Wednesday Weak

Yesterday was horrible.

The alarm went off at five to six on a dark, freezing cold morning. I'd been worrying since New Year's Eve about Daisy being off her food, and she wasn't even tempted by the cod and shrimp variety that usually gets polished off. It was weighing on my mind throughout the day as I ploughed through my inbox and sorted my work priorities out. I went out at lunchtime, and bought some pouches of special food to see if that would tempt her.

I got home, feeling low and then had a phone call from my mum with some bad news. My uncle, who had been suffering with motor neurone disease for the last couple of years, had finally died after contracting a chest infection over Christmas. In some ways it was a relief, because it was a horrible disease for somebody who had been so active and full of life to be paralysed, but it was also devastating news for my aunt who had been married to him for over forty years. Life truly is a bitch.

Daisy was still not eating, so we gave her some food modged up with warm water in a syringe to make sure she was at least getting some fluid in her, and fortunately she lapped it up and seemed a bit happier and settled down to sleep.

I've been having strange anxiety dreams. In one of them I was walking alongside the M1 motorway with Barney on his extending lead. He was pulling ahead of me, and got on the far side of a stile - the lead was at full stretch and then snapped out of my hand and across three lanes of the motorway into the central reservation. I knew that I had to get the lead back before Barney ran out into the traffic, so I took my chances and ran across the road and back again dodging cars. I then had to make my way through a cottage where the rooms kept moving and realigning themselves when I wasn't watching.

The subtext of the dream is not too difficult to unweave. I'm feeling stretched and ready to snap, and unsure of things around me.

This morning was a bit better. Daisy had some food out her bowl, and walking in the woods in the pre dawn light as the snow was falling gave me a little perspective on things. Work today wasn't too bad - I resolved a couple of problems in the application that were due to the migration of one of the invoicing feeder databases from access to a sql server platform. What was less enjoyable was Vista losing my desktop profile for no readily apparent reason until I'd rebooted, a painfully slow process at the best of times.

I was more than ready for Kobudo tonight, and I spent an excellent two hours with Sensei Mike going over some basic throws and break falls in a rather chilly dojo. I think that I've finally got my hip throws to work properly, getting the combination of foot movements to get my centre of gravity below my opponents and then letting my legs do the work of lifting them. We also talked about self defence, and different ways of diffusing potentially violent situations whilst anticipating possible attacks.

Home now, to a beer and Daisy purring happily on my lap. Tomorrow is, as they say, another day.