backward day

- normally, on a day where I don't have any odd-timed appointments, I have a fairly static routine. Used to be that I went to the rehab centre every weekday morning, and then did other things in the afternoon. The last 18 months, though, I kind of dropped out. If it's possible to drop out from a voluntary job. I do shifts when they really need someone, and otherwise I'm available to fetch and carry, and catch anything anywhere. So most days, I get up before 08h00, feed cats and anyone else who needs it, wallow in the bath - depending on the meds, I often have a nap there too.

Before the bath, I check email; after it I settle at the PC, and either work or surf for most of the day. Meds-dependant again....I sometimes have a couch nap. Sometimes being every day on some meds, and never on others. At the moment, it's wouldn't mind but mostly don't. Around 15h30 or so, I have a break, and do some gardening, mostly until it gets dark, after which I have another bath with oils and foam and other good for aching bits stuff, and then go back to the PC.

At the moment I'm waiting for feedback from work, so it's mostly surfing. Today though, my team leader came to visit, to do site handover on all the mainframe database sites that I haven't been supporting. Somehow, I agreed to do standby, which was one of the things I swore I'd never do again, after I stopped working full time. Haha. With the 6-people team down to 1 and me, I have to give her some time off. It's not only being called - it's also things like never going anywhere where you can't leave abruptly, never drinking too much, in my case at the moment, not taking over-sedating meds like the benzo I've been taking. I wake up 5 times most nights, but when I do, I'm so uncoordinated that even having a smoke is difficult... I keep dropping it. Going to the loo is a mission impossible. My main client has very little overnight callout; most of it is either before 21h30 or from 05h30 on, so I've managed so far. But if there is a higher probability of being called at midnight and having to work, I can't be too groggy to log on. So - as of Monday night, no more benzo. Just don't know what else.

Funnily enough, alcohol might get me paralytic, but it has never stopped me from being able to work. Not debating whether I should have or not - the answer to that is almost definitely that I shouldn't have. Fiddling with production data for huge corporations when one can barely stand probably isn't the wisest choice. But I was a stand-alone DBA for those corps back in the '80s when it was mandatory for the IT (DP, then) teams to be able to outdrink anyone and still work all night, and for a woman in my position to still be 'one of the boys'. And I did, and I was. But never to the extent that I couldn't work when I was paged...maybe I couldn't stand too well, but I could still work. Things like that are why I don't mind admitting that I had a well-developed drinking problem. Nowadays, I'm out of practice - so as well as adjusting meds, I'm going to have to not drink at all. Will make p-doc very happy, as well!

The schedule though, meant that I was out at my lavender-trench for two hours this morning, and am consequently in agony again. The worst bit? Definitely, when I have been sitting with my feet in the hole and digging away, and it gets to having to get up. So my butt is on the ground, my feet are a foot down - not enough of a difference to be able to drop onto my feet and stand. Just enough of one so that I have to use my thighs and knees. Which, I keep finding, don't want to be used at all. And pushing off with my hands would entail using wrists, and those are distinctly unusable at the moment. Even using the mouse has become the smallest possible movement required....

Hell, at this rate, I don't need to get old, I'm having all the joys of being a decrepit 90-year old already.