… like it’s going out of fashion. Although I was pretty damn chirpy when I got up this morning (for me on a Monday, anyway), I was knackered by the time I got to work because of the horrors of driving in heavy rain. Which include:
- big puddles on the back roads (six inches deep and worse thanks to the potholes and bad drainage)
- idiots driving too fast through the big puddles
- idiots driving too close behind me
- idiots driving without their headlights on

All that concentration is too much for me on a Monday morning. I hate other drivers. One of my (many) driving instructors once told me to behave as if everyone else on the road is an idiot, and that advice has been very helpful over the years…

… and I have been all week. I haven’t been able to get to sleep at a reasonable hour (around midnight, for me) for about a week, nor did I manage to sleep in at the weekend, so I’m feeling washed out. My eyes are puffy and the skin around them has gone dark and tired-looking, and it’s got to that point in my life where I’ve started to use eye cream (insert shudder of horror).

On the plus side, I have at least read a lot this week - no point just lying there tossing and turning, is there? - and I’ve managed to finish my 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo a whole two days early (although I don’t think that’s got anything to do with my sleeping patterns or lack thereof). I’m pretty sure I’ll be up till midnight on Friday night though to squeeze out those last few words (I’m going to try and get 55,000 done this year), so I intend to stay in bed till at least midday on Saturday. It’s not like I have anything important to get up for, and maybe that will see me right.

… for the hall/stairs/landing and ‘master’ bedroom. Colin started painting the hall etc on Monday, but ran out of paint, both white and green, by Tuesday. So I had another trip to B&Q today to buy more, so he can finish this weekend when he comes back from Galway. In the meantime, I have to put up with all the shoes and phone books and coats dumped in the study, plus protective newspapers all the way up the stairs.
Don’t know when we’ll get the bedroom painted, but we have 3 weeks until my parents arrive… I have to finish organising the study this weekend!

Also today, I am mostly … hoping BT dispatch my new modem very soon

… because for me, it’s true trauma being without internet access. I’m just not used to it (hence my not-so-sneaky usage in work today). Having my modem give up on me (well, according to the little desk monkey I spoke to at BT NI, anyway) on a day when I was supposed to be working from home was extremely annoying… though to be honest, in the end I rather appreciated my enforced/unexpected day off, even if I didn’t do very much.

And also today, I am mostly … being annoyingly clumsy

… with things like making coffee and getting in and out of the car. I’ve managed to bang my head when plugging something in under the desk, and cut the back of my hand while walking down the corridor (there are weird wooden plaques things sticking out dangerously and I swung my hand into one), but so far I haven’t spilt anything on myself. Yet.
As long as I can drive home in one piece, I suppose I should be happy though.

… in which multiple silly little annoyances combine to piss me off right royally.
Well, I suppose it’s not that bad. But it’s been stupid things, like laddering my tights; and the squirters for my windscreen icing over because it was cold this morning and my windscreen getting subsequently very very dirty which meant I had to stop on my way in to work and put more water in the washer bottle because I thought I’d run out when really it was just the ice preventing any water from being squirted out; and I parked out of habit on the road this morning and then found out there were lots of free spaces in the car park…
The day /has/ thankfully improved though, so I’ll stop complaining. It being pay-day helps… As does knowing that I’ve got the day off tomorrow.

… but I can’t go for one, without causing myself a lot of pain due to shin splints, because stupid me, I left my analgesic cream in the bathroom at home. And without it, my legs hurt. Bugger. It’s a nice sunny day too, here in Belfast, and how many of those can we expect at this time of year?