The Clockmaker

It's been a somewhat stressful day. I'm off to Norway on Thursday (ash cloud permitting). I had Brownies last night, Rangers tonight and there's a work social tomorrow night. I initially was hesitant on it, being the night before I fly off. Yesterday Daisy asked if I was coming and I told her it depends on how I get on with my packing. Her response: "You've got to come! Pack pack pack!" I do like to try and pretend to be sociable and I'd like to go, so I've spent today packing. After Brownies last night, I had too much pasta and turned limp and shivery - yeah, pasta's really bad for me - and didn't have the energy to stand up, let alone do anything constructive. I did a chunk of packing this morning, spent the morning at work making a list of things I needed To Do, To Pack in Hand Luggage and To Pack in Hold Luggage and at lunchtime and since I've got home, I've been going down the list. I just froze over at lunchtime, though. You know when you're stressed and you've got a thousand things to do and your body decides the best way to cope is to shut down? That. Packing, lunch, preparing for Rangers, making myself swallow a teeny-weeny pill, finding my phone... I found myself just standing in the kitchen, too overwhelmed to do any of it.

Anyway, we're now down to the last few things. Finding a good map at the correct scale so I can find my way around the two cities. Pretty much all the packing is done. There's still things like putting my cards in my travel wallet and packing my sunglasses - can't do either until I get home after the social tomorrow. And packing my phone, charger, hairbrush and pyjamas - all to be done when I wake up at ouch o'clock on Thursday. And food, but I need to go shopping for that on the way to Rangers. I have emptied my camera, I have put my writing and the entire first season of Boardwalk Empire on my (newly charged) netbook and packed the lot.

Now to watch the ash and quiver until I'm actually in the air (when I remember that I'm a slightly nervous flyer. Even I forget this. I look forward to plane journeys for months. I sit in my seat and bounce like a child and stare out of the window and adore both take-off and landing. I love flying. But when we're levelling off and the engines go quiet, I get twitchy. And when the turbulence is bad enough for the pilot to put the seatbelt signs on, I become convinced we're about to be thrown out of the air and die hideously. But if the engines are noisy and the flight is smooth, I love flying and I will sit there and be scornful of anyone who is nervous). I have decided that my next holiday will be to Iceland, armed with a very large cork. Damn them and their volcanoes.

Also, I am tired. I couldn't sleep Sunday night because my brain was dancing around singing about pirates all night and I woke up far too early this morning and didn't get back to sleep properly. And if I go to bed with the window open, it's too cold to sleep and I am forced to close it. But if the window is closed, I wake up at just-before-sunrise (which is quite early in summer) because I'm hideously uncomfortable without some fresh air, so that's been disturbing me every night for the last week or so. So I am quite tired, especially in the mornings, and therefore liable to uncharacteristic.

I can't sleep. Been a while since I've done a middle-of-the-night-and-unhappy posting because on the whole I've slept really well ever since I adopted the blankets but tonight.. not happening. I'm not panicking, I'm perfectly calm, just bored out of my mind. Too hot under the blanket but a bit cold out of them and also, becaused I'm weird like that, I feel very vulnerable to stab attacks if I'm not covered up. Yes. As if a blanket is protection from being stabbed which isn't going to happen anyway.

It was hard yesterday (although having not slept yet, it still feels today; anyway, I mean Monday) to snap out of the miserable mood. Once I get a feeling lodged in my head, it's really hard to get rid of it, particularly when that feeling is that you don't have any friends. Just constantly going over and over it. Fortunately, my head can only really contain one persistent thought at a time and learning to be left-handed can occupy enough of it that there isn't enough space left for sad feelings. And then Brownies (have I mentioned recently what a cure-all they can be?) drove out all thoughts altogether. Brownies are brilliant for cheering me up. We did some skipping with them and by the end, we had two who had, through stubborn refusal to give up, pretty much mastered the art of jumping into the double-dutch ropes. They weren't so brilliant at carrying on jumping once they were in but they could get in and that was a joy to watch.

Then afterwards, me and Mandy compared upper arm muscles. I used to climb quite a bit at uni, I used to have proper muscles there (until someone attempted to feel the muscle. I am very ticklish. Someone grabbing my arm instantly reduces the muslce to squirming spider limbs) and although they're not as prominent as they used to be, yeah, there's still muscle of a sort there.

I am tired. I have dimmed my laptop as much as it'll go but the light is still really hurting my eyes and picking up a computer is a really, really bad way to tire myself out. I'm going to stop rambling, put it down and lie here listening to the birds chirruping outside. Don't know if they've noticed it's really quite dark indeed. Sparrows, blackbirds, martins and maybe the odd thrush, I think, judging by the birds I seen regularly in the garden. We also have a lot of pigeons and crows but I know what pigeons and crows sound like and the high-pitched chirruping outside my window definitely doesn't contain any cooing or squawking.

