I go to meet people after work to plan a conference and so pick up an e mail from D , back from Sheffield . He likes the bathroom cabinet but suggests its wrongly placed and makes some suggestions about moving the laundry basket into N's room which leaves her filling that one ( she could fill it daily with her stuff ) , and meaning I will not be able to use that one thus will have to share his which is in our room . As he points out , I wear very few clothes , so this shouldn't present a problem . He has re re sited the bin back to its original place as it matches the new cabinet . A point I had failed to note .
He is clearly not happy with the downstairs cabinet , stating in the e mail that the colour of the wood had surprised him . His comments surprise me , as it seemed fine to me , my only concern being the missing screwdriver and my inability to fix the castors which I had built myself up to . I return home at nine and look again at the wood which looks a very fine colour to me . He points out that it is nothing like the other wood in the room , despite the fact that he had ordered it on the basis that it would match . I see that he is right , and find it hard to see how I could have failed to notice this myself .
The bathroom looks great. We bring his laundry suggestions to fruition and I notice how he has stacked the thirty seven toilet rolls in a perfect three deep tower .
Really , its great to have him back . And as he always says , men can be so useful .

Marketing -his -novel -Neil notes blogging as the perfect displacement activity and really I think he is right . But there's also the life-as-blog syndrome .
I'm almost tempted to photograph the bog rolls .

Systems

Wonderfully satisfying 10 pm onwards allocating drawers in the new cabinet and clearing off the windowsill which was where toiletries were formerly stored . Some difficulties over fitting the cabinet against the right wall , necessitating some re jigging of the 37 toilet rolls which were lurking behind the door and completely re siting the bin . N favours the sytem in one of her friend's houses where the bathroom is kept clear and family members carry their own toiletries into the bathroom on a need only basis , from their bedrooms . In fact we had quite a companionable chat about all this and some other matters . I know this system would never work for me . Shower would be on , I would be happily under the water , hair dripping , reaching for the shower gel and .... it would be like camping all over again . Queing for half an hour for a hot shower and reaching front of queue only to discover the shampoo was back at the ranch .

The pointy screwdriver ?

Stepped out to get coffee and get caught in a thunderstorm .

Later , the storm catches me unawares at home just as a delivery van brings two large boxes of cabinets ( bathroom and laptop area ) which I had forgotten ( temporarily ) we had ordered .

Thus I find myself composing and typing in a text for D which says " where do we keep the pointy screwdriver " . Im being polite of course , I know exactly where I used to keep two screwdrivers , one of each type if you know what I mean . One with a flat end and one with a pointy end so that no job would defeat me . I go to the drawer and someone has moved the pointy one , and the flat one , which I attempt the job with , has to be rejected as I know in two minutes I will be stripping the screws and the whole job will go t**s up , as all the teenagers round here say , with great regularity and very seriously , as if not appreciating that for me, and perhaps others of my generation , there is a very real image attached to this little phrase.

I don't send the text in the end . I can predict that D in Sheffield will not know what I mean by a pointy screwdriver , and I haven't the stomach after a day report writing and attending meetings and driving round Walker lost ( until I manage to work out that the reason the satnav isn't working , this time , is due to remote control battery failure . ) I am so used to the satnav not working , and trying to figure routes out without it first , that its only when its clear I am not going to find my destination that I make a last ditch attempt to solve the satnav- not- working- thing with the simplest solution , two new batteries .

I then try to add the castors to the new cabinet myself by hand , without benefit of screwdriver and abandon that fairly quickly too .

Now I'm resigned to waiting for the return of the man who won't know where my screwdriver has gone , but will have a boxed set of his own all present and correct . Tense ? Who Me ?

hatemail

Just read the dooce blog today about hate mail and wondering , again , who it is who is reading my blog ? The records show a startling increase in the daily numbers , even yesterday , a Monday, being higher than the weekend figures . People seem to be coming back . Heather B Armstrong , who makes a living from blogging , seems according to today's blog to attract a high level of hate mail and I have to confess to finding the few samples she had posted highly amusing . Reminiscent of the ungrammatical text sent to D after he refused to trade his MR2 for a very un ok other-type-of-car , the name of which escapes me . ( everything seems to escape me these past days ) . I guess hate mail when directed personally could be deeply upsetting , but for myself I'd be delighted to get some feedback or some idea of who is reading the blog , why , and well Im not sure what else . Any comments gratefully received .

A long and complex dream about cotton wool and puffalumps and woke , finally with a dry mouth and a big fluffed out Toby cat tucked under my arm . The door opening had been done without me and cats were positioned all about the room waiting for me to emerge . 6 30 am and the shower runing already . I squint about trying to make sense of things and see Jessie climbing carefully into D 's overnight bag and everything falls into place . Someone has dropped my glasses onto the floor and there is an odd crunch underfoot as I stand on them . Great start to the day .

I wonder if Windermere is still there .

Books

I hate finishing books . It was hard to get started with Marina Lewycka, Two Caravans though I had loved her Short history of tractors in the Ukraine , and in fact it took me two attempts in between which I switched to something else , the name and details of which escape me it being at least two weeks ago . Something by Nina Bawden I think , who writes brilliantly and whose husband was killed in a train crash not long ago . Again I should know where that took place , but again , Ive forgotten . Paddington maybe . I remember at the time being shocked that bad things happen unexpectedly and just as tragically to well known people too . I digress. I hate it when books end . Having found Two Caravans hard going for about five minutes ( when I tried starting at around midnight probably at the end of a Day Job day ) , I then re tried soon after and found it incredibly poignant , tragic and very very funny all at once . Its definitely not a good idea though if you want to continue eating chickens and conversely could be very useful indeed of you are contemplating the vegetarian lifetstyle.
I see the last few pages approaching and feel myself slowing down . It makes the long nights bearable if I know there are people there by the side of the bed whose lives I am part of in some small measure , to share them with . A friend of mine , who clearly hit the insomnia thing before I did , talked once of treasuring the extra time for reading and I am eternally grateful to her ( thanks Barbara , though I expect she will have forgotten she said it by now ) for providing this take on something which I know many people find troubling , exhausting and indeed a source of anxiety all of its own .
A point is reached as the little pile of pages decreases when it becomes inevitable and my only way to cope is to start foraging for new material , either re reading something old ( with my memory this can be very rewarding ) , ordering something from e bay or Barter Books .
So now that Two Caravnans is done , its over to Fay Weldon .( She may not leave )

The day job

So tricky to do anything at the end of a day job .Today it even starts differently . The alarm goes off and wakes me with a jump at 6 45 , which is odd as for months now I have not slept well and become accustomed to waking several times , reading to send me back to sleep at four am , five am , and sometimes 6 . But in the last few nights Ive been sleeping heavily and waking at alarm time feeling confused and unclear about whether getting out of bed is such a good idea . Usually I'm raring to go ( admittedly often due to boredom and that " might as well get on with the day " feeling when sleep is elusive .I try to post two photos from yesterday and though the blog reports success the blogs fail to appear ( though I manage to get them in the right place later ) .I sit in a long traffic queue and ponder the week ahead .What seems like minutes later in time , but years in how I feel , I'm in the same traffic queue but reverse direction . There has to be more to life than this , arriving home knowing there are more reports to read . Roll on Wednesday evening !I want to be CatCalling , writing about things , out on my bike , not staring into space drained of energy .And shar pei s look like nice little wrinkly dogs .... any advice ?