Its cold, I've been working all night, I've driven home, I have to drive back, I feel ok srangely enough.
Maybe its because the end is in sight. A couple more runs of crappy shifts and then I have a week and a half off.

I can't get into this week's shift of nights...
Got very little sleep yesterday (hence no whining post about it) and really, really struggled with the work in the night. My legs actually gave way at about 4am. I walked down some stairs and found that my legs had gone to sleep as I got to the bottom - and I just about avoided sitting down heavily. Hope it wasn't on the CCTV!!

Again I haven't had much sleep, but I feel OK on it today. Yesterday it was a struggle from the moment I opened my eyes. Today feels better so far.

2 more nights, I can tough it out, and I have my favourite radio show to keep me company on Saturday morning... Could be worse. I suppose.

Back to a run of nights. A tearful day so far, though I hid it well by not actually allowing a single tear to express itself.
Have driven up and arrived with the intention of shopping, sleeping and cleaning myself up before work. I might, just be able to sleep if I'm lucky...

The others will have to go by the wayside - but just arriving and closing the door of the digs behind me has calmed me. Long may it last.

Woke up in a panic again today.
Wifey had been rehearsing for an interview today, and had managed to stress me out completely by 9pm last night. I woke up convinced that the neurologist had told us that she was dying.
I was planning how to deal with it all when I realised there is a week or so until the first appointment. Not a great start to the day.
I took the son to school. She went to the interview.

She came back quite upset, saying it had gone badly. Sure enough, several hours later she got a call confirming that she didn't get the job.

All very black and sour here all afternoon.

Yeah - I'm worried about the doctors, too. She seems to be losing her hair. She says its breaking, but it doesn't seem to be growing back, and its getting worse. The headache that prompted the visit to the GP is now about 3months old, and she has constant stomach problems.
I know they don't seem connected, but it all looks like it started at the same time.

Terrible anxiety over the last 24 hours. Then the sudden realisation that it is Sunday, and I'm not in work until Tuesday night.

Still anxiety, but just a little less...

A few days off work and at home mean several things - Online games, bad food, but most of all, and best of all - Falling asleep in the middle of the day because I can.

Sport is the best accompanyment for this activity, or lack of activity. A gentle sport like bowls, dart or snooker is best, but football or rugby will do just as well. Can't wait to miss the result of Chelsea/Preston, and the start of the Leeds/Spurs game tomorrow.

Sleep - a distant memory.

It's 4:30, and I've been awake since 3:15. This is the 5th consecutive night, or is it morning, that this has happened.
I have tried all the relaxation techniques I know, and they all work really well, until the point where I am about to fall asleep, when my brain suddenly goes "Oh, work is going to be crap today... and you need to sort that debt out, and what about your relationship with your wife, and son, and parents..."
And then it wont shut up.

What a bastard!

If it wasn't for the bad luck...

My opposite number limped into work last night. My heart sank.
When I woke up there was a message that he had limped out of work at 2am. His doctor has told him that his knee is in serious trouble. He's off of at least 2 weeks.

I've worked over 70 hours so far, and I know that the boss is going to rota us in to cover all the shifts. 3 people, 24/7 working, 60 hour weeks... And who knows when it will end.

I'm so tired, and so, so, so down I can't explain it. A combination of uncertainty, tiredness and the prospect of long hours has killed the green shoots of recovery that were starting in my psyche. So much so that... I wished I was dead this morning. I wanted to leave my life behind, to either die, or just become another person and vanish from this world that I can't seem to function in any more.
Now... I'm still here, by the way... I want it to stop. I want to stop feeling this bad all the time. I want the money worries, the sexual problems, the relationship issues to just go away.
But I know they wont. And I know I'm too much of a coward to do anything drastic, be that either self harming or just decisive, radical and seismic.

The title of this post is from an old blues song. "If it wasn't for the bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all..."

I was in the lab a the weekend, doing some samples. Due to an "Act of God" type of event large parts of the plant are completely screwed again (How unusual!!) so I was having to do the samples an old fashioned way rather than using the modern equipment.
It was strangely satisfying that I can still work in a lab quickly and efficiently and skillfully despite it being many, many years since I did my degree.

My particular forte in the laboratory environment was to be able to fill a burette, or a flask to a specific volume at the first attempt. OK - not a skill there is much a call for in the wider world, but I loved being at school and university and taking a bottle of acid, and pouring 100ml into a flask and being all but spot on over 95% of the time.
On the weekend I found I haven't lost this ability.

Oi, you've got to take your pleasures where you find 'em!

I'm exhausted.
There may well be less posts this week...

I won a prize in the work's Xmas raffle - all the prizes were things customers/suppliers had given or left. So there were pens, ties, drink galore and a plastic piggy bank... Guess which one I won!

Oink!

Tired
Cold
Stressed

To add to the surreality of a massive panic attack that has been going on since 5:34 this morning when I woke up and just about managed to stifle a scream... I have developed my mum's "Snow Heads".
Apparently my maternal grandmother used to get headaches when there was snow imminent. She'd always said this to my mum, and my mum dismissed it as crazy talk. Until some time about the early 80s, when she suddenly started getting odd headaches which were followed by a fall of snow.
And I've been getting sudden, sharp pains in my head, just on the right hand side, and they are gone in a few moments. Each time they've felt the same, and they've always happened while snow is falling...
Maybe its genetic.