Eeesh, missing an entire night's sleep really takes it out of you! I deliberately (and stupidly) didn't bother even trying to sleep Friday night and it's now Monday and I could still curl up and go to sleep right now.

My immune system is still playing am-I-amn't-I with me. I've been fine for several days now but it had me all full of cough this morning and feeling really unnaturally hot for a bit. That's gone again now. It teases me.

I bought some new glasses when I was going through a phase back in the autumn. That was when I discovered the concept of coloured overlays and lenses. I used the overlays for a while but I've stopped now and I don't think I'm any worse without them. But I had vague intentions of getting coloured lenses, so I bought some cheap glasses from the internet. And it would be foolish to spend that amount of money on getting them coloured, especially when I don't think I need them now, so they've gone into circulation as normal glasses. I didn't bother with the anti-reflection coating, all it seems to do is attract fingerprints but... actually, I've had it for so long that I'm struggling with these ones because they do reflect things. And they're not fitted to my face. I have quite a small head and glasses tend to be too big. That's why black-framed ones, even relatively delicate ones, always look ludicrous on me. And it's why they all have to have their arms bent in peculiar ways, to try and keep them on my ears. They've been slipping off all weekend and it's driving me crazy.

I have taken advice and am watching Boardwalk Empire. Can't put my finger on why but I'm quite enjoying it. Only two episodes in but I've got four sitting waiting to be watched later. Generally, if I'm not in a series at the beginning I don't bother, it's too much effort and commitment and just takes too much time to catch up (see my unwatched Battlestar Galactica boxset) but this is only twelve episodes. I'm still very much having trouble keeping who's who straight - I mix up Nucky and Jimmy occasionally at the moment and there's still a lot of people I haven't learnt to recognise yet. Hopefully I'll get there.

As well as that, I've finally picked up a book that I'm really enjoying - oh, I can see its faults, both in story and in style, but it's fun and that's all that's important, frankly. Black Lung Captain by Chris Wooding. I'm not going to pretend that it's fine literature. But stories are stories.

Speaking of which, I've spent the last ten days feeling vaguely that April would be a great time to knuckle down on the books I'm trying to write. The Sequel just isn't as much fun as the original Big Book Project. I don't know if that's because I've got something of a plot laid out, whereas the original was total "throw everything I can dream of in there and we'll sort it out later!". I don't know if it's because I'm trying to shoehorn in a couple of new characters who just aren't gelling or if it's suffering from lack of Nat but it's a pig to write. I love Alex and Joey. I love this brotherly/motherly relationship they seem to have slipped into. They're poppets. I guess the real problem is that Joey is coming across as a nerd who'd rather be on his computer and neither of them seems particularly good at the secret agent bit. Arrggh. Boys!
This entry was originally posted at http://phantym.dreamwidth.org/910.html. There are comments there. I prefer Livejournal but feel free to comment at Dreamwidth if you like.

Today, I have done a brilliant impression of a normal, chatty, sociable human being. I have had an in-depth discussion of teeth with two colleagues I don't generally chat to (is it unusual to bite polos? I thought that was the usual way to eat them) and with the accountant about pre-decimal coins and eccentric great-uncles (I have one. Not at the moment, he died long before I was born, but I claim ownership of him) and smiled and enjoyed it. I don't generally (at least I hope I don't) appear moody and grumpy and all that at work but I'm quiet and I keep to myself and I don't usually chat outside of my particular friends. So that was nice.

I have got a drawing pin stuck in my hand (not "I have got" as in "right now there is a-" but in the sense of the past tense of got). It hurt. I now remember that injections hurt. I'd convinced myself that they don't really hurt and my phobia of them is simply of the phobic of them itself, that if I look at it or talk about it or think about it I will faint/throw up but actually, something sharp being poked into you does hurt and it's not so unreasonable to be petrified of that.

I had a giggle at myself today as well. Parked next to another Panda at Tesco, giggled for being so childish as to do that and then promptly had hysterics because that Panda was parked behind another. We looked like a little Panda convention out there.

In a bit I shall go and see my mentor, who came to observe Rangers last week and who this week shall go through my qualification and sign everything off.

I have cut my nails. I bit them until I was fourteen or so, then stopped literally overnight.  A few of them had got ludicrously long and full of what I call faultlines and my thumbnails were so long I could hardly do anything - earrings are impossible and I started having trouble doing up my necklace, so they're all cut back a bit and filed and I'm going to keep filing them regularly so they don't get weak and break and actually make some kind of vague effort to look after them.

