Bork Slowly Borking

 Tough day. As the day wore on I struggled with the stress of my situation. Sometimes better. Sometimes worse. Overall, getting worse. By mid afternoon I had reached super high emergency stress level. I equate this to the point where you just hold your breath. No breathing. Except it's over hours. Everything is cranked up to a high strung point. I had this when Ares was bad and I had to put him to sleep. Everything slows. I disassociate hardcore. Everything becomes unreal. High focus. High achievement. High coping. Everything runs on a steely efficient auto pilot. The emotions are somewhere in there, screaming the house down. But it's clamped down. No time for that. This is about doing the thing. So everything gets held in place. A screaming inner animal pinned to the floor and smothered. Everything tightens ready to fight, flee, do what's necessary. A machine. But not healthy. Under extreme pressure. Ready to pop. Burning so much energy to hold that state of high readiness...

 Good, bad, ugly. Back from my jaunt down to my brothers. Picking up Hazel, getting her sorted for food et al was a faff. A pain. But. Dealt with it. After a long drive down to my brothers with a couple of stops and redirections on the way, got in and I immediately started cooking dinner for Hazel. She was starving. And not about to cook for herself. I had foreseen this however, and taken a bunch of raw materials for a vegetable bolognese cooked in my sister in laws ninja. Hooray for ninjas. My nephew came over about 10 minutes after we landed for a chat. On hearing my tired voice, he said it would be a quick chat. It was not a quick chat. 2 hours. Ok. During that time, finished cooking dinner, finally collapsed and rested. Christmas day was on the whole uneventful. Had a chat with my sister in the morning. Had a lovely dinner with Andy, really nice. And probably the highlight of my days down there. Hazel was good. Nice to be around. Boxing day, the wheels started falling off the w...

 Welp. As soon as I say I'm a bit better for Christmas I have a step back. Nothing too dramatic but. Went for an early morning shop at the supermarket on Friday. Possibly a mistake. Place was heaving. To be expected I guess. Although. I thought I'd get away with it being early in the morning and still technically a work day. Wrong. Still. I needed to get out. Pick up a few bits for Hazel, because sure as shit wouldn't be able to do it over Xmas. After that, had a rest, took Athena for a walk around the old woods, somewhere I haven't been in years, and somewhere where we haven't regularly been in years more. It was where for many years I walked Athena and Ares together, at night, through their best years. Such is the way with me. A lot of memories in those woods. I can't really walk them anymore without a sense of melancholy. Always looking backwards. Never forwards. In any case. That walk was enough to make me feel ill. Nausea. My eyes sucked into my head and fe...

 A quiet day yesterday and one where on the whole, I didn't feel too bad. Nothing terribly wrong with me for once. The usual suspects - of course - but all of them were by and large within copeable levels. At one point I even decided that I had a little too much wellbeing and thus needed to tackle some chores. Do what you can, when you can malarkey. Because when you can't, things go to shit. So. Make hay while the sun shines and all that. I put on a wash and did some hoovering. And collapsed into a fit of sneezes and streamy eyes. Eh. I think it was possibly shaking out one of Athena blankets. Full of hair. Finally managed to get a decent length of sleep in, albeit, the schedule is still out of whack. Apart from a bit of a cracking headache ( of course ) and weakness today, I think I am in better shape for Xmas. Got round to talking to Hazel yesterday about her plans, something I've been avoiding a bit - I just don't want to dig out hassle for myself. As my friend put i...

 Tired. The recurring theme at the moment. Can't sleep properly even when super tired. I have gone from sleeping too long, to not sleeping enough. Sigh. Slowly noodled around with work today. This week has been all about helping everyone else apparently. Just helping the lesser devs sort their shit out. Or get advice. As a result things have stacked up. I have a bunch of shit to do. And a steady stream of interuptions. Eh. Could be worse I suppose. Athena has bumped into a few things today. It's apparent her left eye is not working. She can either see little or nothing at all out of that eye. As ever, she deals with it without any distress. Still excited to go for a walk. Oh. Yes. Yesterday was her annual booster shot that in the end didn't happen. Instead at the vets we talked about her left eye. Started some treatment for that. Delaying the booster for a month or so. We get to go back next week and see how her eye is progressing. The vet was lovely. She said Athena was ...

