Out of sorts

Krakow Botanical Gardens, July 2016

I can't sleep - or at least, I'm waking up at all hours thrashing about in bed unable to get comfortable. 2am, 4am, 6am and all hours in between, no pattern to it. In the morning if I realise that I haven't been awake for a couple of hours since going to bed it's a rare treat.

Sometimes I know why - The LTRP is making me a bit tense, and I've had a few difficult patients at work and that always makes me mull over what I could have done differently or how I might approach the situation when I see them next. To try and improve matters I've stopped using phone or tablet screens close to bedtime, I've been going to bed at reasonable times, I've opened the window, but nothing seems to be working. So I'm tired - one morning I thought I might as well go to work early, but when I got there I had to have a nap in the car before going in.

Then last Tuesday on my day off I had toothache and didn't really want to do anything at all except sit on the sofa or go back to bed. The weekend before that was super busy - Lola II and Mr M visited and came to our concert, which is very brave and noble of them. I was much more nervous than usual because of all the exposed baritone saxophone solos, and the other regular bari player wasn't able to play at the concert, but our glorious leader found a stand-in so I wasn't entirely on my own. It went very well in the end.

So today mum commented that there hadn't been anything new on the blog for ages and I realised how long it is since anything of note actually happened, and how much else is occupying me. Before the concert I was doing quite a lot of saxophone practice and a bit of clarinet practice. That DVD series I mentioned before (The Newsroom) really is very good and as well as watching episodes in free evenings I watched two episodes back to back when I was feeling poorly on Tuesday.

The LTRP has now reached a stage where it really isn't fun at all any longer. The decisions to be made are no more difficult than before, but as much as I try to understand and stay on top of everything, the issues pile up and I feel out of control most of the time.

The meeting with the kitchen company highlighted the fact that I still don't quite know which appliances to choose and the tap catalogue they gave me has a terrifying 150 pages of options. Before ordering the kitchen items he wants to measure the space (which isn't built yet) and delivery may not be for three weeks after that. And my preferred acrylic worktop needs to be installed by a specialist who may need three months notice but the work is due to start in just a month, and the builder's on holiday now for two weeks.

The architect has emailed to tell me that my plans have been passed by building control except for a requirement for a smoke detector which I thought I'd already agreed to, and I still haven't gone for alternative quotes for the paving and veranda and stairs. None of this is critical but it is making me rather uncomfortable. No wonder my sleep is a bit disturbed.

On the positive side, I have sold some of my surplus kitchen appliances and I hope to sell a bit more in the next month, and I have emptied about half of the contents of the kitchen which is a very good start. A colleague has offered an electric steamer for when I am without a working kitchen, and I'll have the microwave - the main problems will be laundry and washing up, although I'll probably use mostly plastic cutlery and paper plates. Or eat out, or have ready meals, or sandwiches. Or have big lunches at work and no evening meal. Whatever. It will be worth it. I will choose oven options, and taps. It will be fine.