Sunday

Back to work tomorrow.
Feeling crap.
So whats new?

Not much, really... I still need to talk to Wifey and sort a few things out.
There just never seemed to be the right moment - maybe this week will be easier.

Yeah... right.

I'll drop in to see what condition my condition is in tomorrow.

150

This is my 150th post to this Blog...

Sad I haven't really anything to say today!
Downers are that I've had to cancel 2 meetings (fun type) with peoplw over the last 2 days because of snow. I'm down £70
Uppers - I've got my computer back... after paying £70!!

What a day!

Snow, buses, trains, more snow, Moctezuma exhibition, more snow, fish-finger butty in a soho cafe, cold, snow, Natural History Museum, crap pub, Italian cafe, Royal Albert Hall, Canadian circuses, enchantment, ice, delayed train, exploding electrical equipment, mad scumbag chav women, frozen doors, taxi, bed.

Its days like that that suddenly remind me why I fell in love and why we got married. And then I get more upset because I immediately remember why I am so fed up, so stressed and tired of working at something that is almost always dead.

I hate myself this morning for having had such a great time yesterday.

I yearned to get better; I told myself I was getting better. In fact, the depression was still there, like a powerful undertow. Sometimes it grabbed me, yanked me under; other times, I swam free. –Tracy Thompson, The Beast: A Reckoning with Depression

Weather and travel...

I have a lot of the latter to over the next few days.
Keep your fingers Xed for me please.

I went to a football match. I used to go to the ground regularly when I was small, but the guy my dad went with, and took me and his son too, killed himself in a drink/drive incident in about 1979 and dad never really fancied it after that.
We went once in a while, but not often.
So the 3rd round of the FA Cup was a good excuse to go. Tickets were available, cheaper than usual, my cousin was going and she'd been badgering me to go for about 3 years.
I drove up on the morning and dropped the car with my dad. Then she picked me up and we headed into the city. Walked around the ground, bought pies, chatted about family, football, the old days and stuff like that.
We screamed and sang and chanted and laughed through the game. We stumbled back to the car and then to a proper pub in the city to meet her husband. Their friends arrived, we ate burgers, and drank beer - well, her hubby didn't he was the nominated driver - and just bullshitted like mad.
And it was good.

"At least New Year wont be as bad as Christmas..." I thought, and thereby poking fate with a sodding big and exceedingly pointy stick...
"Remember that time we came home from holiday and the computer died?" said Number 1 Son on the way back from Xmas... and thereby poking fate with a sodding big and exceedingly pointy stick...

So its midday on New Years Eve and the PC dies in spectacular fashion. The computer repair place is shut, of course. Opens again tomorrow.
We go and buy a new laptop before the VAT goes back up again tomorrow. We buy it at Tesco because we have £150 of vouchers and we can afford it that way, though I'd rather buy it from anyplace else!
Xmas spirit is in evidence as people shove, curse and abuse one another in the aisles. The place is heaving. I say "Excuse me" (literally that and nothing else) to two guys of about 19 who are pretty much blocking the aisle. As I go past they call me a cunt, a fucking piece of shit, a paedophile, and several other things. I park my trolley further down the aisle and return to get something from the shelf. Obviously I was so rude by asking them to move in that way, they take my trolley, remove most of the items from it and leave me wandering around a completely packed shop for twice as long as need be.
I'm pretty pissed, but Wifey tells me to calm down and reminds me I'll end up getting the bad end of it if I do anything or challenge them. Thanks. I needed to hear that. Because all I can hear from you is not "never mind, it will be alright" but "You are a loser and always will be - so don't bother."
Of course when we get home the new laptop wont connect to the Internet. I have no idea why, but Wifey badgers me to sort it out. I know very little about computers, and don't really know where to start... She knows less, but wont stop telling me what to do. Eventually I get a connection of a sort, but not a good one. At least I am left alone for a while.
I get an hours sleep. but I wake feeling very rough.
Then we pay a flying visit to the sister in law to see the family. Lawyer niece is going to work at a function for the evening. Socialworker niece is going out with new boyfriend. The boys are all out.
We get home after dropping Number 1 Son off at a party.
Home again to a cold house, crap telly and party food. I find it somehow bleak and ironic as 'party' is the last thing I want. I have a couple of beers and want to go to bed by 10. I do go to bed at 11 and watch the New Year Hootenany with Jools Holland, as I have done for the last 10 years at least. I fall asleep at about 12:10.
I wake at 1:45 with music playing on the telly, Wifey asleep too. I go to the loo and when I come back and the telly is off and Wifey is curled up across the bottom of the bed. Several minutes of trying to wake her and she finally gets up in a proper huff before returning to bed to drag the covers off me completely.
But by this time I am past caring.
If I could have, I'd have walked out.

And now I'm off to collect N1S from the party.

Happy New Year. I promise to return with something a bit more fun... or at least I'll try to.