I had a bucket of stuff I was going to do today.

Well okay, maybe not a bucket. But a few things. A bit of this and that.

Unfortunately this pretty much sums up my week. I am somewhat lacking in motivation. Yes, motivation, not just capacity, which is the usual deficit. I am attributing it to the prednisolone decrease, a touch of PMS and the fact that I'm permanently emotionally unbalanced.

And let's not forget the stupidly hot weather. It's 29C at the moment, which is normally hot enough for me but now feels really quite mild (nice even) compared to the last few days. I'd been hiding out under our airconditioners (yes we have two - one in the bedroom, one in the study) and regularly congratulating us on our wisdom in getting them.

But even so, I've only needed to stick my head out for a moment to start to wilt and couldn't stay in here or the bedroom the whole time. And there was *something* about the last few days - the heat was so absolute that I was still aware of it. Maybe it was a psychological thing, I don't know.

~~~

My new carer came yesterday. He is a likeable chap and so far seems quite okay re-domestic tasks, but he doesn't appear to have a car. He travels by bicycle, which kind of makes him somewhat less useful. I am rather surprised my case manager didn't check this.

This time, I walked him through a whole lot of tasks and he coped with this intrusion quite well. Funnily enough I was the one that kept referring to the list and explanations I'd prepared. But it did keep me on track and stop me from just backing off from being fussy about things or not 'bothering' about things...because of ocurse, it was all on the list that I was using.

But it also made the time quite exhausting, especially because it meant I was up and about either outside or in the hot parts of the house.

Gee, you'd hate to be really sick and trying to train up a new helper at the same time.

And if it turns out he doesn't have a car or ready access to one, I guess I'll be doing it again very soon.

~~~

Don't ask about the garden.

But feel free to pray for rain.

~~~

InsideCat(TM) has just started a four week course of cartrophin injections for osteoarthritis. Apparently she is now something of a legend at the vet's on account of her continued good health(touchwood). It's been a couple of years now since she was diagnosed with kidney disease and back then the vet was being optimistic about the possibility that she could last many more months. Since then, she's mostly been a pretty healthy and happy cat. It's really only been over the last few months that she's started looking a bit straggly again. Apparently when they get osteoarthritis they tend not to groom themselves so much, for obvious reasons.

I so so hope these injections help. We really don't want to have to make quality of life decisions on something as subjective as chronic pain. When the inevitable finally happens, I'd rather it be because critical has gone wrong, not because we've had to second guess how comfortable she is.

She is presently sitting on my feet and purring. :-)

~~~

Feel free to spam my friendspage with photos of snow, okay?

I've calmed down somewhat now. Two sleepless nights will do that to a girl.

(It's okay, I'm premenstrual and have finally accepted that two sleepless nights is part of the deal).

Basically, all that's really happenned is that a Proper Doctor(TM) has written down an opinion (without prompting) that accords quite strongly with one of the possibilities that I've been entertaining anyway.

But it still remains a theory.

The only way we can find out if it's true is to get me off prednisolone, which is where it gets complicated.

I'm probably going to be doing a few posts about the ins and outs of this.

But here's the guts of it for those who are wondering what the fuck I'm talking about and actually want to know (and feel free to ask if you're confused):

( blood and guts and fangs in my teeth )

In unrelated news, Fuzzychops The Outside Cat(TM) is having a bastard of a day. We've got proper winty weather happening here at the moment and I would let her stay on her little heated cat-mat in the laundry all day but well, we're having a clothing crisis at the moment and so we really need the laundry for you know, doing the laundry. So she's outside feeling sorry for herself.

We can't have her in there with the tumble dryer going - it freaks her right out. And worse, if we left her in there with the tumble dryer going for too long, it would stop freaking her right out. She'd get used to it. That would be even worse because then we'd never get her outside ever again except when she felt like going out.

It's kind of important to effective long term cat-wrangling that she remains convinced that the tumble dryer will eat her.

