The beauty of living in a village in Poland is, that you have neighbours. Well, obviously, people who live almost anywhere in the world, also in the cities, have neighbours but Polish village neighbours seem to know everything about each other. My Smardzewice neighbours still have impact on my life even though I moved thousands kilometers away. Google map says it’s 1098 miles, I actually thought it will be a bit more than that, but it’s still far enough.

So, basically, two neighbours contacted me today because they were concerned about my brother not being able to pay the electricity bill. I was, however, informed that it will be ‘our’ electricity that will get cut off. Our? I permanently moved out from there 18 years ago and was only coming to visit because of my mum. The neighbours also knew that my mum’s pension hasn’t reached her account – it’s partly my fault, being in Poland I could have easily gone to the pension provider and make sure it’s sorted but I just assumed it will automatically be delivered to the same account that mum was using before she was taken to the government care home. How come the neighbours knew about it, I am not quite sure.

I managed to speak with a nice lady in mum’s pension provider office (that is a government organisation btw) and she informed me I have to write a letter regarding where mum wants her pension, however, she didn’t know how to approach the fact I have Power of attorney for mum and finally she told me to just write that letter like if it was my mum writing and then sign it for her. It’s shocking to me that those kind of practices are being used by government agencies, but it’s not unusual in Poland, I guess. The lady also informed me that she never came across anybody staying in a private care home. Oh well.

Regarding the neighbours, I told one of them that my brother stole large sum of money from my mum, used to create arguments, was probably the one responsible for her accident, believes he’s one level above everyone else, the electricity account is 55PLN in credit (I sent her relevant screenshot) and I asked her not to contact me again regarding my brother’s problems as I need to take care of my own mental health first and stress can cause me another psychotic episode. That should hopefully shut them up for a while.

In general I am very good at shutting people up, which is good if that’s my intention but when it also happens when I want to speak with them again and create meaningful connection it’s not so good.

I baked chocolate and zucchini muffins today, they seem to be slightly too moist but hopefully they’ll be better tomorrow. That’s often the case with the healthy bakes – they taste better the next day. For now I had the last of my chocolate and beetroot muffins.

I was wondering yesterday how to make my blog ‘more autistic’. Should I review articles from Spectrum News? But then, I’d have to read them first and this may prove difficult! The fact that I’m autistic doesn’t mean I enjoy reading about autistic mice or even autistic genes.