I've managed a lot of cataloging, and quite a lot of paperwork. No writing, since I don't have the energy or the mental awareness. I've managed very little sleep, dammit.
I don't know if it's something to do with the weather, or what. Usually at this time of year, things are getting warmer, but here in Alby it's freezing (literally) and periodically snowing, even though it's nearly April and most recent years we've had bikini weather by April 1st. I'm in that generally unsettled frame of mind and body, where I'm not quite sick but not quite right either. I do keep getting stupid health problems, things that come right out of left field - since I got back from Somerset three weeks ago I've had four ear infections (yeah, I get a lot of ear infections, but four in three weeks is pushing it even for me) and a urinary tract infection and then today I broke a rib, stupidly. I don't even know how I did it - I was rushing to get in and out of the bath, and then get dressed and dry my hair, but there wasn't a particular moment when I suddenly felt the pain. No cracking sound or sensation, or sudden sharp pain. It just came on over a period of about ten minutes - a twinge at first, then a pain that I thought was a pulled muscle that I could walk off, and then half an hour later I couldn't move at all. I'm guessing it's a rib, anyway, unless I actually tore a muscle. I've had strains and sprains and pulled muscles before, and they don't hit me anywhere near as badly as this. That said, I've also had broken ribs, and they haven't been this bad, although the one that I broke in a car accident five or six years ago still gives me trouble if I sleep on it wrong. Ribs are funny like that.
So I'm stuck in bed. I literally cannot move most of the time, although I'm managing to make it to the bathroom and back every so often (although it takes about ten minutes to sit up and walk down the stairs, so I have to schedule bathroom breaks). I can't sit in a chair. I find it hard to stand. I find it uncomfortable to lie on my back. Lying on my stomach is the only position that's even vaguely comfortable (the injury is in my back) - everything else sends my entire left side trapezius and latissimus dorsi into spasms. I'm surprised at how much the darn thing hurts - I've had back injuries before, but never any that made it impossible to actually MOVE. There is, of course, the possibility that I'm just being a huge pussy, but you'd think that as used to pain as I am, I'd be able to cope with this better.
I'm generally irritable right now, because of the pain, and the tiredness that I've been feeling since Christmas - well, okay, since the strep in Oct 2011 really - and the extra weight I'm still lugging around on my body (with all the health problems I've had over the last year, I haven't managed to stick to an exercise regime for more than a couple weeks) and the constant, gnawing hunger that never quite goes away, even though I feel like I never stop eating. (In reality I'm probably not eating that much. I can't afford to eat more, though. Money is really tight, but that's for another blog post.)
I'm also irritable because I have so much freaking stuff that needs to be done, and I can't afford to be bedbound. I've been decorating - my walls are now entirely pink - and I've been painting the shelves and brackets white, since I can't afford to buy bookcases. Unfortunately, this is a VERY long process. Each shelf needs two coats of primer and at least two coats of paint (they're going from a very dark colour to white) and this results in me having to run to Wilko to buy more paint on a regular basis. I should really just buy several cans and be done with it. I can only paint one side at a time, unless I want to end up with paint smears everywhere. And I have to do the work outside because of the fumes - and it's been pissing it down with rain most of the time. I can't work in the rain. Or the snow.
I've been working on the damn shelves for at least a week now, and I'm not quite finished. I thought it would take me a couple days. But then I thought there'd be sunshine and warmer weather.
The walls are looking pretty good. They could have done with another coat of paint, but I ran out, and I certainly wasn't going to go out and spend twenty quid on another can. I can't believe how expensive paint has gotten.
The frill you see isn't part of the paint, it's just the shadow of the lampshade. I should have taken photos in daylight, but we aren't GETTING any real daylight right now. Shelves will go in this alcove - I actually put the brackets up yesterday, before I did the ribs.
You can see that the window surrounding needs another coat or two of paint, so I bought some tester pots just to do that...and then found out that you're not supposed to paint with them, because they don't give a decent finish. Fuck.
My bed is about the only pretty thing in the room right now, aside from the walls. Oh, and my bedside table. If I had the money, I'd dump all the furniture - I've had it since I was eight. But I don't have the money to replace everything. Nor will it paint (it's cheap MDF, and I've tried, to no avail). So I'm stuck until I can at least buy a dressing table.
The thing that really drives me batty is that there is so much STUFF everywhere. Stuff that doesn't have a home. There's like, NO storage space in this house. This suits mom well, because she likes open-plan thing - shelves made out of planks of wood and brackets; everything sitting out on display. I hate open-plan. Unless you have a weekly housekeeper, it's horribly impractical. Everything gets dusty and grimy and you can't ever get it properly clean. I like cupboards and wardrobes and closets and everything stored neatly in its place except when you're actually using it.
The room looked so nice when I had just finished painting, and there was nothing in it. I seriously wanted to throw out everything I owned and have a room that was empty except for my bed. I like starkness. It makes me feel clean. Or at least less dirty.
I wanted to put coving up, and to smooth the horrible textured ceiling out, but I'm not sure that I'm going to have the time. Mom's talking about putting the house on the market in May. (Bad timing for me to paint, but I've been putting it off for four years because Mom keeps saying we're moving. You can't put off life indefinitely.)
For so long I've had this idea in my head of what I wanted my room to look like, and now that I finally have the walls painted, I can no longer see the plans. I'm just so tired, and the amount of work that needs to be done in this house before we can sell it is weighing heavily on me. There are 200-odd boxes from the attic to sort through. I have to go through the emotional battle of trying to separate mom from her hoards, and the emotional battle of getting rid of some of my own books and clothes. I am not at my mom's stage of hoarding, where I keep things like dried-up tubs of paint and boxes of bricks, but I do find it hard to get rid of clothing and books. Stuffed animals, too, although those are in bags in Ryan's wardrobe right now, and have been for several years (my cardiologist told me I had to put them away until my allergies improved).
I guess the long and short of it is that I'm not feeling good, and I suppose I'm kind of depressed. Not suicidally depressed or anything; not focused on the futility of life, but exhausted mentally and physically. I can't see a way forward right now, except to keep plodding on. My health seems to get a bit worse each season, no matter what I try to do to keep things working. I don't sleep anywhere near enough, and for a couple months I've been waking up every morning in truckloads of pain in my back and neck. I thought it was my sleeping position, and have been working to change it, but so far it doesn't seem to matter what position I sleep in, I still have the pain in the mornings. I'm constantly shattered, constantly starving, and can't seem to lose any weight, even when I don't allow myself to overeat. If there had been any men in my life, I would wonder if I were pregnant, but barring alien abduction, that's not a possibility. Nothing I do seems to matter at the moment. Nothing touches the work that's piled up. No amount of money I bring home in my paycheck makes any difference to mom's debts at the bank and with the Visa. No amount of housework makes the house any cleaner or tidier. No amount of organising or throwing stuff away seems to make a dent in the shit that came out of the attic. I was looking into the possibility of hiring a storage locker to hold some of the stuff I had for my home when I have one - mostly stuff I bought when I was planning on moving in with C - but in this town, the cheapest storage unit I can get is £30 a week. A WEEK. I'd been expecting it to be about that a month.
Damn, this note is depressing. I'm just so tired. I seem to have a lot of blog posts over the years that say this. The fibromyalgia is kicking my butt, to be honest, no matter how good a fight I put up. I just wish I had someone who could and would help me out sometimes.
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