Stupid sore throat! I wish it would hurry up and become a cold already. Instead, it's just hurting whenever I swallow, which of course means I keep thinking about trying not to swallow and therefore need to swallow more often, because I am my own worst enemy.

~~~

We finally had a decent downpour last night and we are having cooler weather. Allegedly. Maybe I'm menopausal or something, because I'm still not seeing any snows of yesteryear. Not that there ever were any, what with this being Melbourne and all. Mostly I just shivered a lot, admired my jonquils and waited for spring.

~~~

Got up to answer the call of nature this morning and as I was heading back to bed, InsideCat came along to insist I hurry up. I love it when she does that. She sits in front of you, meows, then runs back towards the bed, turns to look at you, meows again and then jumps on the bed and meows.

Then she fell asleep on my chest for a while.

The only problem with this is sometimes she follows me out when I go to the loo. She's only allowed as far as the passageway door, so she waits for me in the passage. This would be lovely and sweet except the door swings into the passageway and she tends to sit within its swing which has caused a couple of heartstopping moments in the wee small hours of the morning when it's still dark and you are least prepared for disaster. Fortunately she rolls quite well.

~~~

Oh and it's call centre week. We're getting overseas calls which we aren't answering and the caller doesn't leave a message. Prior experience strongly suggests salespeople who really want to keep you talking. Prior experience also suggests that if we don't answer, after about a week (maybe two) they stop ringing for a while.

There is a website you can register with to have your name and phone number removed from call centre lists, but your registration only remains valid for six months and I personally object to having to go to that much effort to stop something that I didn't request in the first place. And why would I seek to make it easier for the companies that do this to keep doing it by removing one uncontactable/non-buying person from their lists? I rather prefer the idea of wasting *their* time.

To that end I could answer the phone and keep the sales staff talking for as long as possible, but that would make life hard for them which isn't fair either. Unavailability seems to be the best option.

Got a grand total of about five hours sleep last night, I'm hoping to tough it out today and go to bed at 10PMish. I'm throwing every behavioural strategy I've got at this, in the hopes I can keep with the (relatively) early rising business.

That's not entirely true of course, I really only got up because I couldn't sleep. Otherwise I'd still be there. It's just that I'd rather make my upness part of a clever and brave plan to improve my lot in life. And now I'm up, I'm yawning my head off and really wishing I was back in bed. And I really only couldn't sleep because the pathology nurse failed to show yesterday so I was stressing out about that, as I'm sure anyone would because the world will come to an end if your pathology nurse is a day late. And don't even get me started on what happens if your towels are folded wrong.

~~~

I have come to the conclusion that I have a constant level of anxiety regardless of circumstance so I'll be just as stressed in this situation as I would be if I were say, a high-powered diplomat and maybe a spy and now that I know this, I think it's safe for me to apply for jobs that say "must be able to handle a high pressure workplace" and explain that I lose a bit of sleep if the towels are folded wrong but it's okay, because if that's the worst that happens when the towels are folded wrong, then I'm pretty sure I can handle anything.

I'm sure they'll be impressed, you can read all about it when I publish my memoirs.

~~~

We have just been cat wrangling - Fuzzychops had to go to the vet for tests today. Getting her in the box involves brooms for the prodding when she hides behind the bath, and hands for the grabbing when she briefly is within reach and then much door opening and closing to ensure that she and InsideCat do not have to know of each other's existence, because then the world would come to an end, you know how it is with cats.

Anyway, she's there now with 10B. That's assuming she hasn't escaped from the box, hijacked the van and gone bush.

They're just routine old-cat blood tests, but she does take on so.

~~~

Shit, I can hear sirens.

This takes one and a half minutes, make sure the sound's on.

Cat Man Do by Simon Tofield of Tandem Films.




Thanks to technomom for this one.

In other news, I had a whale of a time yesterday at the wedding of doushkasmum and sacred_chao. They are two very lucky people.

