Tent Rat

Well if Charlie is chief hammock rat then Moses is definitely chief tent rat! Can't beat life under canvas for my gorgeous albino!

So, August comes to an end today! We're about to move on to September, which means autumn, back to school (starting my CELTA at college in my case), the closure of the outdoor pool, the last couple of maths assignments before the exam, and getting past the equinox to shorter, darker days.

This September will also be the 10th anniversary of my BIG nervous breakdown, and I shall always watch myself carefully as the days get shorter, since I know it's a danger point for my mental health. The lightbox is at the ready, the mood diary is assiduously kept, and when the pool closes, I shall start walking outdoors regularly.

However, today my mind and body finally told me to stop, so I did. I e-mailed my tutor and she kindly gave me a few extra days on my maths assignment, which is good. I then gave in to the sleep, which I so desperately needed, for the rest of the morning, and then watched Cars on the video this afternoon! Excellent excellent film! My taste in films can be quite simple - I usually like kiddies stuff, things with shooting and car chases, sci-fi, or things about the weather or disasters. Occasionally, I quite like silly comedy-type romcoms and have a bizarre fondness for High School Musical and others of that ilk. Slow arty films, or films with subtitles almost always send me to sleep - I only ever watch them with the Wonderspouse (who's into that stuff), and I drive him barmy asking him to explain what's happening because I miss so much! I also get very confused if the characters look similar, because I'm very poor at telling people apart unless they look very different!

Anyway, I spent this afternoon in Radiator Springs, which was a pleasant rest for my mind, which is trying to juggle the following balls at the moment and keep them up in the air without dropping them (in no particular order):

maths assignments x2
maths exam revision
reading for CELTA course
viola practice
tuba practice
electric viola project
rat cage cleaning
finding new rat bedding supplier - mine's out of stock
giving the cats some attention
tellys x3 conversion to digital
video recorder replacements
laundry & clothes falling to bits
fridges desperately need defrosting
house desperately needs cleaning
garden needs mowing & sorting
party to plan & database to construct
a zillion unfinished craft & sewing projects
birthday thank-yous
500 e-mails in inbox that need attention
50 messages in fb inbox that need responses
blog that is grinding to a halt
computer to back up, iPhone to sync
piles of books everywhere
trying to keep exercising
trying to lose weight
being hungry nearly all the time
not eating any puddings at home
trying to keep well
study surveys & questionnaires
when to go for flu jab
student loan deferral
Smudge's booster jabs (finance & date)
will the new neighbours be nice?
money (which has a whole list of its own)
really need a new car
current car still held together with string
will car get to Devon in present state if needed?
MiL & FiL
Wonderspouse

Not all of these are "bad" of course - playing the tuba and planning a party are definitely fun, but just because something's nice, doesn't mean it doesn't take up brain space! And, of course, some of these (such as MiL & FiL) are taking up a gigantic amount of space at the moment, which means the rest of the stuff has to be fitted into a smaller bit than usual.

I hope, that after some rest today and bed tonight, I'll be alert enough in the morning to sort all that lot into "urgent", "important" and so on. It appears that I'm getting to the stage of needing a spreadsheet to organize everything that's in my head!

*sigh*

I'm not quite sure how life became this complicated. I try to live a fairly simple life, but complications seem to seek me out. I fear that being a person who's interested in lots of things may be part of the problem, but I can't make myself "not-interested" any more than I can stop breathing air - the only time I become "not-interested" is when I'm severely depressed.

Hey ho! A cup of tea will probably make it all feel more manageable!

Then I'll start to put the calendars onto September!

Sorry this is rather a lengthy post - as anyone who's ever tried to write a conference abstract and edit for a really long paper knows, writing LOTS is the easy bit - editing it so that you cut out all the superfluous waffle is the difficult bit! I've just done the easy bit today so you have a "stream-of-consciousness thinking-aloud-waffle" sort of post!

Oh, and yes, blipfoto does seem to lose my posts after a while - it's now happened so many times (when I've been interrupted in the middle of typing for example) that I take the precaution of copy-pasting what I've written before I click preview. Before I did this regularly there were too many swear words and tears!