The Clockmaker

It has been a pretty good-ok-ish sort of day. I have slept ok for the last two nights so that helps a lot, catching up on the sleep I missed Sunday night. Unfortunately, I did eat last night before bed, a couple of slices of toast and a handful of cheesy biscuits, I think, so not much and quite early on too, but not being very good at the whole food thing, I woke up at god-knows-what-time feeling very very sick. This generally happens if I've eaten cheese after about 9pm but I had no cheese yesterday. I haven't had cheese since Sunday. Anyway, after lying very still for a while and trying to sit up a bit, I must have fallen asleep again fairly quickly.

It got to about 10am before I remembered I didn't have breakfast. This isn't unusual, I generally don't bother having breakfast if I've got to go to work and it's a really bad habit and I really should force myself out of bed ten or twenty minutes earlier to make time for it. But at 10, I suddenly realised I was really really hungry. For some reason, if I don't eat before bed, I'm not hungry the next day. If I do eat before bed, I'm invariably starving in the morning. And I was starving! And then Mandy came over at lunchtime to do some Brownie planning so I didn't get any lunch either *cries*

It's odd how lack of food affects your mood. Despite the fact that I come to LJ to whine and cry and be sad and angry and unleash a gamut of negative emotions I don't get to display in real life, the flesh-and-blood me is generally sunny-tempered, or at the very least placid and even-tempered. But this afternoon... I could feel this hunger-induced despair. Things that shouldn't have been upsetting me were - I won't even start on the saga of the chocolate biscuits. I was resentful of everyone else in the room who had eaten in the last twelve hours, I was starting to have trouble getting a thought together (although this may be the stress of covering the work of two people who are away - I'm half trained in their work, but I'm office admin and crap jobs, not order processing and I suspect it would be just as quick for the order people to do the orders themselves than to have to keep answering my questions)

Anyway. Then I went snowboarding. I had to buy a new pass because I finished my one last time. Accidentally bought ten hours instead of five but never mind. I've got through four passes in the last two years so I will be using those five hours eventually but that's twenty half-hour sessions. If I go twice a month, that's ten months it'll last! There were some Explorers coming to play on the ringos, using half the slope and possibly straying onto the other half. They apologised that I probably wouldn't get much snowboarding done. "Obviously, we won't take any time off your pass for tonight...." Sweet. I like the snowboarding lot. They do give me a free night from time to time. When it's half term and there are ten thousand kids learning to ski so the queue for the lift is eight miles long and you only manage three descents in the half hour - I got that night for free as well.

The "Explorers" looked familiar, or their t-shirts did. After I'd finished and put my normal shoes back on, I approached their leader and asked if they were Rangers. They were indeed and we spent half an hour chatting about Senior Section. She's given me some interesting ideas to discuss with my own girls and also given me a flyer about an activity challenge camp for the entire county that has somehow not made it to my neck of the woods. It looks great. I really hope my girls would like to go. All sorts of activities for £20, finishing up the night with a barbecue. And then I got home at 7.30pm and finally got to have some food. Been awake eleven and a half hours, done a day's work and been snowboarding and only just getting the first morsels of food in me. Well done there. I would make a good anorexic because I can go quite a long time without food. I would make a bad anorexic because I hate it and it would make me cry all the time.

And finally, I've decided to go ahead and have a go at the Walking Qualification. I picked up the book last time I was at CHQ, flicked through, shuddered and put it down. But I'll be brave. I'm a qualified leader, now I will do an activity qualification. I will get in touch with the County Outdoors Advisor to see how I go about doing the qualification - will it at any point involve a weekend at one of the training centres? I will order the book tonight, it'll arrive next week and I can have a look through and see how plausible it really looks.