I have declared today a horizontal day and it's actually feeling pleasantly decadent rather than an endurance test. This might have something to do with tenbears fishing out his dark blue silk dressinggown for me to lounge around in, or the chocolate truffle I just found in the fridge, or maybe both.

It's a crap day outside, warm and really, really windy. Both the cats and myself have windbrain**, another good reason for staying in bed. OutsideCat has it so badly that she's refusing to leave the laundry and even hid in her extra secret hiding place for a while this morning, just to be on the safe side.

I've got another knitting machine. More on that later.


~~~

Windbrain: a state of discombobulation bought on by windy weather. Coined, I believe, by monstah.

Our tumbledryer has stopped working. It still dries clothes same as always, but when I flicked it on earlier, OutsideCat did _not_ scramble off her little cat bed and scamper outside like she's supposed to, which means it's not working properly. Quelle annoyance! How to get the cat out now? We may have to invest in some kind of catapult.

Catapult! I am on fire.

~~~

Dear Outsidecat, she's such a sweetie. And such a ... cat. No other word for her really. I was reaching into her special laundry cave and patting her and of course, the moment she realises you are gently trying to pull her out, she retreats further in. If she thinks you want her to go to the right she goes to the left, and so on. And alas, clearly she now knows that the tumbledryer is not a kitty eating monster but an unsubtle attempt to lever her from her bed and therefore must be ignored.

Fortunately, even though she's no longer scared of it she doesn't like the noise much so she did saunter out at her leisure a short time later.

We have her inside, albeit just in the laundry, a lot more these days. She's getting old and I think she really needs the heated cat bed now. She's less able to deal with other cats and perhaps most importantly, we're aware that it's not going to be too long before we're going to have to be giving her nightly medication of some sort or another so a habit of coming inside for food and shelter needs to be encouraged.

Our beloved InsideCat is now on three pills a night plus antibiotic paste (I wish more of these things came in paste form). That might sound a little dire, but she's still a very happy cat. She was a gorgeous kitten, a delightful and insane adult cat, and now she's a beautiful old dame. She now lets us carry her round the house and seems quite unfussed by it, where once she'd take your arm off if you tried. So we carry her around, we feed her treats, we activate the sleepatron when we get up so she can stay warm (old cats really feel the cold), and we generally just treasure her and treat her like royalty.

~~~

In other news, still feeling this extra sick thinginess. Blah. I'm not sure whether I'd prefer this crash to be a virus or a drug reaction. A drug reaction could be fixed sooner, but is inconvenient in other ways. If it's a virus, lord knows when I'll be back to the picture of health (hahahah) I was not a week or so ago but hey, the psych drug will kick in and maybe I just won't care...

~~~

I am still waiting to hear about that drug trial, I thought I would have heard by now. The waiting is really getting on my nerves.

This morning I dreamt I was at a market. It was full of little deli-type shops selling Japanese food. I was wondering round feeling overwhelmed by the number of exotic and beautiful delicacies I could choose from and most temptingly, every stall had for sale a sample pack of doughnuts: one with pink icing, one dusted with sugar and a couple of others that didn't stand out.

Of all the fabulously interesting things I could choose from, it was the pink-iced donuts that were really tempting me.

However, I wasted so much time walking from stall to stall admiring all the food (and the pink-iced doughnuts in particular) and wondering who to buy the doughnuts from, that they all closed up before I bought any and I had to leave, pink-iced doughnutless. I was rather annoyed with myself. And hungry.

In real life, I rarely eat doughnuts and when I do, they are hot, jam filled ones and are either purchased and eaten at South Melbourne Market or purchased and eaten on a beach, ideally in winter. Usually as I eat them I reminisce about the *real* doughnuts we used to get when I was young: we got them from a bus permanently parked opposite the sea wall and they were prepared and cooked right there, not cooked elsewhere then reheated like they are now, and which had hard crusts on them but when you bit into them the whole thing would collapse into nothing and if you weren't careful you'd sustain third degree burns from the jam.

