dog tired

It's been pretty hot (ok, very hot) lately and this is how I feel on hot days.

Fortunately I can flop on a bed, not hard paving and I don't have to get dragged around the city by my human. 

We took a lot of dog photos in Paris. There are lots of dogs who live there (I only saw one cat) and they all need walks. No-one cleans up after them though. :(

urgh

Yesterday's tiredness has turned into today's achiness and general grogginess. Yuck.

It's Bonfire Night, but I suspect I shall not be going out to see fireworks. Instead, I'll be curled up in bed and going to sleep early.

hospital drama

The last few days have been more dramatic than I expected.

I had some pain in my rib cage last week, which although pretty excruciating, I assumed was just a muscle strain. (I'd had similar pains a couple of weeks before that I'd put down to an awkward bike skid). However, on Thursday morning, I was coughing up blood and thought maybe we'd better get it checked out. Rob drove me to Addenbrooke's A&E and by lunchtime I'd been admitted with what was either a chest infection or a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in my lungs). An initial x-ray didn't show up any clots, but a CT scan later that night showed definite clots. Thursday night was pretty painful and I didn't get much sleep, in between the pain and the worry.

Friday morning I was put on a heart monitor, just in case. I wasn't allowed to walk anywhere and had to be wheeled to the bathroom, which made me feel pretty helpless. Although the first day's events had been pretty scary, things quickly improved. I was put on anti-clotting drugs as soon as the possibility of a clot was raised and continued to have injections over the weekend. I had plenty of pain killers to help me be more comfortable. The last couple of days have mostly been about starting me on Warfarin and getting the dose right. I've got to go back for more blood tests over the next few days and weeks, but these will get less frequent as things settle down.

I'm home again, as of this afternoon. I'm very tired and looking forward to getting some good sleep in my own bed. Rob's done a very good job of looking after me, keeping everyone informed and making sure I have everything I need in hospital. We've had lots of support from friends and particularly from Eden (our church) and feel very loved and looked after.

It all felt pretty scary for a bit, but it was very reassuring to know I was in the right place, being looked after by people who know what they're doing. I suspect it'll take me a while to get back to full strength, but I'm going to take it easy and not rush anything. I'm still achey, though it's not the terrible pain I had last week. I'm very thankful to God for all the support we've had from friends and for modern medicine and the easy access I have to it.

this week I have been mostly sneezing

At least, that's how it feels. I've got the sniffly lurgey that's going around and I've spent the last couple of days lying on the settee feeling sorry for myself, producing large quantities of snotty tissues and watching stuff on iPlayer.

Last night, I slept well and didn't wake up at 3am like I have the last few nights. Hooray! I'm feeling a bit more alive this morning, though I'm still coughing and sniffling. I hope by tomorrow morning I'll be feeling even better and be ready to sing at church.

Christmas is coming up fast. One good thing about being ill is that I've had lots of time to knit, so my gift knitting is under control. Christmas shopping on the other hand, hasn't happened at all. I don't think I'm going to attempt any today - town will be packed. Maybe Monday.

And there are Christmas services next weekend to sing at and invite people to. And then it's Christmas proper. Yay!

nothing much

sillhouette, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

I've got nothing much to say today. I am (guess what) very tired. I went to Rev and came home again after two songs. I hope a good long sleep will sort me out.

Here's a photo from a couple of weeks ago. I was playing with my camera and using the colour highlight setting to pick out the blue of the sky and put everything else in black and white. It's a little hard to tell since the trees are almost monochrome anyway.

...and zonk!

I think yesterday's wooziness was caused by tiredness. Today I am just as tired and about to have an afternoon nap.

I'm frustrated with getting so tired. I've worked three mornings this week. I did have a relatively late night on Monday, but in theory I've had enough sleep and mostly it was good sleep. I'm tired of being tired. I don't know what to do differently. Most fresh air and exercise? Different food? Go to bed even earlier?

Grrrr.

dead mouse

dead mouse, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

It says something about my state of mind this morning that all I can think of to post is a picture of a dead mouse.

