At the moment I’m struggling to compartmentalise my life. I do a lot of the right things – I have a To Do list which I add to and cross things off, for example, but I haven’t got the balance of being reintroduced to work with resting and relaxing yet. The ridiculous thing is that I don’t have much in the way of work but somehow, once I’ve read emails and responded, I seem to spend an awfully long time doing admin and feeling stressed about what I haven’t done, including the rest and relaxation bit. Yes, the old demon stress is back, courtesy of yours truly. Is there anything more annoying than creating stress for yourself? Probably, yes.

The duvet sliding down inside the cover, leaving a lot of cover at the top but no duvet – that’s annoying. People looking at my shorn head on the tube and discussing it between themselves without thinking to offer me  bloody seat – that’s annoying! Rude people in general annoy me – not holding doors open, not saying thank you or please, being impatient with hospital staff, people who block the pavement and don’t think to move, thoughtless people….. Wait, this is turning into a rant! It’s too soon in my blogging history to rant. I leave that to my daughter who is a champion ranter. If it was an Olympic sport, she would be gold medallist. Come to think of it, we’re all pretty good at ranting in our family. Not all the time, because that would be, well, very annoying.

What can I do to help with this miniscule work/life balance? Life looms large and needs to be grabbed hold of. Not enough time and too much life in me. So I’ll do different things in my newest life. No more weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth – not today, anyway. I’ve been forced into changing so I want some say in some of the changes. Regain and retain control as far as possible. This is where the dragons and zombies come in. Dragon boat racing. I’ve seen it done and admired it but that was it. I never thought ‘I’ll join a team’ because it just never occurred to me. So now I have. There is a terrific team in Docklands called Wave Walkers and team members from Raging Dragons come over every other week to train with other newly emerging people like myself so we can regain fitness and have a lot of fun. Me, in a boat? Never! But I did it. I went there and did the preliminary safety stuff, helped carry the boat and then I got in it and paddled away. It was snowing, someone got taken off the boat with hypothermia and carted off in an ambulance; it was brilliant. I’m going back this weekend to do it all over again. Zombies? That’s for October. I’m going to dress up and scare people witless at some 5k Zombie run. It means makeup, walking in a funny way and moaning, as in a constant noise, not complaining. The dog’s coming, too, so I’ve got plenty of time to think of his costume. Do dogs become zombies? This October they do!