It's a Heatwave - Official. Keeping my mind busy ... or overdoing it?

I just had a very surreal experience with Blogger ... all my fonts and tools were invisible when I opened a new blank page to start writing ... maybe the heat is affecting the web too?  After I cut and pasted a snip of code from a previous blog to get the tags for the font right it suddenly popped back to the proper view of the writing page.  Ooh-er!

Anyway, dodgy IT aside, things are hot and sticky here in Barnsley.  The temperature has stayed in the high 20s since last Sunday and although it's great for drying my washing and lovely for the people who have pools or can get to the beach for the rest of us it is just a bit too warm I'm afraid. 

I'm currently feeling very twitchy, I can't settle to watch television with the OH, I keep thinking there's something I should be doing.  I've had a busy day, a first visit ever to a U3A meeting (it was local history, so not that strange really, quite familiar actually - but definitely a tick for a first visit to the community centre at Burton Grange) followed by a quick trip around Iceland (which has a new branch in Lundwood, the bit on the other side of the road from Burton Grange).  This afternoon I was kept busy typing up the minutes from a CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) meeting we (the OH and I) attended on Saturday, helping a friend with a family history query (what is the history of the chapel in Buckley Street in Barnsley?), doing my washing and hanging it out, preparing the meal for this evening, and doing some advance planning for our summer break.

Some people take a holiday over the summer, the OH and I go to London for a fortnight and work as volunteers at the Great British Beer Festival - the biggest pub in Britain for five days!  Having been sent some advance information I've been drafting my tannoy (public announcements to the visitors) script for the sessions when we are open to the public.  I did at one point feel the whole afternoon was just too full of stuff that I needed to get on with and had to take a step back and have an ice cream! 

Now I don't know what to do - well, I do - write a blog post about why I think I'm so twitchy!

My cat, who as you know if you've read many of my previous posts, likes keeping me awake at nights, has decided to spend twenty-four hours outside, preferably with as much of her body as possible spread out on a cool piece of concrete or dry soil.  This, theoretically, means that I should be sleeping better however I woke as usual several times in the night and at 4am my mind was buzzing so much I wrote down what I was thinking in a attempt to empty my mind and get back to sleep.  Even so it took an hour, a pain killer (painful knees and ankles last night - probably after the gardening at my mum's), and a several games of Spider Solitaire before I dropped off again.

What was I thinking?  Well my notes (which are a bit scribbly and hard to read now, nearly 18 hours later) say that I was particularly enjoying the feel of the fresh clean sheets (the OH and I made the bed up when we came home from my mum's), that the cat was out, so I didn't need to worry about her, and that by 4:30am it was beginning to be daylight again.  Several cocks were crowing over in the allotments behind our house and a pigeon was joining in the chorus.  That the pain in my left knee and the pain in my right ankle were the worst, however the ache in both my shoulders was annoying too.  That I was a bit worried about going to the U3A meeting by myself, or oversleeping and being late for it.  That I was upset about having to ask the OH for the £1 for the sub for the meeting (he did give me £2, so I have some change for the Cudworth meeting on Wednesday).  That today's tea (that's our evening meal, when the OH gets home from work) will be lentil risotto - because we need to go shopping and the cupboards are a bit bare.  That on the bright side it is the OH's pay day today - so we can afford to go shopping soon. All my money from my mum this month is going on my Ancestry subscription which is due at the end of the month.  I know it sounds like a luxury, but I use it so much ... I've cut back on everything else, honest. 

I wrote that it was nice to find out on Saturday (whilst at a meeting in a very hot attic in Lincoln) that a friend reads my blog posts and follows me on Twitter so she doesn't miss any.  But that it was sad that I had to announce that I need to give up something that's been important in my life for the last twenty-one years because of my health. 

And I squeezed in at the bottom of the page (after I'd given up trying to sleep and gone to make toast and see if the cat wanted to come in to keep me company) that the cat likes toast crumbs, even more than the chicken scraps we'd fetched from my mum's for her.  Daft animal!

I think I'm trying to do too much again, I need to pace myself, slooooowwww down, take my time - especially in this heat.  But how do I do that?  Whenever I stop doing I think I'm neglecting something that needs to be done ... tomorrow I might go to the Archives (at least it's cool in there) and on Wednesday it's the Cudworth History Group and on Thursday the Archives again, Friday is my daughter's graduation (I'm sooooo proud!) and at the weekend another trip to my mum's. 

Too busy ... must slow down ...