning, woke up with my son, who is going through a phase of wanting to watch either Dinosaur Train or Power Rangers, realising that saturday was Free Comic Book Day, we ended up popping to town and getting some free s**t.

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Free Comic Book Day swag for me &amp; the Sam <a href=”https://t.co/q8KdeSz2hj”>pic.twitter.com/q8KdeSz2hj</a></p>&mdash; Keith Mason (@Mentalmunky76) <a href=”https://twitter.com/Mentalmunky76/status/729567544907071489″>May 9, 2016</a></blockquote>

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I had fun with my son, watching him chase bubbles from a minions bubble sword he got free with his comics, he was chasing them around the road for ages, at one point, he was chasing them along with about 4 or 5 girls in their 20’s. That was a fun sight, although he nearly crashed into a couple of them. We bought toys, we had fun and then we went home for cuddles with his mum and my awesome wife, the Mighty Rosie.

We had a couple of hours fun and then his nanny & grandad on my side popped back to have him over night. Me and the Mighty Rosie had some chill time and then went for a meal in Wallasey at a place called Chutney’s to celebrate her sister’s birthday.

Sunday we spent organising clothes and packing for our holiday to Crete that’s coming up soon and again some chill time.

I’ll be honest, after the shitstorm of the last 6 weeks, I am so happy with this weekend and can’t wait to get some sun, sea and sand.

I want to thank all those who messaged me and commented with words of support, when things aren’t so great it’s good to know that other people far away care, even when those closer to where I am seem not to.

 

But this is a monday that is beaten and broken at my feet.

The rest of the week lies ahead, but my gloves are up and I will not fall.

Stay strong people

 

 

 

 

Feelings on Friday 9: Near bottom

I was called to an informal meeting yesterday, apparently I have an ‘attitude’. My personal faults were outlined one by one in great detail and the fact that I didn’t rationalise coming off as a prick was somehow a bad thing, whereas I have always felt that only a prick rationalises being a prick, if you’re trying to be a decent person, then what you do is apologise and try to make amends.

So I’ve not handled the stress of the last 6 weeks well, a side effect of my depression certainly. I went home to see the Mighty Rosie, who was unwell and just broke down in front of her (well dignity has become a luxury these last three years) as always she was there for me and I slowly picked myself up and went back to work.

That was hard, but I did it. I was then called into another informal meeting, where I was again detailed my faults, but this time given a written warning. Now that wasn’t nice, but at least I was able to counter what they were saying more and was able to give ideas how I could do better.

I don’t entirely blame them for what they felt they had to do, but it was a kick in the teeth I could do without. I was left reeling and that feeling of having to pick myself up once again. I’ve got too relaxed around them, no longer feel like the outsider. Maybe that’s my mistake, people act friendly and so you consider them friends, but that’s not the case, I have a great rapport with one of the directors, but have been reminded he is not my friend.

It’s been a week of unpleasant reflection, but after talking with my wife (the aforementioned Mighty Rosie) and my trainer Tom, I have come to the conclusion that my job doesn’t need to make me happy, but I don’t have to let it make me unhappy. I’m not trapped, I need to think about what I want to do about this. In the meantime, smile, make nice, cheerful through gritted teeth. I need to pretend I’m a normal person happy to be there. I certainly don’t qualify as either. They’ve been no help since I’ve been going through this, paying lip service to being there. When I first had my breakdown, I was amazed by how many people wanted to help, but I now realise that it’s they wanted to be seen to want to help. Mistake made, lesson learned and now it’s time to get on with this.

Positives: I was taking my son to school yesterday, he was behaving and I told him he was a good boy.

“You’re a good daddy.” was his response, I can’t say how much I needed that.

This morning he told me a joke

What kind of bees make milk?

Boo-bees

Back with a vengeance: The Spirit of Munky is irrepressible

Well, that happened.

After I lost all my comic related stuff, have spent all my usual blogging time restoring my files and not blogging myself and I’ll be honest, I have missed it.

Work has been transformed into a new circle of hell due to changes in tax legislation, deadlines and technical difficulties, have gone into work, worked like a dog, been treated as such and then gone straight back on dad duty.

I am no longer under the care of the local mental health team on a regular basis, I have numbers, but I know me well enough to know I am unlikely to call them. Also found out the same day that my trainer at the gym is leaving to open his own business miles away. I don’t blame him for wanting that, but that’s another convenient support I had built up gone.

My wife, the Mighty Rosie, has had so much stuff happen in work, I can’t write it down without feeling angry, lets just say if I were able to do what I’d like to do, there’d be a person less in this world and I’d be looking for a place to hide some bloody tools and looking for a good alibi. I don’t like anger I can’t use and it’s frustrating when the person you love most in this world needs help  you can’t give.

That said, my mental health state is improved and we are communicating better than we have in years, she knows I am there for her and she is letting me and I feel like a better husband than this depression has let me be. Also me and my son are as close as ever, so not letting the dad side down.

All this stuff, doesn’t really define this last month, work stress, family stress, health stress, mental health stress and all that are there, but there’s also positives.

Been the pictures twice this month, more on that another day.

Got a night out with the Mighty Rosie on Saturday, that was nice and all three of us had a lovely day together on May Day.

Got to meet one of my podcasting heroes this month Andrew (too many podcasts to mention) Leyland, at a local comic mart and we had a fun little chat.

Above all am ok.

Have gone through the wringer this month, been shouted at, told off, angry, stressed and depressed and you know what? Doesn’t matter, I’m still going strong.

I owe this to my boy and to the Mighty Rosie, who are the two people in the world I can always count on.

There may be another break coming up soon, but will get some posts out sooner rather than later.

 

There are 8.5 working days till I am off to Greece for my Sister-in-Law’s wedding.

Sun, sea, sand and some other forms of fun await.

Stay strong internet people, even when we’re down, we can still rise.