Water, water...not quite everywhere

It may only be a little leak in the roof but it's a little leak that's leaking straight onto the electricity fusebox.

I dragged Himself out of bed but after several tins of beer too many he can hardly see the ceiling let alone the leak. All he could say was "well what do you want me to do about it?"

Actually, I'd like you to do something to stop us all being fried in our beds please.

So if you hear a bang, don't panic, it's just my house exploding.

Croak

I wandered into the kitchen without putting the light on.

In my stockinged feet* I almost stood on something.

Fortunately I stopped before putting my full weight on it.

I bent to pick it up.

It moved.

It was a toad**

Why is there a toad in my kitchen?


*What a lovely old-fashioned phrase that is!
** Stockinged feet. Toad. There has to be a joke in there.

And so on to Monday.....

On Monday I went Christmas shopping. I hate shopping. I hate shopping more than anything else I have to do and Christmas shopping is my idea of hell on earth.

I opted to go to Wimbledon rather than Kingston, which was my first mistake. Wimbledon has all the right shops but for some reason they are all the poor relations of their respective chain-store families. Kingston, on the other hand, has all the flagship stores and the best in-town shopping centre for miles. By the time this mistake dawned on me there was no point in trying to get to Kingston because it would be heaving.

My second mistake was not wearing summer clothes. Why do they keep the shops so hot when they know it's raining outside and people will be wearing winter coats!!?? So as the morning progresses, I can't find what I need anywhereI'm getting hotter and hotter and more and more flustered when I finally erupted in Boots. Looking for a particular item, three members of staff told me it was nothing to do with them and I needed to speak to someone else. No helping me look or offering to help me find the right person, all three of them just said "that department's nothing to do with me" and went back to what they were doing. I was furious!! Whatever happened to customer service? I threw my basket on the floor and stormed out muttering like a mad woman...you could see people parting like the Red Sea in front of me!!

Then I headed back to the car park and nearly just collapsed and cried....I couldn't find my car. I knew exactly where I'd left it but it wasn't there. I have a terrible habit of forgetting to lock it and really thought, that's it, it's gone. I walked up and down the rows of cars pressing the remote control button hoping I had just had a memory lapse and I hadn't left it where I thought I had. Nothing.

Then it occurred to me that I was on the Lower Ground level. My car was on the Upper Ground level. I really am starting to worry about the state of my mind.

Fast-forwarding to this morning......I'm looking after my neighbours chickens and put the single egg they'd laid overnight in my pocket. And forgot about it. Until I got to work when it broke in my coat pocket all over two sets of keys! Then I dropped a half-full tin of coffee all over the office floor.

I think I need to go and lie down in a darkened room until I regain some equilibrium. Dakota, I need some of your wise words please!

So, a fraught few days then.

This is likely to get confusing so you might have to make some effort to keep up but I need to get this down so that I can remind myself about how I sometimes just fly off into one...and how little it actually achieves.

It started on Sunday. I was up early as I wanted to get down to the Sunday market before the crowds. 7.45am - all ready to go. I hadn't slept well the night before and was tired and probably already a bit short-tempered. And then I couldn't find my purse. That's not particularly unusual because I always leave things in places where they are not supposed to be left but as long as no-one else moves them I can always work my way backwards to where I left whatever it is and find it. Except this time I couldn't find it and started to have some slight palpitations.

I mentally retraced my steps and knew it had to be either in the office where I had last seen it, or at the cottage, which was the last place I had been. Called my boss, no, she hadn't seen it at the office. Now the palpitations get worse and I start panicking, and I really mean panicking. There was no money in my purse, just my Debit card and, more importantly, Greyhound Gap's Debit card, and that was frightening the life out of me....what if someone had stolen it and taken all the money out of the account? You know how your mind can go from a standing start to total panic in the space of about 2 seconds flat?

On top of that, the veg stall at the market has an ordering system in place for the Christmas period and I had to hand in a list of what veg I want to collect on Christmas Eve. As my boss uses them as well and was working, she had asked me to drop her list in for her. And I'd put her list in my purse thinking that would be sensible and that I wouldn't lose it. Ironic eh? So, before I do anything else, I had to go to the office, photocopy my form and get my boss to fill hers in again. Half way there I realise I haven't picked my list up so scream to a halt.........to the sound of all the boxes of tiles on the back seat of my car sliding into the footwells. Get home and find the list was in my coat pocket the whole time. That makes me spit and curse even more.

All this time, the panicking is getting worse because I keep thinking about the money in the Gap Bank account. So there I am in the office screaming at the photocopier because it is taking so long to warm up and then I'm pacing round my boss's house whilst she fills her list in again and then screaming even more loudly at the silly Sunday morning drivers and panicking because I'm going to be late at the market and it's going to be heaving and I really can't deal with crowds.

You'd think the sensible thing to do would be to cancel the cards but I didn't want to do that until I'd checked everywhere. With hindsight, I can see that some part of my brain was organising me and making me do things in the logical order, which makes me think that I must have slightly obsessive tendencies. For example, if my planned schedule gets changed at short notice or I'm going to be late or if I have to do things in the least logical or slowest way then a switch flicks in my brain and I hit total tantrum/panic/anger mode at train-wreck speed.

Hence me getting vegetable order forms sorted out before checking everywhere first, because that was the logical thing to do as the office is closer to home than the cottage.

Which is a pity really because if I'd checked everywhere first then I would have found my purse at the cottage and wouldn't have got myself into such a state.