long day even though i didn't do much

- best bit as always, seeing p-doc this morning. Got him laughing twice - the first when he (as always) asked about gym, and I said no but lots of heavy garden work, and he was going to shake hands (normal thing) - I said can't, he says why, I show him multi-layered blister in palm of right hand from digging (which, in all honesty does look a lot like a wannabe stigmata), and he gets this look on his face that says oh shit, know she self-injures but neatly, and not like this one ever, what now...- I tell him it's a blister on a blister, he visibly relaxes and insists on shaking left hands instead.

And then, he tells me that his early-morning reading matter was an article that says that the human brain establishes 1 million new connections every second, and isn't that amazing. So I thought about it, and asked how many die off every second. I get the look, and he starts laughing, and says he's going to have to send that one to the author - how even in the most incredible fact, someone with depression can find the negative. (hey, I mean be fair, how many connections can your skull cater for before it starts looking like Boris Karloff? I wasn't only being negative!) And made little red squiggles on his sheet of little squiggles that only he can interpret, which theoretically tell him everything meaningful that he asked me about.

When I first started seeing him, he told me that his notes aren't encrypted, per se, but by default they are, because no-one else has a clue about what any of his symbols mean, never mind what he notes next to them, and the bits that he actually writes like 'increase Remeron' or list of current drugs etc are so bland that no-one would mind them being read - a lot easier than the electronic hospital notes and HIPAA stuff that the US shrinks talk about. His files are his only. Also, he said straight-faced, if it does end up that he and a patient file get dragged into court, his writing is so appalling anyway that a judge will quite likely believe him if he claims that he can't read it either!

Love the dude - he's brilliant, funny, and I really believe that he's about the only one who will ever fix the fuck-up I've become. Just wish it would happen faster.

And then quick stop at the rehab centre and make peace with bosslady, and off to meeting at IT job - make peace with software team (only 'cos asshole was deliberately not invited by me), and end up with a million extra tasks, all marked urgent. Home for an hour of hard labour in the garden before dark.

Decided just now that he (or she) who documents things publicly first gets to steer the conclusions in the right direction, so finished off my evening by writing a masterful (well, I think so...) email listing all the relevant stuff from the meeting and who is responsible for doing anything about it. Had to think hard, so that I could put boss's initials next to 3 out of 12 points - even though two of them were things that I put down as 'not discussed because we ran out of time', so he didn't even get to dive out of them personally. Besides, they are basically just running interference for me and telling other senior people that they have to have status meetings every 2 weeks if they ever want this project to stop sitting with it's bum in the mud. So much for a peaceful weekend - I have now committed myself to about 50 hours work before Monday morning, tomorrow morning is full up with non-work things already, my list of other stuff to be done asap has snuck across about 4 corners of other pieces of important paper. Fuck, I knew I deliberately turned doing this whole upgrade thing down last year because I can't handle the stress and the hours, and now I'm sticking my own stupid head right into it. I should have the sense to leave well enough alone. Guess at least I can count the number of bags of gravel that this pays for - even after tax, if I didn't have to pay medical stuff, household, domestic worker, car and animal stuff, Gil the builder, water and lights, and maybe food and cigarettes as well, I could buy about 1606 bags of purple gravel (actually grey with just a purply-pink hint) or 401 bags of rose-quartz ( the real thing, sooooo stunning, and so dog-proof!) or 480 bags of fist sized caramel-brown river rocks. All of which, at about 20kg a bag, albeit different coverage rates, would cover the entire garden and the house - I'm just using them in patches bordered by paving stones to theoretically create dog un-friendly bits, where I plant stuff, and then also use the rocks to make it eco-friendly by preventing evaporation and encouraging composty things to happen under there. And then the dogs can hurtle up and down in between.

I guess I have to confess though, that since I started in the right-hand corner with a patch of about 15 ft squarish of gravel and lots of little plants in it, from the three dogs, there hasn't been one turd anywhere else except smack in the middle of my lovely gravel - and in one case, dead centre in the middle of a plant, almost like a soft brown orchid. Go figure.

And go sleep. Long day starts in about 30 mins, and only 6 hours of it will contain sleep. Night-night....