Where Have All The Hours Gone?

For no apparent reason, I've continued to feel abnormally tired all week. Around two o'clock p.m. some invisible power hits me with a hammer in the head, turns my body temperature down to ice cold and puts me in hibernation under a mountain of blankets for two or three hours. Curiously enough, my night sleep on the whole does not seem much affected by these extra hours spent in Nothingness.



Today I probably didn't get more than one proper hibernation hour in the afternoon because I had to go down to the laundry room between naps; plus I was up extra early in the morning to make a couple of Authority phone calls. (Authorities, especially Health Care Authorities, have very early habits.) The result is that at 6.30 p.m. I keep glancing at the clock on the wall to check if it isn't bedtime soon!

Should perhaps point out that the clock in the pictures is not mine. The photo was taken in one of the cottages in our museum park back in the summer.

Time To Hibernate

Typical Christmas: A lot of going back and forth by car...!

Yesterday and today have been no fun at all from weather/traffic point of view, the temperature around zero and sometimes rain, sometimes snow = slush. A lot of accidents were reported on the radio as my brother drove me back to town yesterday afternoon. I hope he got home safe today, from a considerably longer drive... (P.S. He did! Confirmed by text message...)

Myself I have had the luxury of not even having to set foot outside the flat today. Hopefully I won't have to do so tomorrow either. Eventually I suppose I will run out of either food or paper tissues (the cold is still hanging in); but until I do, or the weather improves, I will continue to hibernate...!

I have written a long letter to a friend, and talked to another one on the phone, and watched two episodes of a British crime series on DVD, which I got as Christmas present from my brother - Jonathan Creek. I'd never heard of it but got really hooked by the first two episodes. So from entertainment point of view I can easily hibernate a few days more...!

"Certain mammals have what many people might consider the good fortune to be able to sleep through the winter—to hibernate. They bed down in the fall and, for all intents and purposes, don't arise again until the spring." (Quote from a web article on hibernation. The picture is my own, from the zoo in the early autumn. I've used it before on this blog, but I think it's sooo cute...)

I Got the Shot

(Photo from 27 October)

The last intense colours of autumn from a couple of days ago are all gone now. The weather started changing yesterday (Sunday). (See my other post from today.) This morning, there were just a few brownish leaves left on the trees, all was grey and wet, and the main impression is that NOVEMBER is upon us... And as the calendar agrees, what else is there to say?!

This afternoon, I went to my health care centre and got my first vaccination against swine flu. Remains to be seen how I will be feeling tomorrow...! On request, I got the shot in my left arm, because of the chronic pain problems I already have in my right arm (every extra pain on that side usually gets multiplied).

I have been getting regular flu shots every autumn for seven or eight years. Some years I've felt nothing, other years mild symptoms for a couple of days. Nothing compared to the rounds of real flu and aftermaths that I used to get...  Since I started taking flu shots, I've hardly even had an ordinary cold in the winter. The swine flu vaccine has been discussed a lot but considering my own experiences of other flu's I did not hesitate...

I'm prepared. I can hibernate the rest of the week if necessary. I've got food. I've got pills (which I take anyway). I've got handkerchiefs and cough drops. I've got films to watch and audio books to listen to. The weather report says rain tomorrow anyway...