 Tired. But again doing a tiny bit better than the day before. Each day one after another I get a teeny tiny bit better. It's not saying much. I am still, on the whole, a shitshow. But I am nudging away from cataclysmic will I make it to tomorrow shitshow. My ass, conspicuously, is also quiet. Better. The correlation / causation holds. You might, perhaps, be inclined to wonder whether the post surgery recovery actually hit me quite hard, and that a lot of this, is perhaps a very depressed body dealing with a pretty invasive slice and dice in your ass. Like getting stabbed in the ass. It makes me kinda wonder how that works, at what level does the cumulative strain result in your body waving a white flag and just keeling over. The whole, stab, shock, stress kind of response. Where people die from shock. Not blood loss. Not major organ failure. Shock. What is that ? Anywho. Take it with a pinch of salt. Could be nothing to do with surgery recovery. Could just be coincidental. My reco...

Tired. But doing a smidge better. Sleep is still a major downturn in wellbeing. Docs tomorrow. Coincidence or not - my ass has also stopped being an awful mess of gloop and seems to have for the moment knitted together. I do wonder how tightly tied together my general well being and Other Bullshit is to that most obvious of open wounds. There definitely seems to be a very obvious connection in state between the two. Of course whether its correlation or causation I have no clue. Yesterday I found the energy to make a chicken stew. And gasp. Also make mashed potatoes. No mean feat for my sorry lack of energy ass. I am frail and fucked up, but, doing a tiny bit better than I have been. Everythings still there shit wise, just dialled back a little. And things shift in the sands. My symptoms do a slow pattern movement, from one thing to the next, but never right. Eh well. Hazel pinged me yesterday, a message I didn't get until hours later, I was - of course - asleep. She has had a ...

 Up early. Out early. Didn't feel entirely terrible, so decided to go grocery shopping first thing in the morning. Ended up filling my boots with stuff I needed, and it wasn't terrible. Only by the time I got to the checkout, hastily filling bags and dumping them did I suddenly get dizzy. Oh. Slow down. Unloading it at home was a stark lesson in just how far down the spiral I am. Lifting 4 heavy bags into the kitchen made every alarm spike in me. I swear. My heart is shot. But who knows. I slowed down a peg. Breathe. And stabilised. Had brunch, a long sit down and then roused myself to take the Athena out for a walk. Which was nice. Athena has slowed. She now 100% just endures other dogs by standing still, wagging her tail and waiting. Most of them tend to give her a thorough butt sniff. On the scale of attractive butt areas, Athena ranks very highly. Something about her. She smells good. One gsd in particular was so enthused he lifted Athena off her back feet with his nose wed...

 Everything has come down a notch. Eased off slightly. It no longer feels like I am on the edge of spiky imminent demise. A peace and calm settles over me. But it is not all peace and rainbows. How deep I dive into sleep and not coming back out of it has increased. Everything has been dialed down. That includes how awake and alive I am. Today I have slept 15 hours straight. I am slow. And it feels like I am on the deck of a slow rolling ship, pitching one way, then the other. I have to concentrate not to stagger. My eyes are laggy. Each movement feels like it is half a second too slow. Everything is weak. My arms feels heavy. My legs don't want to move. A strange weight sits on my chest, a pressure. And my legs are slow to respond, heavy, asleep. Everything slows down. At the 12 hour of sleep mark I woke up. In that treacle. Asked Alexa what time it was. Midnight. Everything felt wrong. Bad. But. No horror. It was easy to just sigh and slip quickly back into oblivion. Too easy. An...

 3.28AM I am bouncing between tired awake and tired trying to sleep. I feel super weak. And spacey. And weird. This, in all fairness, is probably at least half my own fault. I've not eaten. Yes. I know. I am a dumbass. But somehow. It makes sense to me. Seems alright. Ok. Acceptable. No problem. Today I have been surprisingly work productive. Problems at work with the release continue. More advice. More fixes. And outright taken control of one of the gnarlier issues - just, give it to me. Plus estimates. Plus my own work. So. Busy day. Up early. Worky work. Took Athena out for a mid afternoon walk in the midst of the work. We had a gentle walk around the heath, cold, grey, damp, your prototypical December day. It was ok. I didn't start wiping until the end, albeit I felt it all the way round. Tired. Slow. Frail. Athena has perked up a little since her latest shot. Not fully up. But a bit better. All day today she has bugged me. What do. Pay attention to me. So she's had her...