If you want to know how my week is currently going: I magically skipped from 10:00 PM to 3:30 AM in the blink of an eye. This is just another wild night in The Tuesday Report, and honestly every week feels like an episode of The Tuesday Report for me lately.
Seizure. In The Tuesday Report, these kinds of surprises seem to happen far too often.
I awoke sitting bolt upright next to the birds, sitting in a reading aloud position to them. When my brain finally came back online at 3:30 AM, I realized I hadn’t moved a single muscle from that exact sitting position for five and a half hours. Standing up produced a god-almighty crack that sounded like a collapsing building. Blobette and Mojo were thoroughly unimpressed with me leaving their cage light glaring all night, too while I was “out”.
To top off the temporal chaos, a “whoops, took too many gummies” situation this morning knocked me out cold for four hours—which was definitely not the plan. Yet, it’s yet another classic tale for The Tuesday Report archives.
So now I’m awake, my sleep schedule is completely wrecked, and I’m actively trying to stretch my bedtime tonight so I don’t induce another seizure.
How’s your week starting off? Anyone else fighting a completely broken body clock? If so, you might have your own version of The Tuesday Report to share.
I seem to have completely forgotten the mechanics of going to sleep. My physical body is currently functioning with the structural integrity of a wet sandbag, but my brain has decided it is high noon and time to run a marathon. Being utterly exhausted but completely wired is a special kind of nocturnal torture, and it usually means I am staring at the ceiling until 2 AM. This is what I call The Insomnia Tax, and it feels like there is no refund. For me, The Insomnia Tax imposes a penalty every restless night.
Since I’m awake, let’s talk about the sheer audacity of modern supermarkets. I had my Asda shop delivered today and decided to get some Halloween sweet multi-packs for my carers. Have you seen the state of these things recently? You practically need to remortgage your house to buy a bag, and when you finally open it, the actual chocolates are microscopic. Don’t even get me started on Cadbury. They are the absolute worst offenders in the shrinkflation game. I’m paying premium prices for a fun-size bar that is now genuinely the size of a postage stamp. It’s not a treat; it’s a choking hazard. All this, like dealing with supermarkets, sometimes feels as thankless as taxes on insomnia itself.
Reading
But I digress. On a much lighter, slightly weirder note, I have established a new evening routine in the flat. Every night at 9:30 PM, I read aloud to Mojo and Blobette. We are currently working our way through The War of the Worlds. Apparently, H.G. Wells’ tale of Martian destruction is incredibly soothing if you have feathers. They sit there on their perches, puff up into little round spheres of absolute contentment, and practically fall asleep listening to the carnage. It’s working wonders—they are noticeably less skittish around me now that we have our evening story time. Even the birds don’t have to pay what I call an insomnia tax, it seems.
I also have a daylight lamp sitting in its box ready to be installed for them, so they still get enough rays as the dark winter days draw in. I haven’t quite mustered the energy to wrestle with extension cables and timers yet, but it’s on the agenda. It’s genuinely nice to end the week with a positive little project waiting in the wings. Meanwhile, that unique penalty called insomnia tax is lurking, waiting for me at bedtime.
Since The War of the Worlds is almost finished, I need your help.
What are some good, relatively short books I can read to the birds next? They seem to enjoy classic literature and alien invasions, but I’m open to suggestions.
P.S. A massive thank you and welcome to all the new subscribers who have joined recently. It is lovely to have you here in our weird little corner of the internet.
I’m trying to sleep but I’m struggling. I don’t want the Valium as I’ll just get hung over again like I was all this morning. It’s fine when you have nothing to do the next day but I’ve got stuff that needs to get done
Problem one: I need to wake up at or before 9:30 a.m. to speak to Mental Health services about seeing the consultant for an assessment. I can’t for the life of me figure out what for. Is there some magic wand or stick he points at me and poof suddenly I’m okay again. I’m depressed because I lost my independence with FND crippling me, my wife left, living in a motel while the council find me a flat and yeah to me that is a lot going which explains the depression. Am I thinking of killing myself? yes but that’s just thoughts, I’m not taking active steps in following through on plans. So back to the question at hand. Why do I need to see him? My meds are fine, don’t mess with them they are working. If I wanted a chat I’d call the mental health helpline.
Problem two: I need to find a laundrette that collects my dirty washing and drops it off all nice and clean. There are no facilities here to wash your clothes which is fair enough. Unless I wait till Wednesday and wash them while I’m at Doti’s house. My house. The house, old house. And use the machine we have there. It’s only two loads so should have it done by home time. Unless I come on Tuesday and stay, but then I need to be at the office. Hmm. I’ll find a laundrette and get it sorted. I think my social worker found one…. I remember he did and texted me the number. So will ring them and see what the deal is.
Problem three: Meeting with a social worker. I can’t remember which one I’m meeting (currently 3) tomorrow and where. Usually, it’s a place just down the road from where I used to live. There are offices there and even a cafe inside. All are hidden behind the main street. I know it’s at 1 pm. So mass text would be the solution.
Problem four: Insomnia. No caffeine drinks after 7 p.m. Make an appointment with the doctor.
Problem five: Exercise. Part of the recovery is to get the strength back in my body to move around. I can hobble a short distance but need to find a way of doing it but seating is available every hundred feet or so. That way I woke fall over and collapse. I would love to walk down the main road and do it but I checked today and there are no benches. Maybe a park would be better. I’ll have a look online and see if there are any good ones. I think there is one with a lake that has benches along it so I could try that.
