The non-sexual crush

So I sort of have a bit of a crush on someone.

Someone I'm not sexually attracted to at all.

It's a sort of wanting to impress them, being more interested in whatever they're talking about than you usually would be, being more aware of them than others in the room, caring what they think of you kind of deal, rather than wanting to sleep with them.

It's weird.

I've noticed that when this happens to me (not that it happens very often, not since my teenage years), it's usually a woman that's the recipient.

Now I am sexually attracted to women as well as men, but don't identify as bisexual mostly because I'm not interested in romantic/sexual relationships with women - in general they are just too complicated, with all that expecting you to be a mind reader and saying one thing and meaning another and insecurities that you get so often. Note that I'm not dissing women at all here, neither am I saying that all women are like that. Those that are? It's a social conditioning thing. But I digress. Plus, penis = good.

So anyway. This crush is a man. I've known him for a while, although I don't know him very well.

I've been trying to figure out what it is I like about him, and what he has in common with my previous crushes - and I've come up with a little "crush wishlist".

1) Funny. Makes me laugh, in a clever not-just-endless-fart/penis-jokes kind of way. Which also leads to...
2) Clever. But not obviously cleverer than me. Not that I've administered IQ tests - he could very well be more intelligent than me but he doesn't act it, and that's the bit that matters. Clever enough to be intellectually stimulating, but not clever enough to be threatening or make me feel stupid.
3) Slightly vulnerable. Guess that's the maternal side I haven't got coming out.

This probably explains my little list of People I Don't Fancy But Would Still Sleep With, which notably includes Alan Davies, Bill Bailey, Billy Connelly, Rich Hall, and Jennifer Saunders. Okay, so I do sort of fancy Jennifer Saunders, but not enough to discount her from this list.

What is it about funny people? I don't get it.

Well surprise, surprise. Blogger's being a twat again.

Bastards....

I've been trying to comment, on my OWN BLOG, so I can reply to the comment's I've gotten recently.

Apparently that's just asking too much.

Despite being logged in, my blog looks like I'm not, i.e. it says "sign in" or "create blog" at the top rather than "new post" or similar. When I click to sign in, I go straight to my dashboard, which I'm signed in to. But if I try to comment, the page just refreshes and my comment vanishes.

Pippa says the she's having trouble commenting here as well, so it's not just me.

So you were going to get actual content, but instead you get yet another moan. For which you can thank fucking Blogger.

And I'm out.

You'll be pleased to hear...

... that I've accepted the support job.

It will actually be more like 15 hours a week but as Sarah says, some weeks it will be 8, some closer to 20. Depends what she needs at the time.

So, I have basically two choices regarding uni - if I can persuade them to let me back in a part-time flexible kind of way.

Either I work part time and study part time (can possibly manage that), or I take the year off from studying and just work for Sarah, then reconsider next year.

If the job works out for both of us, I could potentially do it for 3 years (the length of Sarah's PhD) - I've told her I'm definitely available for at least one year.

Just realised that I actually have a third option - if uni insists that they can't make adjustments for me (and if it turns out that they can do that legally), I could study by myself this year. Although it wouldn't actually count for anything, then I could lie to my doctor to get them to provide me an "I'm all better" note and go back full-time next year having already got most of the material under my belt, and just spend the year revising and doing essays and exams and practical work. Much easier.

So yeah, a lot of stuff to think about.

I'm waiting to hear back from the Disabled and Dyslexic Students department anyway, see what they have to say about the uni thing.


And on a completely unrelated note, tomorrow I will finally reveal the mystery bird! So this is your last opportunity to guess...

To make things slightly more complicated...

... I've just been offered a part-time job.

Which sounds really good.

Basically it would involve me being a PA for my friend Sarah, who's doing a PhD in speech therapy or linguistics or similar (I forget the exact details), and who's completely blind. I'd be her reader, recording printed text onto CD, and assist with things like references from printed books. Also as her guide when she goes to conferences and such (she has a guide dog but the dog doesn't help when Sarah's in an unfamiliar place - you can't ask a dog to tell you where a particular room is for example). And I'd format her written work on the computer, making sure that tables were the right size for the page, stuff like that.

I'd be trained in the International Phonetic Alphabet which is used a lot in linguistics, and how to use the recording equipment, and how to make the various vocal sounds which aren't used in English. (Very useful for singing actually, since we sing a lot in different languages.)

Hours would vary week by week, but would average maybe 6-10 with most of it being done at home, so I could work at 3am if I wanted to.

Since I have an interest in linguistics and the work's flexible and I already get on well with Sarah, it would suit me pretty well. And I should be able to cope, it's not like a massive workload or anything.

As to how this would fit in to studying, I'm not sure.

Plan at the moment is to contact the Disabled and Dyslexic Students department at university and see if they can help me at all with tackling the Psychology department. Because I still think that they have a legal requirement to give me a bit more than "sorry, we can't help".

I'm so not happy. In fact I'm downright pissed off.

I emailed my university department today, explaining the difficulties I've been having with the fibro, and saying that I didn't think I'd be able to cope with going back to uni full time.

The reply I got was pretty much, "Sorry you're ill, unfortunately we can't offer part-time study, try Open University - you can't come back until you get a medical certificate saying you're well enough to do the course".

Now I know I'm pissed off right now and probably not thinking straight, but surely that's discrimination?

Don't they have to make "reasonable adjustments" to make sure I'm not disadvantaged compared with other students, since the problems I'm having all come from my disability*?

Which won't go away?

Would it be unreasonable for them to allow me to work at my own pace, provide me with copies of lecture notes and allow me to access actual lectures from home (via web cam or video recordings for example)? To give me extensions on essays? To give me just a little bit of fucking support?

Needless to say, I'm tired and I don't know what to do.

* I still can't quite think of myself as disabled. Although I am. Disabled to me is using a wheelchair or crutches, or having dyslexia, or being blind or partially sighted, or something of that magnitude. I don't look disabled and I don't have specific impairments that are obvious to people - maybe it's because I don't have a "traditional" disability that I have such difficulty in self-identifying as disabled. Or "person with disabilities", since I'm all for the person-centred label.