So I'm figuring the pink-iced doughnuts must stand for something deep, I just don't know what. Nonetheless, I've been hanging out for some all day. 10B has just bought me doughnuts from the bakery (alas, too late in the day for pink-iced ones) and I've eaten three, but I'm still puzzled by why I'd dream about them because the three I've eaten have reminded me again taht cold doughnuts without a centre, with or without icing, are really not that nice.

~~~

10B went to the dentist today so he has been saying 'garg', drinking soup and tending to my doughnut requirements, bless his cotton socks. AND he took me on a wild and crazily impulsive trip to a wool shop because we're wild and crazily impulsive people, or maybe because I looked like I'd cry if he didn't (I haven't gotten out much lately and it's really starting to show). But bless him all the same, because he bravely had a filling done and he looks so cute when he's mildly distressed.

~~~

A very nice pathology nurse came by today, he told me that the word on my house among the path nurses of Melbourne is that it's 'haunted by cats'.

I would have thought our house was warmed by cats, or maybe soothed by cats. Possibly enlivened by cats (only not today on account of the weather). Silly path nurses and their inappropriate verbs. I would have chased him away with a few inappropriate verbs of my own if he wasn't armed with something sharp.

~~~

Oh and back to dreams again: the little market in my dream(kind of an arcade and food hall really) was part of a larger place that I often dream about that seems to consist entirely of shops selling all manner of exciting food. There's even a place that sells a really fantastic Thai-style/stir fry dish that has usually sold out by the time I get there, although the place has comfy enough chairs where you can look out the window, so I often prop there for a bit with an iced coffee or something. Occasionally in the dream I have gotten there early enough to get some of this fabulous dish. It has this really amazing mix of spices, with a fragrance something akin to what you'd get in a a Thai beef salad except that it's stir-fried and somehow richer. There is always a queue of people waiting for it. The chef's Italian and he also does a good pasta as well, but this dish is so good everything else kind of pales in comparison.


I'm not sure what this says about me, except maybe that I think food is nice. And possibly that I attribute far more meaning to it than perhaps I should.

~~~

And I'm trying to be a better person again. It's a work-in-progress but sometimes I find myself being more concerned about it than at other times. Y'know, more aware of those flaws you bitch about in other people and then realise you yourself possess in bucketloads. Things you wish weren't there because if you stopped being such a blatant hypocrite, you could criticise others with impunity.

I figure on leaving the bit about not being such a judgemental bitch to the next lifetime, when I hope to come back as the Minister for Immigration.

If anyone wants to know what to get me for a present, offer to come round for a weekend and sort my books for me. You know, fiction, non-fiction by topic, that sort of thing. One house move, a few furniture reshuffles and 9 years of chronic illness have conspired to make it impossible for me to find anything.

But don't let me near you while you do it or I'll drive you made by ruminating on whether it really makes sense to separate fiction from non fiction given the concept of multiple truths.

~~~

So I'm trying to do what I guess you'd call an audit of stuff that needs storage space.



I'm taking this to mean things we don't use very often - camping gear for example. And maybe the entire shelf thing of Boxes Unknown that have been there for five years at least.

Sounds simple but the trouble is, the only clear cut examples are the two I've just given you.

But still, it is kind of interesting to think about just how much stuff is spread throughout the house that could be conveniently located in one spot. Fabric-y type things, for example. We do very little of that sort of stuff, but it doesn't make sense to have a suitcase here, a drawerful there and bags of the current stuff up the other end of the house. Well it does make sense, but only because everything has to be somewhere.

Okay maybe it's only interesting if it's your own stuff in your own place.

To create a more orderly and liveable house we would need:
1.A cupboard for camping gear, probably including a few things that are currently stored in the shed, like the bed base. I'd call this priority one.
2.A linen press, towels and things in regular use at the front but all the other stuff as well, that gets looked for once every so often and not found. That would be a good spot to keep the sewing machine and the leatherwork tools that 10B owns. It would make it easier to keep those occasional things in good order - easier to mothproof, for example.
3.We need to sort through Boxes Unknown, but I suspect we will always have some of these so we do need a space for them as well. You could argue we could chuck stuff out, but I feel we have already proven that we'd rather die in a hideous crapalanche than divest ourself of perfectly good Stuff, so more storage is not a bad idea.
4.We need more bookshelf space. Aside from the fact that piles of books are once again appearing in odd places, I'd forgotten that we still have a few boxes of books in the back room. And books are sacred, even if you never read them.

Gee it would be nice to be able to group things together by theme rather than order of aquisition.



