Not all negative!

I hadn't really intended on posting a blog this evening.  I just looked in to see what a couple of other people had written, if anything.  One is just back to University after an exciting year away, and seems still to be finding things a bit disorienting following her return home; and the other has a cold, but is cheerful, and concerned about an allegedly innocent prisoner in the US who faces execution later today.  It all seems so 'real' compared to the way I'm feeling just now, and in the guilt of that comparison I decided to put finger to keyboard myself.

This driving life is driving me mad at the moment (excuse the pun!)  Last Friday I was up at 2.0 am, in order to make a delivery almost at the far end of the country (that's England, not UK!) by 7.30, and then did other work once I'd returned, a total working day of over 16 hours, with a few domestic matters to attend do afterwards.  The knock-on effect of this - despite a relaxing Saturday, the focus of which was watching a football match played at the end of a pleasant journey by public transport, during the course of which I encountered a variety of interesting people - was that I still felt a little dazed on Sunday morning as I told friends at church about it all.

Yesterday fell into something of the same mould, subject only to a few hours' delay.  I left home at around 5.0 am for two deliveries in the Peak District, and then after an acceptable local 'errand' in the afternoon, I found myself saying 'yes' to the offer of another job in the evening, collecting from a fairly local hospital, and delivering to a private house near Lincoln.  After an essential, accident-preventing, body-chilling snooze in a lay-by, I finally got home at 1.20 am.  Then - despite switching off the alarm clock, shutting the bedroom door and silencing the phone - I was up in time to be at work by just after 8.0 this morning!  So ... convince me if you can that body clocks are as wonderful as people make out!

I know I'm my own worst enemy.  I'd rather be on the road, adventuring, meeting people and 'doing things' than sitting at my desk completing tasks that have lain half-done for weeks ... and in one case several years!  And when it comes to housework - I almost awarded myself a medal when last I caught myself wielding a duster in anger! 

Today I had a relaxing day.  Two nice easy deliveries in the morning, after which I took time out to make a phone call on behalf of a friend who is on holiday, and had left me a couple of bits of business - important to both of us - that needed resolving before she gets back.  Soon it was time to attack a couple of those local jobs that fill the cracks of every day, and then I collected something to deliver (at a civilised hour) tomorrow morning, and was home a little earlier than normal.

Even so, I haven't been able to settle to anything.  I've let the evening slip through my fingers as I flitted from one thing to another, passing over some things that are essential by the end of the week, and others of which I've forgotten the detail that I was going to look up, and now as bedtime approaches I'm feeling confused, unfulfilled, wasteful and dissatisfied.

But even as I write this, I tell myself, there are good aspects to life: I've signed the lease on my flat for another year; the landlord hasn't increased the rent; I finished today's crossword; and I didn't get a flea in my ear when I made a grovelling phone call to the surgery to apologise for missing an appointment last week.  As I asked to make a new one - and promised to keep it this time - the receptionist said calmly, "don't worry - these things happen."  So I'm happy to offer a silent, "yes, they do," and slope off to bed.