So the only problem with my day is being shattered. I wish I could get used to going to bed before midnight and staying asleep all night but it's not working at the moment. I can't seem to make myself go to bed early enough and if I do, I can't get to sleep. The heating isn't working properly, so I have to sleep with the duvet over the blankets and it feels like... well, to say it feels like it's crushing me would be melodramatic but I'm definitely more comfortable with only the blankets. However, just blankets is too cold. So I never feel good in the morning and by the end of the day I'm ready to come home and crash. But my moods are ok which is a good thing.

In the meantime I am rewatching All the Small Things. I love Olive. (And Jake, obviously).

And finally, the pasta I've just eaten is expressing its displeasure at me having eaten it. Some of us never learn.

Hair straightened. I'm a little disappointed at its length. In my head, when it's straight it's insanely long. The reality is that when it's pulled straight it only reaches to an inch or so above my waist. The blonde is coming back. It's never going to regain the white-blonde it used to be when I was tiny but I think it may reach the golden light brown it was five or so years ago. If I don't go and dye it red again. Maybe it's time for a change. Maybe it's time to give up dying it various shades of mid-brown, chestnut and pillarbox and either let it turn back to blonde or give it a helping hand back.

I have done a mischief to my right knee. No idea how. It doesn't hurt unless I put my weight on it. Even poking it with my fingers doesn't work. I did exactly the same thing last year to my left knee. It concerned me a bit at the time because it was quite shortly before I was heading off to snowboarding at Altitude but it sorted itself out. To this day I know neither what I did to injure it in the first place or what happened to make it better the very week I happened to need it functional. So I assume the same thing has happened to the right knee now and that it also will stop hurting sooner or later. In the meantime, if I need to kneel or crawl, I use my left leg.

Intending to go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight. I've got into the terrible habit of staying up until 12.30/1am and then of course, being an early bird by nature, I'm exhausted in the morning. Bed as soon as parents turn off the TV which is on the other side of the wall but still only six feet away from my ears. And they're thin walls. There's a line in Friends "if you can recognise it through a wall, you know it too well!" I can recognise a lot of things through the wall. I generally know exactly what they're watching and I don't have to have seen it too may times to do it.

I have vague plans of running. At the moment, I don't run. I've never been a runner. For a while I was moderately less-than-appalling at high/long jump but it was a short while and it was definitely only less-than-appalling. But I quite fancy attempting to run. I live behind a big field, I have a pair of trainers suitable for running somewhere in the house and I'll start small and gentle. One minute jogging, one minute walking. That's a variation on Scout's Pace. Then I can either gradually take it up a step or abandon the ludicrous idea. I have quite muscular legs, a legacy of going to a school that was effectively split between two sites and required a five minute walk from one site to the other between lessons, usually with a long-legged friend who walked too fast for comfort. That and Duke of Edinburgh and being a Guide. Running would help stretch the tendons in my ankles too, which would help when I go snowboarding because having my feet immobilised in boots and then walking up a hill half a dozen times in quick succession gives me cramps, generally in my right leg only. This sometimes results in trying to get the boot off in a panicked hurry to stretch and rub the offending leg. (I occasionally have a tendency to panic when something gets stuck on my feet or in my hair. This is ludicrous, I know. I'm more likely to freak out if my laces are in a knot than at any other time. Ridiculous).

So yes, running. Goodnight.

So.

I went to bed fairly early last night, slept really well and really late. Well, I sort of woke up about 8.25ish, which is the time I drag myself out of bed during the week but stayed in bed dozing for another hour, picked up my laptop, played on that for a bit and then put it down and curled up again. I didn't get up until Mum came in at just after 11 which I know isn't late for some people, especially on a Saturday but it is for me. Or it used to be. Pre-laptop, I would get up about 6.30/7am every day without fail. Now I'm catching up on years of lost sleep. But I've felt so much more lively today for the extra sleep.

Sister's Useless Boyfriend (hereafter UB) arrived thirty seconds after I dragged myself out of bed. I like him. You wouldn't tell from listening to the two of us - it's a two-way stream of constant insults and rudeness. Mum says I treat him like the brother I never had. I mean, yes, he's useless and he's not interested in anything beyond Nintendo but, y'know.