~~~

I'm reading The Red Peony by Lin Yutang. I bought it secondhand a few months ago.

Since then it's been sitting in a fairly visible place in the hallway and I've had a few let-downs when visitors pick up the book and say "ZOMG, the Red Peony!" and I eagerly ask if they're a fan of Lin Yutang because I'm the only person I know(save for an old family friend I haven't seen for years) who's ever heard of him and they invariably say "Lin who?" and look at the book again...and I realise that they were just taken by the kitsch 1960's cover. Ah well.

And fair enough, it is a pretty cute cover.

On the one hand I find the book overly romantic for my taste, on the other hand Lin does such fantastically detailed description of a world I'll never see that he makes it all worthwhile. And as with the other two novels that I've read, his descriptions of food are astonishing.

~~~

Our beloved InsideCat is doing really well - she's started trying to escape again when we give her her evening pills. This is an excellent sign. It was when she stopped giving us hell that we really started to think we were about to lose her. And she's back to being demanding and frankly, bloody annoying sometimes, like right now when she'd rather I pat her than type, so she keeps butting my hands with her cold little wet nose.

~~~

Yes, I'm still somewhat withdrawn. Don't take it personally.

~~~

I only realised yesterday that I got that bad medical news on Friday 13th. I hadn't even noticed the date.

~~~

Yesterday was nice - time with friends - took my mind off things for a bit and got me out of the house. It was nice to see everyone.

~~~

And I now figure I'm no worse off than I was before I heard about infliximab, really. I'm a bit more upset about the cataracts than I had been, now that I know I'm not about to be coming off the pills that are causing the damn things, but I've had worse things happen and I've survived okay.

However it might be a while before I risk feeling hopeful about anything again, and I do feel kind of jaded and pissed off.

~~~

In other news, I just switched off the telly and the radiator in the living room. InsideCat had been happily sprawled in front of the radiator and she started to get up, and I couldn't help noticing how scrawny she is now, how unkempt her fur has become, and how much effort it took for her to get to her feet. She let me pick her up and bring her in here with me, 12 months ago she'd have had my arm off for trying a stunt like that.

But fortunately she has started eating again and stopped throwing everything back up, so maybe she'll start gaining weight again. And she still seems happy to be alive, which is our main concern.

~~~

Tonight I got this sudden urge to cook. Given that I can't cook (by Royal Decree and on pain of death) so all I've done to indulge it is make some porridge, and browse the PWMU cookbook while watching Angel with 10B. Hopefully the urge will pass soon. I figure it's been triggered off by both increased awareness of my own physical frailties and the awful things that happen to your bank balance the moment you so much as think about home improvements.

If it hasn't gone by tomorrow I'm going to make tuna mornay.

~~~

Sometimes I think it's incredibly handy having a cat who's totally deaf.

Then I wonder just how bad it is to think such a thing.


Then I give her a little pat and get on with the day.

Is something amiss with PubMed or has Dave decided that if I learn any more my uterus will shrivel (and that that would be a bad thing)?

The timing couldn't be worse. A student friend discontinues his course this week so I will no longer have instant access to Melbourne Uni's online journal collection. Just as I was getting used to it, too. I was planning a final, frenzied swoop, but I guess it is not to be.

~~~~

I had a very good chat with my counsellor today about how I'm improving physically but am lagging behind emotionally. It all boils down to just how much risk-taking and uncertainty I can realistically handle in one week.

It's very hard to become a shut-in and once you have, it's very hard to un-become one. I had to become one in order to survive the experience.

I can't always explain or predict why certain situations inspire more anxiety than others. They just do.

There was more to it than that but it's nearly bedtime.

