This has been a very difficult past few days emotionally so I have been lying low. Yesterday was the closest I came to suicide, I had it all planned out and everything - go to work, finish off my jobs, then at lunchtime drive to a park and carry out the act..... but then my boss came in and handed me more work so couldn't get out at lunch, and then Sally called...... and well I am still here, fortunately or unfortunately depending on which way you look at it.

Aside from the cursed 3-weeks of July, September is always a very difficult month for me, first with Father's Day being the 1st Sunday of Sept in Australia, then my birthday. I often suffer the worst depression on my birthday. Last year I didn't celebrate my birthday at all, this was the September from hell when Sally required 24/7 care and I survived on 2 hours of sleep each night for the whole month until just before the Jewish New Year near end of September she suffered a fall and was taken to hospital where she would spend the next 6-7 weeks. But during that time I vowed never to celebrate my birthday. It was 1994 all over again when I experienced the Xmas from hell and so vowed never to celebrate Xmas again. Now in 2011 I vowed never to celebrate my birthday.

As we know the JWs (Jehovah's Witnesses) don't celebrate birthdays, the reason they cite is that there are only two stories in the Bible that refers to birthdays and both involved heathens and someone's head being chopped off. The first story involved an Egyptian pharaoh and on his birthday the baker's or butler's head got chopped off, can't remember exactly which but suffice to say one of them had his head chopped off. The 2nd story involved King Herod at the time of Jesus, and on his birthday he ordered John the Baptist's head to be chopped off. So it is for this reason why JWs does not celebrate birthdays. It seems a good reason to not celebrate birthdays but this is not my reason. Firstly I refer only to MY birthday and not anyone else's, I still remember the birthdays of family and loved ones. And in any case I will never submit to a church or religious group. But it sure feels like my head being chopped off, it was spiritually chopped off when mother died, so I want never again to celebrate my birthday !!!! The last time I had gotten anything for my birthday was in 2009 when mother gotten me a computer game. In 2010 mother was too ill to remember my birthday, she died 2011, and since then I had gotten nothing for my birthday. I won't knock back any birthday wishes, nevertheless, personally it is not a day of celebration for me, it is a day of sadness and depression.

Now back to Father's Day, I didn't expect to do anything special but to keep myself busy as it was a day of depression. So I spent the morning in the garden, and around lunchtime Justin had sent a txt to Sally's phone inviting us to afternoon dinner at mother's house - well Pasco's house now. It was a shock cos I had not heard boo from mother's side of the family since Xmas last year. Well of course Sally couldn't go cos of her sores, she is housebound and cannot go out anywhere. But she wanted me to go there, so I did so. There were Pasco's sister, Debra and a few of her kids, and some other souls. They still had mother's ashes there.

Soon after that my emotions took a nose dive, and well yesterday I almost killed myself....... the weather seemed to match my moods, we are having a real blast of winter since yesterday with thunderstorms and high winds. More thunderstorms today, and the forecast is for more storms to Thursday. So after a relatively dry and warm August we are now having "winter"!!

The disaster area that is the football tipping, well for this last round I did pick all 9 winners for the first time, but then so did half the office comp members and of course most had better points variances than me thanks to the curse of "The Three Weeks" when my points variance suffered catastrophes from which I would never recover. The prizes has been finalised, and for the first time ever it can be confirmed that I won no prizes whatsoever. Seems fitting for this horror year of 2012 the worst year of my life thus far.

Jewish New Year falls on Sept 17 this year so perhaps something will change then. Sally called our doc yesterday and he had suggested some alternative treatments for Sally's sores, some mixtures of "essential oils" which the doc will prescribe then have them ordered and mixed especially for her. It sounds promising but I am not willing to get my hopes up until I see physical results. Too many times before I had my hopes up only to be dashed against rocks. If you walk along the valley floor you will not get hurt, but if you climb up the side of the valley then slip and fall you will get hurt even killed - so I never allow myself to cultivate raised hopes. Hope deferred makes the soul sick. Nothing else works, antibiotics doesn't work, and Sally can't have certain other medicines due to allergies, etc. And the oils are rather pricey and not on Medicare but then we spending over $400/fortnite on bandages etc. So we shall see what happens when we get the oils, I guess in the next couple of weeks, probably in time for Rosh HaShanah the Jewish New Year.