Tricky

The problem is, the more you refrain from posting, the more there is to post about and the next post can become a huge rambly update-y thing when you finally return. So do I describe my holiday in great detail, or do I take the lazy approach and just refer you to Beanie's description of the holiday so I don't have to?

Regardless, I shall inform you that I had a really, really excellent time, Muleboy's insect bites and my ankle-wrenching accident nonewithstanding. I spent some quality time with the Mule, spent some quality time with lots of other people that I really like, ate a lot, drank a lot. Didn't do as much exercise as I would have liked and despite my preference to spend ridiculous amounts of time in the pool ended up spending rather too much time using it as physiotherapy or not bothering because getting in and out was too much like hard work. We went on trips out and we had our first wedding present bought for us on my favourite day out. We danced, we sang, we talked, we watched Dog Day Afternoon in Italian and we slept.

Since then, it has been nicer than I would have thought getting back home as I did miss the cats (call me crazy cat-woman) and my house. I don't really want to be back at work but what can you do? I had a great extended weekend and popped up to London to talk to a man about a dog and spend some time with Mum, Dad and Big Sis, followed by a lovely wedding the next day. Mr Whistler and Funny Girl are now joined in holy matrimony and shall be henceforth the Funny Whistlers. It works for me. I also managed to tidy and sort some of the bedrooms that had yet to be done in our new and enormous house, which gave me a great sense of fulfilment before I spent bank holiday monday parked in front of a TV, first at Drunken Accomplice's and then at my very own. I didn't do as much concerted laziness as I had planned but as this is probably something I would say about my holiday as well, I would count this as a personality flaw.

While on my holiday, I made two decisions. One, that I would direct again with the Mule. I expected to come home and regret this decision but am actually both hopeful and excited. I shall be better this time and try and improve the stuff I got wrong last time (assuming we get voted in). I also plan to write more. I have good ideas, I write fairly well, I just don't dedicate any time to it. If it doesn't work after I make a concerted effort, then it isn't something I can do and I can cross it off the list.

So there we go, both long and rambling. I thought it would be.

Signing in

Just a post to say, I have been away and am back again today (Once you start rhyming, I think you should see it through). It was very nice (despite thunderstorms, terrorism fears and my typical knack for accidents and misfortune). I shall fill you in in detail at some point and may even be so daring as to include a photo (although I have got so lazy recently that I haven't even been bothering with links etc). Right now I just have to try and remind my body that I do have to stay here all day, I can't have crudo (yum!) or a ridiculous amount of cheese for lunch and I can't just pop indoors for a nap during a strenuous day of swimming, sunbathing and reading when I feel like it. I do not need a nap, I do not need a nap.

It was all going so well

I have fallen back into bad habits. Not the eating thing, I messed that up already. No, this is the obsessive counting and listing thing that my brain does when I'm tired. I found myself counting my footsteps as I walked to work this morning, which I change when I walk on a different surface. I can walk on cracks within a particular type of surface but I have to try and avoid stepping on two types of surface at the same time. Nothing bad will happen, I'm not that crazy, but it will fuck up the counting, which isn't allowed. The worst thing is when I realise I'm doing it about halfway through and try and work out what I must have looked like as I take alternatively large and small steps trying to fit it in. And then, despite being conscious of it, keep doing it.

Basically it's a brain under stress thing. When I'm very ill or very tired, this is what it resorts to. When I had appendicitis (aged 12), I couldn't sleep and went through in anal detail things that I had just watched (Vice Versa and Abigail's Party) and listed the plots and characters' relationships to each other to a dizzying extent. It stopped making sense but I still kept listing. It explains my love for Japanese puzzles and pointless trivia about films at any rate - they're both ways of fitting my brain's need to count and make order into (mostly) acceptable forms. So the next time I annoy someone by listing all of the films that a particular actor has been in when you only needed one, please take a deep breath and try and think of me like a high-functioning Rain Man. I just can't help it. And if you harrass me about it I will hit my head with my hand and make braying noises. You have been warned.