~~~~

InsideCat is doing well today. We are reducing the thyroid medication and already she seems more like her old self.

~~~~

I really do feel my life is lacking something at the moment.

If I procrastinated less I might get more done.

But I might also have to accept that my limits are far narrower than I like to think.

I would rest after tasks were completed rather than dither all day not really doing anything, and possibly have to accept that that's that for the day, rather than feel like I've got things to do, and I'll do them any moment now.

I'd have to deliberately stop myself from going further and doing too much, rather than be held back by the fact I haven't completed task one yet.

Which would mean, of course, that I'd be using my energy and my down-time much more effectively.

~~~
( Vague ponderings about to-do lists. )

In other news, InsideCat aka Pachelbel aka Wonder Kitty went to and from the vet's today for tests. When she came home she was not so sick that she couldn't be suitably outraged at the indignities she had endured and horrified at the lack of choice in her food bowl. This was most pleasing. We'll get the results tomorrow.

Woke up at 8AM.

Went out. We drove here and there, we walked a bit.

Am killing time until it's reasonable to go to bed for the night. I figure 10PM is probably about right. It does mean, however, that I will probably wake up at 4AM, then want to sleep again at about 10AM. Which would be okay so long as I can keep it short and go to bed tomorrow night at 10PM again. It would be nice to have a normal sleep cycle. I think it might make my life a bit easier. And I'd get to see more daylight. But it is much easier said than done.

Mumph.

~~~

InsideCat(TM) is really sick. We're worried. Tests tomorrow. She went on medication for hyperthryoidism a couple of weeks ago, I'm sort of assuming that maybe she's had too much medication and her thyroid levels are now too low. She's lethargic, no appetite, and dry retching occasionally. A bit wobbly on her feet. But she is still drinking water. Whenever I think it's time to ring the vet in a panic, she gets up and does something normal and I relax.

She really doesn't need to lose any more weight.

Oh and a nasty little ulcer on her mouth just won't go away, even with an extended course of antibiotics.

~~~

Yep. Just holding out until bedtime and not particularly looking forward to what's in store this week.

Still, we had doughnuts today. And went out together, that was pretty cool. And saw people, if only briefly. And 10B has just declared it takeaway sushi night.

I <3 the the Wonder Kitty!

She bought me three pairs of socks during the night! They are all in a little heap here on my side of the bed. Three pairs!

For those who don't know already, our beloved InsideCat has long had the habit, usually in the early evening, of finding pairs of socks (always a balled up pair),carrying them to near one or both of us, dropping them and yowling loudly for a bit.

She usually gets them from the sock basket on the floor although in her younger days she would sometimes leap onto the chest of drawers and scoop them out from the sock drawer which I always left partly open for her. Actually, the other reason I left it partly open is she liked to sleep in there sometimes and better there than have her try and find her way into the undie drawer (one word:furballs).

We'd never been able to work out whether she was presenting us with kittens or prey. She always seems to want a pat after she's dropped them, but if you pick them up and bat them round like you would if they were mice she goes kind of weird on you, so we stopped doing that.

But recently we've both had her bring us socks and pounce on them again after dropping them, albeit in a half hearted sort of way with a look that said "you never attack anything I bring you.... guess I'll kill it myself then".

So we now figure the socks are prey.

Alternatively, she does appear to be getting more erratic in her behaviour in a number of ways and it's possible she has dementia: she's now started doing the sock thing at random intervals through the night, complete with the yowling, so it could be that she's losing the plot and attacking her own kittens.

I hope not. In fact I really hope not because up until I wrote that sentence I was mostly wondering whether I should be honoured that she's presenting me with prey three times a night or worried that she thinks I'm so useless I need that much feeding and looking after. When you think about it, neither possibility is so bad, both possibilities suggest she loves me. Now I have to consider a third option: she's trying to frame me for cruelty to kittens.