I think it's a rather sweet and pathetic dead mouse. A memento mori perhaps.

I am tired.

stop!

I'm supposed to be not rushing around too much. I am failing to do so. I was going to go to the cinema tonight to see Quantum of Solace but instead I shall be staying in and going to bed early. Oh, the excitement.

I am getting better at stopping to be. This year I've noticed that I've noticed autumn in a way I'm sure I haven't for the past few years. I was excited about waiting for the leaves to change and about watching them shade into different colours. I allow myself longer to get out of bed, dressed and breakfasted and out of the house which means I've got much better at finding time to read my Bible and pray in the morning. Sometimes I'm managing to take time to hang out with other people and not do much, just breathe the same air and chat. I'm doing 3 mornings a week at work, which I can manage. I'm not sure whether I could manage more. That feels strange. I used to be able to work a full week, do lots, miss out on sleep and eventually recover by collapsing in a heap. I can't anymore. Maybe that's a good thing.

ready for bed

ready for bed, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

Curling up where it's warm to sleep.

to sleep, perchance to dream?

I am STILL having weird dreams. I'll try fiddling around with when I take my drugs again, but I'm not sure it makes much difference. It's what happens to me in the early morning I can't take. It's more like hallucinations than dreams. I'm sleeping lightly, but as soon as I close my eyes I'm in dream world. It's as if I have to chose between being awake and sleepy or dreaming and confused. And the unreal stuff seems so real, so tangible. This morning I dreamed I was writing and when I opened my eyes my hand was waving about in the air, writing. So strange.

In other news. I am knitting lots. I've finished the fronts of a cardigan. I have an interview for a part time temp job tomorrow. It's only 8 hours a week, but I think it'll be a good first step back into working. On Friday I'm going to London to the 900th anniversary celebrations of the church I grew up in and went to until I went to uni. It'll be good to see some old friends again.

Life is weird, but God is good. I am still alive, and there are people who love and care for me, for which I am very grateful.

I need to make myself write more. Probably not on the blog, but I keep coming up with ideas I want to get down on paper and work out and then being too scared to sit down and write. So my head gets stuffed, and things don't get sorted out. Not good.

I think I'm scared of reading too. Which is daft. But it's like I can't read any serious books, because I won't understand them, or be able to talk about them properly. I'm not sure. But there's definitely fear there. I dreamt the other day that I was talking to someone about books and they started on a subject I knew nothing about - French poetry, I think - and I just had nothing to say, so I laughed and said something like, "I recognise all those words, but I have idea what you're talking about." Which is totally not what I'd do in real life. I'm a terrible bluffer; I hate to be wrong or to be found wanting. Maybe there's a solution there, to be able to admit when I don't know stuff and laugh about it. And learn. I may not know everything, but I want to. Is that a useful aim in life, or am I just setting myself up to fail? I suppose one can keep learning to the end of life.

What about beyond? Will we still be learning in eternity?

I shall stop now and lay my befuddled head down to sleep. And pray for deep and peaceful rest.

what next?

I've had a few days of fun and relaxation. Now I'm back to being stressed again. The weird dreams seemed to have gone, before returning with a vengeance last night. I suspect the fact that I knew I was planning to start job-hunting properly today made me feel tense and my sub-conscious reacted by producing scary monsters and a set of disconcerting nested dreams I kept trying to shake myself awake from, with no success. Why does my brain do that? Just when I could do with a good night's sleep, it goes crazy and weird. :-(

Today, I have been mostly filling in temp agency forms and trying not to pick fights with Americans. Tonight, I'm helping Liz strip wallpaper. Tomorrow, who knows?

finishing things

Today I finished my last essay for a while. The next one is my dissertation, which I can't face at the moment, so I'm taking some time off and coming back to it in February. Or later. Or maybe never. Who knows. But today I filled in the forms to intermit for a semester.

Today I also finished the video editing and uploading I've been doing at the place I worked for until a year ago. So, approximately a year after I left, I actually finished working there.