We went shopping, I found another duck - really must get out my entire collection and count them one day - and bought some new toothbrushes and some orange juice for work and we bought ingredients for Rocky Road, then came home and watched Scott Pilgrim. Well, I only half-watched it. Then we bulled UB into letting us watch some of the extra features and damn, I'd forgotten exactly why I used to have a fairly big crush on Edgar Wright. Isn't he lovely? I mean, physically he's My Type - the smallish guy with longish unruly hair and a great thick streak of geeky passion. He also works far too long and doesn't sleep enough, so he has a tendency to exhaustion, headaches and colds which tends to bring out my otherwise-hidden caring side and make me go "Aww, poor poorly baby!" And I've never heard anyone say a bad word about him (I've seen plenty of criticism of his manic directing style, on the other hand) and he just seems to be a really nice person. I like Edgar Wright a lot.

At Rangers this week we did some Fimo modelling. I made another little dragon to add to my collection but he only got baked this afternoon and then I sat and painted him with three coats of varnish while watching the film. I will take a photo of my Fimo dragons tomorrow. They're cute.

UB had also brought Toy Story 3 but I can't watch it. I have a ridiculously sentimental streak in which even the idea of it makes me very nearly cry, and a discussion of Toy Story 3 and Mr Magorian's Wonder Emporium had me with tears in my eyes this morning, without even watching either of them. (We watched Mr Magorian on Christmas Day a couple of years ago. I really don't know what it is about it, or what was wrong with me that day, but I cried my eyes out for hours. I've never done that before or since. I just couldn't stop it. Stupid things make me cry.)

Then when we'd finished with Scott Pilgrim, we made Rocky Road, then watched Total Wipeout and Primeval and then UB and Sister played Goldeneye on Wii. I have a problem with video games. I'll have a go and not be very good, because I'm not used to the controls but people won't give me the chance to get used to it. It's always "Look, look, watch me, this is how you do it." Oh great. Three hours of watching you drive a virtual car/shoot people/play golf. Jess is particularly bad for this. I want to enjoy it, I really do but it's not something that comes naturally to me and no one's willing to be patient with a beginner. (Arcade Soul Caliber, however, I'm awesome at. We used to go to the arcades above one of the bars when I lived in Switzerland and I would annihilate my two friends there.)

And when he'd gone, I retreated back to bed and laptop, which is where I am now, waiting to feel sleepy enough to go to bed. I've had a very enjoyable day. Goodnight.

I'm so glad it's Friday tomorrow! I've only been back at work three days and I'm completely exhausted. I honestly didn't stop for one minute today, nor yesterday. And this morning I was convinced I was coming down with the flu again (as of 9.07pm, I'm fairly sure I'm not) but I was so tired and I had really achy legs for no reason whatsoever, which moved into my right shoulder and upper arm this afternoon and I had so much work piled on me. People would come over and ask if I was busy and I'd say "Kind of.... ok, fine, I'll do it (whatever it is)" because I'm too quiet to say "Go away and leave me alone! I don't have the time to do your stuff!" Yesterday I was stressed about it (drew a Stressed Octopus in my diary, it's bright blue and vaguely embarrassing so now I have to leave it shut so it isn't on display to the office. You can't tell it's Stressed, it just looks like a crazy-eyed blue octopus) but today I was relatively calm and just tired. Far too tired to have any idea whether Dearly Beloved Boss is teasing when he says I look bored and could I help him with some things? I was waiting for the scanner at the time and it freezes my computer a bit and it's slow so I have to sit and stare at the slow-moving bar for a few minutes and he witnessed this and me noting something Accountsy in my diary, so it's entirely possible it did look like I wasn't doing much. But I sighed my eyes, all resigned, and took down my notepad and tried to produce a bright smile and said "What do you want me to do?" and he looked shocked and asked if I was kidding, have I actually not got much to do?

Shouldn't be on the computer now. I'm trying to limit internet after 9pm - means I haven't really seen my computer this week - and instead am devouring books. I read 28 books in 2010. As of 9.13pm on January 6th, I have read Harry Potter 1, 2, 3 and 4 and six chapters of Harry Potter 5 which I only picked up at lunchtime today. I should be reading it now but I sort of fancied a little bit of internet for a change. Bad insomnia at the beginning of the week but was ok last night - perhaps the lack of bright computer before bed beginning to kick in. But I'm fairly sure I had two odd dreams this morning after my alarm had gone off. I woke up just enough to shut the thing up before going back to the dream, two or three times. Really didn't want to wake up this morning. I didn't get out of bed until 8.25. My work starts at 9am. I cut it a little fine.

Mood-wise, today has been better. Today I'm winning. And I finally sent Silver's box off to him. Did you know BFPO (at least to active war zones) is limited to 2kg per parcel? Silver has a packet of sherbet lemons waiting for him at home. And some baby wipes although I'm sure he can live without those. And did you know sending them is free? I didn't know this. I may have given the nice lady at the post office a bewildered look as I was waved away without paying anything.

