Depro days are here

I’m having a depro day. And not the good kind either.

Some depro days bring with them the ability to focus and an urge to put my head down and plough through my to-do list. I call those constructive depro days.

This depro day is making me tired and restless. All I really want to do is crawl back into bed and sleep until tomorrow. I don’t want to be stuck at the office, trying to focus on work, surrounded by people asking me questions about stuff I should care about. The only people I’d like to see are the ones inside the TV, or, better yet, the ones inside a book.

And this is as much enthusiasm I have for blogging – not even 150 words.

Oh well, it’s better than nothing, right?

Road Rage Jane

I learnt something new about myself yesterday. For a person who spends a fair amount of time on self-reflection, I was quite surprized by this – thought I knew everything about myself already.

I hate traffic – that’s nothing new – but I found out that I do have a tolerance for it I never thought possible.

Not sure if every person who lives out west of jo’burg decided that yesterday was THE day to get in their cars and travel up Christian De Wet/Witkoppen, but the traffic was ridiculous. I joined the queue around about the Randburg SPCA.

I took this very calmly, letting cars join the flow of traffic where I was able and generally being polite. Before 10am, with no caffeine in my system,  this pretty much a miracle. Also, I didn’t want to give anyone an excuse to do damage to my brand new wheels.

We stop-started all the way down the hill, up the other side and on to Cedar road. I remained calm and polite. The traffic opened up until Montecasino (all of about 1km), after which we sat again. By the time I got close to Main Road, I was fed up. I checked the time – it was almost exactly one hour since I left home. By this time I was tired of people pushing in front of me, cutting me off from the yellow lane, making rude gestures when I left more than 30cm of space between me the car in front.

I morphed into Road Rage Jane – hooting, swearing, gesticulating and riding up the arse of the idiot in the BMW who insisted on pushing in. I regained calm after turning onto Main Road and by the time I got to the office, my blood pressure was under control.

And that’s my discovery – I have exactly one hour’s tolerance for traffic. Which is good to know. I don’t think my tolerance of stupidity stretches that far, but maybe one day I’ll discover otherwise.

Home sweet home

Since I was a little girl, I’ve had a problem sleeping away from home.

I clearly remember making my dad fetch me from friends’ houses close to midnight after I’d arranged a sleep over, and making up excuses why I couldn’t sleep out.

I’ve grown out of this, to some extent. Travel being a perk of my job, I do spend a few nights a year sleeping in strange beds. And when I travel, I do sleep. I’m not so messed up as to suffer from insomnia if I can’t sleep in my bed. But it’s when I get back home that things get interesting.

For the first two or three nights after returning from a trip, I have weird dreams about being at a party and deciding it’s time to go home. Then I sleep walk to gather my keys and get into my car.

I haven’t actually ever made it as far as the car, but I did get to the back door once and woke up just in time to stop setting off the alarm.

Clearly my subconscious takes a while to catch up to reality.

The best cure I’ve found is to chant a little mantra as I’m getting into bed. “This is home, no need to roam.” (The poet in me can’t resist a bit of rhyming.)

This weekend A-Friend and I spent two nights on KZN’s South Coast for the launch of a new Camelot Spa at San Lameer. I was ecstatic to be getting out of Jo’burg and I was promised a day of pampering at the spa. It didn’t quite happen that way, but the weekend was still completely relaxing and enjoyable.

On returning home I forgot to chant my mantra as I readied myself for bed. I was completely buggered on Sunday night, so there was no problem. But last night I half woke up and remember wondering what strange place I was in. I think I even opened the curtains to check outside.  It was after midnight before I was able to convince my subconscious that everything was okay.

I still can’t figure out why it happens when I get home and not while I’m away. But I’m getting used to being odd , swimming upstream, going against the grain – it just seems to be my way.