Thank the heavens for that. Okay, so I got woken up at 3am by something or other. It might have been the fierce wind. I then realised that I couldn’t breathe very well and failed to return to sleep, but as I’d gone to bed at 9pm and drifted off to sleep almost immediately, this was almost acceptable amounts of sleep compared to what I’ve managed for the last week

I am all ready to leave for work (I can’t bring myself to consume breakfast) and it’s only 6:17am. I had the bath last night, you see, so there is little to do in the morning except pander to cat, have bath, get dressed and consume breakfast items. When the most time-consuming activities are not required, and the cat rejects excess pandering, there is not much left to do.

I did end up reading some of the ‘Urgent Educational Material’ that arrived yesterday, and found it quite soothing. Also, I think I managed to convince myself that I’ve actually solved all the big scary problems for this thing I’m building, so actually, the rest of it is just working out the detail. So I think my poor brain felt it could have a rest. To be fair, I hadn’t solved them until yesterday morning, so maybe it was justified in working overtime. I’m just glad it has stopped.

I will probably leave early for work this morning: the weather sounds fierce and cycle-unfriendly, so I think, in my debilitated state, I will need a long time to ride the 2 miles to the station this morning. It took me a long long time to get to the dentist last night. I wasn’t going to go, as I felt so vile, but after ringing them and being assured they wouldn’t mind my cold, I decided to go. Well, I was off work ill anyway, and I would have had to miss extra work time to get to an altered appointment, and I reasoned that if I wore myself out with the ride, it might help me sleep. I had forgotten how much I hate that hill on the way through Maidenhead. We used to live on the top of it, so every journey was a struggle on the way home. I don’t miss it at all!

The regrettable upshot of the dentist visit was a further visit booked for 28th February: I need to have this dratted tooth removed. Apparently it is cracked and that is why I have had so many problems. I am nervous. My dentist is lovely, but when he announced that I would have to extract it, I turned into a little ball of fear. I felt that I looked like a cartoon of a scared cat - all big eyes and ruffled fur. I was certainly shaking. I don’t know why I fear the dentist - he’s a lovely gentle man, and I have had root canal on this tooth already, so there are no roots to cause pain, but I’m not sure it is the pain that worries me. Oh well, I shall try and forget about it for a month or so.

I shall now prepare for launch.

Miss you..

Well, if you’ve been following the fortunes of the Braggs for the past two years or so, you will be aware that we are growing some lemon plants. I stuck some pips in a pot full of soil, and to my surprise five-sixths of them sprouted.

All are still alive, although I regret not to be able to complete the cliché with ‘and well’. They had been universally happy little lemons all through the summer; revelling in the increased light our new housing arrangements offered to their glossy little leaves. It seems winter leaves a lot to be desired in the lemon-pleasuring department: their leaves are no longer glossy and luxuriant-looking; they rejected proximity to a cold pane of glass, but are now sulking because they are no longer near a window and are starving of light. Much as I hate to disappoint my citrus friends, we cannot, at present, afford to have the house double-glazed just to pander to five recalcitrant plants.

Things are coming to a head though, yesterday it was discovered that Tall Lemon had thrown off 75% of its leaves - overnight. This morning brought the discovery of several further shed leaves. A hasty consultation of that universal oracle Google brought comfort and confusion: we are not necessarily bad lemon-parents, it’s just that lemons are drama queens and will often just decide that all those leaves are not strictly necessary. It can be for a variety of reasons: too hot; too cold; too wet; too dry. Basically, there is no hope of ever discovering the root cause, we just have to weather the leaf-storm and hope they have the brains to leave themselves a few to transpire with.

I shall apply some citrus food, and dust the remaining leaves, as I fear they have been neglected since being relegated to the spare room. We have to keep the door to the spare room closed, otherwise the cat leaps on the printer and presses the sheet-feed button to help herself to a fresh piece of paper to shred. I kid ye not. That’s a smart mog we have there.

I wish. For almost a week now I have been unable to switch my brain off at night, and have found myself spending hour after hour designing the new database that is required at work. Don’t misunderstand me here, there is no-one jumping up and down for this new system, so there is no actual need for me to spending my night hours working out the best way to structure the darn thing.

I am tired. I am so very tired. I now have some kind of cold-thing that the philb was harbouring last week. As a result I am more or less subhuman today. I am weeping with tiredness but still I cannot rest. As soon as I shut my eyes, I find myself fretting about suppliers and services and rent and fees and…

I have to confess that I have always had this problem, albeit to a lesser extent, and have become used to waking in the morning with the answer to something that was puzzling me the day before. I used to solve things in my sleep. Now, I’m not getting as far as the actual sleep.

I have tried relaxing, listening to null-music, reading, bathing, drinking warm milky drinks. All the usual attempts. This morning I woke at 01:47 and lay half-awake until the alarm went off at 05:40.

This cannot continue, I feel weepy and hysterical, like an overtired child. Which, I suppose, I am.

My next batch of Open University study material arrived this morning, and I’m ambivalent towards reading it. You see, I’m studying relational database on this course. Do I really want to be encouraging myself to be thinking about databases, when this is the very thing that is costing me my sanity right now? On the other hand, it may well be of assistance, giving me alternative (and simpler) problems to think about, so I can get the monster out of my brain for long enough to sleep.

As a complete aside, I’m finding the wordpress option/feature ‘Post slug’ a little disturbing. Not that I know what it means, or does, but my enfeebled mind is boggling at the wording. Maybe I should look up what it does, so there is one less for my tired brain to worry about..

So, I come home from work to find that the philb has attempted kitchen-based conflagration. There was a distinct smell of smoke, and he was grinning like a loon. Apparently, fat from the burgers he was grilling ignited and there were interestingly-large flames bellowing forth from our oven-based grill facility.

Understandably, the cat was looking a bit wild-eyed and uncertain but seems to have settled into somnolence now.

Incidentally, I can’t believe I’ve just needed to add a category for ‘doom’.

Also in the philb/insanity department: five minutes ago saw him miowing one of the themes from Lloyd-Webber’s Phantom of the Opera. I radiate concern. Can you feel it?

The mogret and I have been playing hide and seek in the car park. It’s quite a strange experience, to be chased around by a year-old cat. She seems to really enjoy the game. I’m not sure what our neighbours think of me dashing around madly and lurking behind their cars. I’m quite sure they are unable to see the cat from their windows, so it must appear that I’ve gone quite mad.