#oneaday Day 528: Autumn plague

Andie and I were ill all over the weekend. Nothing serious — and thankfully not COVID, which we were both concerned it might have been — but the kind of cold that is just enough to be moderately debilitating and make you want to stay in bed for a good 75% of the day.

I think we're both over the worst, but we've both been left exceedingly exhausted, as neither of us have slept very well for the past two or three nights. Hopefully tonight will allow me to get a decent rest, as tomorrow I have to do a long drive for the monthly trip into the office — though it should (should!) be moderately less stressful as I'm driving down in the daytime in order to attend in the afternoon, and then I have the following day off work completely.

With all that in mind, a proportion of today has been spent napping, and I suspect an early night will follow. I genuinely couldn't keep my eyes open by the end of the morning's work, and so my lunch break was spent not eating and watching some TV, but just napping. It was nice.

A middle-of-the-day nap is not something I really started doing until a few years ago, and I'm aware that it can mess up your sleep schedule and all that business. But sometimes it's just nice to allow yourself that moment of peace and quiet, to shut down for a bit and attempt to replenish your depleted energy reserves. It doesn't always work, of course — sometimes waking up after a nice nap leaves you just wanting to nap a bit more — but at others, it can be just what you need to refresh yourself a bit. A power nap, or whatever.

For some reason, I find it much easier to fall asleep for a nap in the daytime than I do at night-time. Part of this is the mind's tendency to ruminate on things last thing at night, but I'm not exactly immune to that in the daytime, either. And yet still I find it much easier to nod off in the middle of the day than at night-time.

Perhaps part of this is down to the fact that from university onwards, I was a bit of a night owl. I have particularly fond memories of being up late one evening pootling about on the Internet, receiving a message from a friend of mine who said that they were going to the beach, and heading off for a thoroughly pleasant evening of night-time beach foolishness with said friend and some other mutual acquaintances.

There was also the period around 2010 or so where I was Going Through A Difficult Time, shall we say, and as part of that process I completely ruined my body clock to such a degree that I was going to bed at 5AM and not waking up until 12 hours later. Not my proudest moment, but also I think the support I was receiving at that time is what helped me get through that particularly difficult period, as incompatible as it may have temporarily made me with a "normal" existence.

Maybe I just like sleeping. I do like sleeping. Regardless, I'm going to sleep relatively early this evening in the hope that I feel a bit more human tomorrow, because right now I feel like a sentient pool of sludge.

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#oneaday, Day 2: Flubag

I can always tell when it's the holiday season. Because the holiday season is the Time To Get Ill. Almost without fail every single year, at some point around Christmas/New Year, my body goes "Nope! Had enough. Here's some snot. Happy Christmas!" and buggers off for a few days.

This year is no exception. I thought I'd escaped, because for the whole time I was over in California visiting my brother for the holidays, I was fine, despite everyone around me gradually sinking into a mire of barking repeatedly like someone with Spatchcock's Ever-Coughing Syndrome. Including the dog. Who was actually barking, not coughing.

On the plane ride on the way home, though, I felt the illness hit. Several other Spatchcock's sufferers on the flight coupled with yummy delicious recycled air being pumped around the cabin meant a breeding ground for germs. And sure enough… "Had enough. Here's some snot. Happy Christmas!"

Well, you're late, illness glands. And, you know, you really didn't have to get me anything this year. I just got you a bunch of pills, and I know you don't really like them that much.

The most irritating thing about suffering with Spatchcock's Syndrome is how difficult it makes sleeping. When you lie down in bed with Spatchcock's, you are constantly in one of two states: mouth-breathing, or coughing.

The mouth-breathing comes because your nose is so full of juicy snot that if you didn't mouth-breathe you'd suffocate and die, and suffocating and dying because of snot would just be embarrassing. If you do happen to get to sleep whilst in the mouth-breathing phase, your snores will qualify as some of the most disgusting noises on the planet and will probably involve bubbling. If you are sleeping with anyone at the time, this is a sure-fire way to find out if they really love you or not.

The coughing usually comes when you manage to clear your nose a little bit, and inevitably brings up more snot to join the party. The noise and the irritation in your throat wakes you and anyone in the same building up, and once it passes you're back to mouth-breathing again.

So you probably end up not sleeping until your brain is so devoid of power that it goes into laptop-style hibernation mode and fails to wake you up until lunchtime the next day. And because you slept at a weird time, you end up feeling crappy the next day, which compounds the whole situation further.

Eventually you just decide to not sleep any more until this dratted pox departs your system, during which time you gradually slip into a hallucinogenic fantasy which you can't quite decide whether is good or bad or somewhere in between and then you die. Possibly.

I am grateful for one thing, though: at least it's not full-on achey joints flu, which I've only been struck down with once at a time that happened to coincide with a Christmas I was set to spend alone in my house due to holiday retail work commitments and the rest of my family doing other things. Elsewhere. Without me.

Remind me why I want to get a job again?

#oneaday, Day 317: Snow Joke

First up: DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID WITH THE TITLE IT'S CLEVER AND FUNNY AND BUGGROFF

Ahem. Anyway. It has been snowing. It being winter, it thankfully hasn't caused anywhere near as much panic as the last time it snowed, when it was headline news pretty much 24/7. Granted, it did snow quite a lot, though I got the impression that Canada and Scandinavia and, err, other places it snows a lot were laughing at us quite a bit for our complete incapability to deal with a bit of the white stuff.

Snow is a mixed bag. Some people love it, others hate it. As with most things, though, there are good and bad things to it.

Bad: cold.

Good: pretty.

Bad: wet.

Good: inspires creativity.

Bad: receiving a snowball.

Good: sending a snowball.

Bad: walking when dressed inappropriately.

Good: walking when dressed appropriately.

Bad: driving.

Good: not being able to drive and getting a day off work.

You get the picture.

It actually snows here in the UK—at least in places where I've been living—rather less than you might think, with whole years going by sometimes without a trace of the cold stuff. Even so, it always astonishes me quite how surprised people seem to be when there is even the slightest bit of snowfall. It inspires panic buying and the importing of grit. Grit! The stuff you find on the ground. Yeah. Ridiculous.

I just went out for a run in the snow. It's cold, snowy and icy. It is also difficult to run in, though I found that after about ten minutes or so, I didn't feel it any more. This was perhaps due in part to the number of layers I was wearing (which probably also contributed to my relatively slow speed tonight) but also due to actually being active. Or perhaps I was just so frostbitten all my extremities had fallen off.

I have one particularly enduring memory of the snow from my childhood: out in the garden with my brother and some of his friends, carving a lovingly-crafted likeness of Arnie from snow. This lovingly-crafted likeness of Arnie was wearing a jock strap which was lovingly carved with a little bit too much care and attention, as I recall, but the finished product looked awesome. There are probably some photos floating around somewhere, but this was the days long before the Internet, let alone Facebook, so you won't find those pictures anywhere online.

Most recently, my experiences with snow have been negative. Driving in the snow is particularly unpleasant. I recall one night I was driving home from the school I worked at at the time—a trip which normally took about 50 minutes—and it took six hours. Six hours. At least one of those hours was spent in a genuinely terrifying position halfway up a steep hill with traffic in front and behind, praying to God that my brakes worked properly.

Right now, though, I can look out of the window at the thin white covering on the street and admire its pleasantness. All the more so having just been out in it.

Doesn't stop it being bloody freezing even inside, though. Wrap up warm.