Thank you for reading my boring list of chores. I’ll attempt to sleep now. It’s warm. There is no breeze. Agh.
It had been a few days since I did a proper post, so I thought, why not on this late summer’s day do a post despite taking an epic amount of medication, my brain would not sleep. Whether this is strike action because I didn’t indulge in any brain-appealing work today, I don’t know. It could just be insomnia. I can’t wait to find out.
I had the pleasure of looking after Doti’s house today, I was there from 8 am to 9 pm. It was nice, Ben was keen to show me Forza with his steering wheel and pedals in action. Just needs to set up the stream deck with his shortcuts. We had a talk about stuff for a while. Life stuff that we never talk about. It was good. Wholesome fun. Followed by him giving me his Liberty County role-playing moves on putting an IV line in my arm and then stabilising my heart after being shot. You know what? if it makes him happy then I’m happy. The day passed pretty quickly, did a few things like dishes and stocking up on the basics. It’s my day off tomorrow and Monday so will try and be productive with housing applications since the housing officer I have seems to of forgotten about me.
The motel seems to of taken in a few scruffy stoners who are huffing on the nitrous in the corridor. For laughing gas, they don’t laugh much. Must be a saying.
Delusional behaviour. So I’m not sure if this is most people but every few minutes a random story plays out in my mind. So I’ll think of something like ‘This person is annoying” but then turns into a 3 season epic movie in my mind where I do x, y and z. I then, for lack of a better term, zoom out and I’m back to normal. Seconds have passed but minutes in my mind. It is messed up. Like the hallucinations. “I need to finish writing this down or I’ll for..” The book disappears, hand still in pen mode. Gone. Or there I am watching this dance of people in front of me and I stand up to dance and it all goes away. Like living dreams maybe.
The method of trying to banish the sleep demon was unorthodox but it served its purpose. I couldn’t see the words on the screen anymore as I was that tired. It was around 5am, and I managed to secure a spot on the sofa with a few bribes for the dogs. I fell asleep instantly. It was AMAZING. No thoughts, no rolling around listening to people condemning you. It was bliss. I was up at 7am to walk the dogs and here I am now. Tired but not defeated. Hopefully, it’s enough to break the cycle. Although I’m still worried it won’t be enough.
R my daughter is coming to visit today, D has taken her and B to the circus since, for reasons unknown to me, I cannot drive them without supervision and we can’t leave Dobby the newbie on her own for very long. So D will bring R here and I can see her and annoy her. Still a far cry from the contact center I used to see her.
I should do a ‘Bizarre things that only happen to me’ list at some point.
I’m now messing with the Google Bard bot. So far he has been so useful in looking up and getting it summarised. Also interesting to see what the limitations are. For example, trying to get Bard to access my emails and search it for me was a failure due to privacy but if I told Bard my name he would remember it the next time we spoke. Thought that was pretty cool. It can also write blog posts but they come across as too clean if you get me. I’ll keep experimenting with it. Although as a programmer, I’m worried that it can auto-complete code. If that develops a lot of us will be out of work pretty fast. Or the market will become saturated as less skill is required to do it. Blah.
I’ll leave you with this awesome, flattering photo of Dobby the dog.
My eyes hurt. I’m sure this is down to a lack of sleep. Got the screen on the dimmest mode possible which is helping. I’m having another rough day. Its been relentless for what will be a week tomorrow. I don’t want to go to sleep. Not for some petulant reason but more if I push myself to exhaustion then when I do sleep it will be dreamless. I know I’m supposed to take PRN meds when this happens but I took them yesterday and really didn’t like what they did to me.
I’m finding it hard to keep this bad stuff bottled up. I’m trying my hardest to not unleash it upon the family so it doesn’t affect everyone. Not that I would do anything stupid but it would just worry them and I don’t want to do that at the moment. Things are fractured enough in the family, I fear any more additions would break the horses back.
Happier things,
Dobby the dog has found a new hobby. I discovered this whilst doing the dishes earlier this week. Although, I have noticed that randomly socks appear in the kitchen. I thought that it was someone just ditching socks so I can match them. But then I noticed the dog acting funny. It seems Dobby has developed this habit of picking up a sock and placing it randomly in the kitchen. He doesn’t chew it, nor does he play with it. He simply picks up a sock and put’s it on the floor and then runs off to fetch another one. It appears that he will only do this when I don’t look at him. It is unbelievably cute and probably stems from his sheepdog heritage. So far this week he has beaten his personal best of three socks placed while my back is turned. He annoying cute bugger that he is.
As it’s almost 2am, and D went to bed early, I’ve got both of the dogs with me downstairs while I type this. Probably best not to take them upstairs and sleep in the bed as it will wake D up and she’s not been feeling well lately. She’s having a bit of a hard time working things out so I try and just be helpful when I can and listen when she speaks. So. Yes, Dogs are sleeping on the sofa. One side each. It’s cute but the only problem is I now have nowhere to sleep down here. I’ll probably sleep in the middle and see what happens. Slowly stretching out to the point of poking them out with my feet. It’s nice that every day, little by little, they are more accepting of each other. It’s not like they growl or bite, or fight, but yeah. Who knew that an extra dog would bring some companionship for Nina and ultimately me as well. We do however still need a cat to make up the numbers in the house. Saying that Nina is in her sanctuary upstairs away from Dobby who chased her whenever he gets the chance.
That’ll do for the midnight thoughts.
Think I can manage another hour. Should be enough for a very deep sleep without my thoughts plaguing me before falling asleep which worries me the post.
Goodnight. Hope you all had/have an amazing weekend.