Snowboarding again tonight. I was delighted to be greeted by my favourite instructor, who I haven't seen in a while, with the words "Hello stranger! How are you?!" (This is partly because I didn't go for a few months and partly because he wasn't working on the days when I did go.) It went well. Really well. I had the slope to myself, the only two staff there not watching me - although my latest Snowboy was outside painting the woodwork with his back to me and I daresay did catch a glimpse of me from time to time (I get nervous if I think the pros are watching me too closely). Eighteen months ago I must have had my first turning lesson and it was only last week that it really clicked. Today I just enjoyed the fact that I could do the turn that's been my nemesis for so long. I won't say it was neatly done or even with a great deal of control but having the confidence there made a world of difference. I can tidy it up later. Happy happy happy.
However, within ten minutes, I suddenly felt a really strong dose of drowsiness. The mixture of adrenaline, exhileration and drowsiness is unnatural. It shouldn't be physically possible. I was giggly and excited and adrenalined-up and yet feeling drowsiness so acute it felt like it had to be chemically-induced. Made me wonder what was in my apple juice today. At one point I was standing at the bottom of the slope, staring at my feet and sort of hoping that if I stared long and hard enough, the bindings would come undone all by themselves because I couldn't muster the energy to bend down and unclip them myself. At another point, I got to the bottom, felt delight and tiredness and decided to crash forwards and just lie on the snowflex for a few moments. To be fair, I'd just walked up to the first exit twice, up quite a steep slope, before sliding back down on a plank. I was entitled, I think, to be a little out of breath and a little tired.
Despite the weird sleepiness and occasional concentration blackspot, I enjoyed myself immensely, I think I made some big steps forward, the iron is hot and I will be going back tomorrow. I suspect I'm still not entirely over the sports-and-camp-induced exhaustion I inflicted on myself last weekend and need to shut up and go to bed. (This last bit written quite a while after all the stuff below was actually written)

Regarding the banana bullshit - my mother told this story at work today and was told in reply, in utter seriousness "Well, it's true that eating soft foods uses up more calories than hard foods. That's why you should puree things into soups." I am glad to report that my mother's mind boggles every bit as much as mine does that anyone can believe that crap. And the woman responsible yesterday for the banana has today been telling us all about how her husband went to the doctor and how she disagrees with his prescription. She thinks the doctor's "lost it". I should also note that this woman is more inclined to believe the chiropractor who treated her stiff neck with herbal remedies than the doctor who treated the inflammation and pain with medicine. (I should also add that I stand very firmly on the side of science and drugs and not the side of homeopathy/nature/alternative therapies etc and may be more scathing than is polite.)

I realised, watching a repeat of Mock the Week, that I've never written up my trips to see Andy Parsons, Micky Flanagan and Mark Watson. That was a while back. I am disorganised.

( Andy Parsons, Micky Flanagan and Mark Watson )

I think that's enough for now. Next week I am going to Lithuania. I am nervous. Right now I am tired and need to catch up on some sleep. Nighty night.

Today has been a good day...

Heating was on when I woke up, so I curled up against the radiator for a while. Seems I'm a lot more functional and in a much better mood when I've woken up gradually feeling warm instead of being too cold to get out of bed.

The day went fine.

Then this evening, I went snowboarding. I've gone back a long way from where I was last summer but it's a massive step up from when I last went, when the slope was covered in ice and I couldn't even stand up. It reminded me why I wanted to be able to do this, even though I was very reluctant to go tonight. But it was reasonably warm and dry and clear and I couldn't come up with any excuses not to go. And I'm glad I did.

On the way home, I decided that I couldn't resist going for a drive, not with that greatbig piece of silver in the sky. I managed to turn a 34-mile round trip into 60 miles by taking a trip down to the sea. I didn't go on the cliffs - not a great idea in the dark. I'm not stupid, I have no intention of falling over a cliff - but I parked and looked out over the hills. It was incredible. I wish I could paint - hills rising up, golden-grey under a dark blue sky and then a nearly-full moon over it all. My phone camera managed to get the moon and nothing else.

And when I finally resisted the lure of the moon and came home, I had some toast and some Maltesers and am bouncing around the house singing (the sort of singing that earns one the nickname "Furby") and in a bit, I'll have a bath and read another chunk of Best Served Cold.

I should go to bed because it's a little late and I'm about to be tired. I can feel it coming.

I don't know what's going on - I'm enjoying work! Well, not so much that I wouldn't stay home if I had the opportunity but I'm not getting up every day and going "Oh God, I can't face it today!" I'm busy, we've had visitors in all week so I've seen next-to-nothing of anyone with any authority, I've got loads of stuff done.
 
( Driving the company car )
( IT vs 71-year-old )
( Snowboarding/snowboys )
And it appears, from comments on Facebook, that my mate Silver is coming home from his war earlier than I was expecting. No idea exactly when. I was expecting late March but people keep saying "Not long now!" which seems not quite right when he's still got 2 out of 6 months to go.

( The trials and tribulations of needing to buy new shoes )

Aha. Here comes the impending tiredness. Time to brush my teeth and sort out my blankets. They seem to have had a party while I was out today. God knows how they've got in such a tangle. Have I mentioned recently? Blankets are awesome. Get rid of your convenient modern duvets. Blankets. They are the way forward.