I want to do a daft holiday again. Last year's were great - I went snowboarding in the Alps, I went to Zurich and I went to the Lake District but I didn't do a "in three weeks I'm going.... here!!", the "here" in question being somewhere people don't often want to go. I want to throw a dart at a map of Europe. But if I'm keeping the spirit of spontaneity, I've either got to wait until nearer the time or plan it for the end of January. January is cold. I want to go around around the end of March but it looks like something has come up. The middle of April might be good except that it's school holidays. Maybe the first full week of April then, around the 6th to 11th-ish.

Sorry to ramble. I'm sitting on a radiator, with a dose of chocolate inside me, a diary at my left hand and a laptop in front of me. It's a good evening.

I am bored out of my tiny little mind. No response from Jess or Annie about meeting up this week (should be neither surprised nor disappointed. That's how people work). I braved the shops this morning because Mum wanted to get out of the house, so I wandered aimlessly for an hour or so, looking in all the shops I go in all year round, at all the stuff I can buy all year round. I find shopping immensely boring unless I'm shopping for something specific, and then it tends to be stressful because I can't go home until I've bought some shoes!! or What on earth do I get Jess for Christmas?? or some such.

( My thoughts on Top Gear in the Middle East, Three Men Go to Scotland (and sailing), tonight's TV and last night's insomnia )

Can't do great detail. There's only been nine days of it. It's been cold, it's snowed, I've made snow chains for my boots and apart from that, not done a lot. Soon it will be Christmas and I haven't finished shopping yet. One parcel seems to have gone missing in the post. Godless Christmas next week, spa day the week after. Maybe seeing Jess & Annie the week after. I don't have any enthusiasm for writing about "this month".

I'm sorry I've been miserable again the last couple of days. Life. People. This is a war and every day is a battle and I can't win every battle. Sometimes maybe I'll be sad, sometimes I'll be frustrated, sometimes I'll be upset. I've lost a couple of battles this week but I still think I'm winning the war.

I didn't sleep well last night. I've spent most of the last week working on the profit & loss account at work and every time I closed my eyes, I just saw my bed as a series of twelve boxes and I didn't know what numbers to put in them. Then I'd open my eyes and tell myself my bed is my bed, it's just one thing and it's right here but... eyes closed, back come the boxes. The surrealness of it stopped me getting too upset with it. Imagining some loving boyfriend making me warm and comfortable and giving me drinks and rubbing away my headache was nice but if anything, made it harder to get to sleep. (I have a cold. Just a lovely ordinary one with a bit of added headachiness for the fun of it, nothing like the flu bug from hell I had in October. No sneezing or coughing, just a misbehaving nose and mild lingering headaches. It's so nice to be back to ordinary non-miserable illness!)

Another thing that made me happy today was my boss. I generally give the impression that I hate him. I'm not keen on him; he's capricious and unpredictable and frequently moody but quite often he's in a good mood and sometimes he's just weird. We've got a water machine which used to be up in the main office but on his orders was moved yesterday to reception (Stupid place to put it. Walk all the way to the front door for a cup of water?!). It's just a stand that holds up a massive 9l bottle of water and you can have it room temperature or icy-cold. Anyway, he was talking to his Feisty Mother on the phone last night. Conversation went as so:

Boss: I'm a bit worried about where you've put the water machine.
Mother: [Boss], I didn't put it there. It was your orders to move it.
Boss: Well, I'm a bit worried about where it is. People might pee in the bottles.

...I don't even know. Have I mentioned that he's weird?

This is my elephant table, by the way. He's cracked on the tabletop and on one of his ears but he's still adorable. Even Mum likes him; says the cracks add to his character. There were half a dozen elephant tables but I fell in love with the cracked one. He's going in my house one day. I was going to make a winter project of him, try to repair the cracks, clean him up etc but I'm not going to. He's cute enough how he is.

( My elephant table )

Isn't he cuuuuute?

Now the pressure's off, I'm going to start playing with Alex and Joey again. I want 100,000 words of serviceable Draft Zero of The Sequel by the end of March and as of the end of NaNoWriMo I had just under 31,000. I'm very fond of my boys.

I've got the house to myself for a few hours tonight so I've got a blanket and some cheesy biscuits and I'm watching Zemanovaload, which I haven't seen for far too long. I like it. It's a good-hearted film and I genuinely can't decide whether my favourite thing about it is Ed Byrne, all short spiky hair and dark eyes and shirts over bright-coloured t-shirts, or the soundtrack. I may picspam this film at some point.

For now, I'm warm and sniffly and contented. I think I'm winning today.