Next week, I must start looking for a job in earnest. For the next few days I'm going to relax, sleep lots and generally flop.

technicolour dreaming

I have been having the weirdest dreams. Super-vivid glorious technicolour dreams directed by Cecil B. deMille or Busby Berkeley or George A. Romero. Dreams so vivid they seem more real then reality sometimes. I keep flashing back to things I remember and can't quite work out whether I dreamt them, or they really happened. So far, I've not misremembered or invented anything important, but it's getting harder to tell.

Sometimes my dreams are entertaining, mostly they're odd, occasionally they're downright disturbing and distressing. I wake up frightened in the middle of the night or so unsettled I can't sleep. In the morning, I'm more tired than when I went to bed. I almost dread going to sleep because I don't know what's going to greet me, monsters, wombats, shrinking houses, bullying armies or giant slides. For a while, it was funny, but now it's not. I'm not sleeping properly, I can't concentrate.

I'm seeing my doctor tomorrow and I'm going to tell her about my dreams and see what she suggests. I suspect it might be a side-effect of the anti-depressants I'm taking. If so, then perhaps switching to something else will make the dreams go away. I hope so.

twirly

It's silly o'clock in the morning and I'm awake. The birds are singing and the sky is getting lighter.

I ache a little after getting knocked off my bike yesterday. I was overtaking another cyclist, who turned right, straight into me. I flew off, scraping my knees and elbow and smacking my head on the tarmac. Fortunately it was on Trinity Street, so there were no cars and I was wearing my helmet, which saved my head. I think I sort of went over the handlebars though, since there's a painful bruise on my stomach.

I'm not sure if pain woke me up, or strange dreams. I'm having lots of vivid dreams at the moment. This one was continuing the book I was reading yesterday. (The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill.) It's good, but a little more scary than I'm used to, somehow. Stopping in the middle, before anything's had a chance to be resolved is probably a recipe for unsettled dreams.

Curiously, in my dream, I knew it wasn't real. I knew God was in control and everything was going to be all right. Which is very comforting.

this must be thursday

It's not been a good day so far. The bad day actually began last night when I came to unlock my bike and discovered the lock was stuck. In a very silly, but impossible way. There was little point trying to fix it in the dark, so I left it until this morning. Today, I woke up later than I intended, managed to break a necklace and send beads all over the floor and in the process of clearing it up, knocked a vase of flowers over and spilt water all over the floor. When trying to throw the flowers in the green bin, I discovered the keys to the back door were at work because I'd discovered them in my pocket yesterday, not recognised them and decided someone at work must have put them in my coat pocket by mistake. (Seemed logical at the time, but rather less so now.)

I have now freed the bike, using nail clippers and tidied up the mess, but the whole business has left me feeling stressed and frustrated and unsettled before I've even done anything. And it's windy and raining, so I'm staying in the warm until the rain goes away, hoping nothing else breaks.

locked in the library

Not literally, but I've been here all day, working on the essay that's due in on Monday. I've made pretty good progress today. Nearly at 4000 words, another push tomorrow and it should be done, with a day in hand to tidy it up. At least that's the plan.

I now know more about Bartholomew Fair, William Poel and the Elizabethan stage company and Renaissance lath and plaster than I did this morning. And I have a slightly sore feeling throat which I hope is just the result of too much dry air conditioned air and not the start of something nasty.

My brain is quite tired. Home soon to wind down with knitting or a (non-work) book or just sleep.

just being

I'm sleepy. I'm having a travelling Christmas. So far I've been to Melton Mowbray and Cheltenham. Now I'm in Exeter for a New Year's Eve ball on Monday, but planning to spend some time sleeping, reading and maybe even essay writing before that.

It is quiet here in HP's house. Fe lives here all the time, but everyone else is home with their families, or otherwise elsewhere. HP herself is on the Isle of Wight. I do like the quiet dip between Christmas and New Year's Eve, it feels like a time when you can do anything and not feel like you should be working or tidying or otherwise being useful. Except that I do think I should do some essay-type work. But not right now, I'm far too sleepy. Radio 3 and the paper for me.