It's past 3am and I cannot sleep.
I have tried. I went to bed at about 1.30am, read a little and turned out the light. And just lay there, mind whirring.
It didn't help that I was cold. I can't sleep when my feet are cold - I think I need bed-socks; nice, soft cashmere ones.
Anyway, after an hour or so of lying there I decided to get up and try to download some of the stuff whizzing around in my head. I can't see the point of just staying in bed, getting more frustrated when sleep avoids me. Better to get up and divert myself another way. It's no warmer downstairs, by the way, so I have a pair of (normal) socks on and a blanket over my knees. My hands are cold now.
One of the reasons for the whizzy head is that I've been trying to write a commissioned article about living through the earthquake in Japan. Naturally this has raised a lot of ghosts; emotions and feelings buried for a while have come to the surface. Add to this the frustration of wondering how much information to put into the article and then the frustration of having to remove a lot of it as I've gone over the 1,000 word count quite considerably. It has to be sent off this week - the earlier the better, in my opinion. Hopefully I shall finish that tonight so it will be removed from my mental to-do list.
Other items on this sleep-preventing list include:
- A couple of other articles to finish this week
- Collate all the research / write my book
- Study for my graphic design course, dreadfully behind on that.
- Learn German
- A never-ending and mountainous pile of ironing
- Rhiannon starts school tomorrow and we will find out if they really are going to teach in German and if so, how will she cope?
- If she doesn't cope, what shall we do? There are three other recommended schools here, one doesn't appeal and the other two follow the International Baccalaureate programme. Need to sort that out before she heads into Secondary school; which impacts on where she will go to school in the UK after we leave here; which impacts on where we may end up living... argh!
- Clean the house
- Tidy the house properly. Put remaining crap away - yes, there are still unpacked items with no home yet. Most of them are in the spare room; many are here, awaiting 'filing'
- Clear out the spare room
- Make spare room attractive ready for Mum's arrival
- Mum's coming to stay next week for a fortnight
- What to do to entertain Mum?
- Plan what to do with the garden. See above...! Mum's going to help, yay!
- Knit. I can't knit much beyond purl and knit scarves, but I really, really want to be able to do it neatly and effortlessly. One day perhaps I can knit my own bedsocks...
- Rhiannon's birthday. Every year this catches me out. Why? Well, it seems to appear too rapidly after school starts. We're so geared up to the start of the new school term that suddenly we tune in to her constant comments about her "party" in October. What party?
- Where to hold Rhiannon's party? I swore a while back that I would never, ever hold her party at home again. But when you are new to a country, you have no idea where or even if there are any places for a kid's party. She wants a Harry Potter party. At home. Oh my god.
Well, that's where I'm at right now. I've downloaded some of the crap in my brain, but I'm nowhere nearer sleep. And I haven't resolved anything. So I shall sign off here and go back to removing 200 words from my Japanese earthquake article.
Goodnight / good morning!