And that just hurts.

Shadow Meet our latest feline interloper, Shadow. He is beautiful: light just seems to fall into him and he has big soft paws. He is playful, rambunctious and curious - this is him staring inside on a day when he wouldn't actually let me near him, but he kept coming back to stare some more until he decided it was time to chase birds. Unfortunately, our beloved Tiger aka Fuzzychops aka Ratbane aka OutsideCat is way too old and little to stand her ground with him, so sometimes things get a bit stressed and she is our first priority. Thus we are keeping food bowls well away from him, and on two occasionas we've stuffed him into the cat box and taken him home. He lives indoors in a little flat and while his owners dote on him, clearly our yard is a lot more fun. We think he spends most of his time there devising new ways to escape and come back.

Plants that don't know their manners. So I planted my sunflowers at the back of the high-maintence patch of the garden (that ferny thing in front of them is asparagus) because I knew they'd grow nice and tall and the flowers would face north towards the sun(that's one of the interesting things about sunflowers) and thus the house, providing a nice background and boundary. Notice how you can't really see them? That's because they're facing south. Away from me, and away from the sun. Anti-sunflowers, that's what they are. I feel cheated.

P.S.: Ate one of my snow apples today. Very nearly ready.

I wish to find myself a new default icon but so far nothing has sprung out and said "I am a suitable representation of you in cyberspace" or even "This will make people think you're hott and weigh 10 kilos less and maybe that you're 10 years younger too."

Alas.

Suggestions welcome so long as you won't take it personally if I gag and ask you what the hell you were thinking.

~~~

It's raining here. We've been awake since about 5:30 ish (dawn, anyway) because we went to sleep (comparitively) early and then got woken by cats fighting outside our window. Not ours, I might add. Both interlopers.

And then we stayed up because it was rainy and pleasant.

I'm off to have breakfast and then go back to bed because if I don't, I'll be non-functional by noon and if I sleep then, I'll feel ghastly all day and not be able to sleep until very late tonight thus losing the possibility of maintaining this early night thing. I might not be able to keep it up anyway, but I want to maximise my chances.

Trust me, I've tried all the possible options and it works best this way.

Also, I'm going out this arvo (dental thing), so I do in fact need to be awake.


I must say, this concept of water falling from the sky is really very appealing. It's like all my plants are having a shower. A girl could get rather fond of this but prudence suggests I just savour the moment and stick to my routine of no more than two buckets of water per daily wash and only flushing when stricly necessary.

*le sigh*

(Actually, please don't tell anyone but I had a bath yesterday).

I have always believed that if I want to Be A Better Person I need to be well organised. This may go a long way to explaining my chronically low self-esteem.

I have two options: ditch the belief that good organisation can save my fetid soul, or do some spreadsheets and maybe tidy my desk. Today I am attempting the latter. Tomorrow I shall probably attempt the former, as is my want. (wont...?) It may happen earlier of course, depending on whether or not my little brain explodes after another session of adding stuff and whether or not I can find a place for my collection of used post-it notes.

~~~

Having worn something the other day that looked really stupid, without me realising, I have decided that telling people something they're wearing looks stupid is the right thing to do. A

But only if you know them, of course. If you told someone at the bus stop that those pants made them look stupid it wouldn't be so good. Yelling the information from a passing car is right out.

And probably only if you like each other too, certainly not if you are both parties in a neighbourhood mediation.

~~~

I was sitting outside yesterday and I noticed a furball next to OutsideCat's saucer. I am pleased by this because she's an extra furry cat (the vet even has trouble taking her temperature sometimes, she usually just pokes wildly with the thermometer until something gives) but I'd never seen a furball from her before, nor have I heard her hacking away under the house.

I'm pleased because I'd started to wonder if she was a real cat after all.

Although it doesn't explain how she manages to keep so quiet, could be that she really is an alien and she just made a furball in her flying saucer and put it there to keep us of the track.

I should probably go back to my spreadsheets now.