Ridiculously tired !!

I feel phenomenally tired!

It has been a ridiculously busy week all told, and the weekend was hectic too. Coupled with too little sleep, back pain and not a very health diet for a few days, over busyness is a killer (hopefully not literally).

We have done some nice things amongst the busyness, but it has all come at once. Thankfully next week is less frenetic and I will be able to catch up on the little things (which make you feel stressed when they are neglected) before we go away (again!).

The Hubby tells me to stop moaning and be thankful that I am able to take four or five breaks a year when most people have to make do with one or two (or increasingly in today’s straitened times, no holiday at all) and of course he’s right but I do feel like I earn it and anyway, what’s the use of having a place in the southern Mediterranean if you don’t take advantage of it as much as possible?

Perhaps this excessive tiredness is a result of my age and the menopause, along with the high blood pressure, weight gain and poor sleep pattern? Maybe I’ll go through it and come out the other end a rejuvenated person! That would be nice, but somehow I can’t see it happening.

Quite simply, I am getting old and feeling my age! There are times when I feel still like I’m in my thirties which I think were my best decade in many ways, but more often than not I get the urge to curl up in my PJs with a good book and cup of hot chocolate with my dog and my cats and shut out the world. I hobble when I get up from sitting in a chair for a while as my limbs have gone stiff, and I am becoming less and less tolerant of other people and their peculiarities. But then you may have noticed that!

The tiredness is the worst of all the symptoms of age, because it is so debilitating and there is no easy solution if you are a bad sleeper. I’ve tried herbal pills which were useless, and then tried Nytol which works to a degree (but not, interestingly enough, after a glass of wine) but leaves you with a heady ache first thing in the morning. I’ve tried old fashioned remedies like a warm bath and warm milk just before bed, the bedroom is totally dark and quiet anyway, and I wear earplugs (The Hubby, although he denies it, snores!), all of it to no avail.

I do know other women who have started having trouble sleeping when they hit the menopause so I’m hoping that’s what it is, because I am now starting to look as haggard as I feel and getting increasingly grumpy and grouchy with the world. One poor friend went through a phase of not sleeping at all and God knows what she must have felt like. The trouble is I can usually go off to sleep, but wake up after a few hours with my mind buzzing and then have trouble dropping back off again. I regularly lie awake between 3am and 5.30am pondering the mysteries of life and other momentous things, only to drop back off just as the alarm is due to ring.

An afternoon nap is sometimes the solution at the weekend, but it isn’t always possible. I have always been able to sleep in the afternoon and then slowly come round, like a dozy fly on a hot humid afternoon, with the aid of a cup of tea for 15 minutes.  A siesta should be compulsory in the UK like it is in Europe as it really suits me. Shame my employers don’t think so.

I am working at home later this week and so I will schedule my working day to put my feet up in the afternoon. I’ll have to set the alarm. And don’t anyone dare ring me between 2pm and 5pm, I’ll be asleep!!

Snoring - a heinous accusation !

Apparently I snore.

Naturally I dispute this heinous allegation and in fact could level exactly the same one at the person who is accusing me, namely The Hubby (well who else would it be?), who snorts away best part of the night flat on his back and incredibly resistant to all but the most vicious pokes in his ribs to make him turn over.

I certainly never used to snore, and in fact gave only the most ladylike of snorts on the odd occasion when I had a bad cold or sinusitis, or possibly when I had consumed a glass of wine or two too many. But not on any other occasion and certainly not in the high decibel range of which I am being accused.

I do sleep incredibly badly, which is why I am always tired. And that has got worse as I have gained weight and got older. I read somewhere that a bad sleeping pattern was one of the most debilitating symptoms of menopause and one of the most common causes of depression. So watch out! And it makes you fatter, because you are too tired to do anything constructive about eating healthily and instead eat comfort food.

The Hubby is also, of course, reluctant to accept that he snores fit to wake the dead, proclaiming with total confidence that he has been lying awake for most of the night listening to me. Utter nonsense and one of these days I am going to record him on my mobile phone and play it back to him in the morning (although on second thoughts he might do the same thing to me, which could be a bit of a backward step for my argument if he is telling the truth, so maybe not).

There’s nothing else for it, I will have to buy some earplugs and get a large enough supply for The Hubby to have some too. You can buy an incredible array of them on e-Bay, as I discovered last night when searching through for something, anything, which will allow me to sleep uninterrupted as best I am able. Foam, rubber, perspex and in all sorts of shapes and colours (yes, this is earplugs, not anything else more seedy or for use in any other orifice, which would be too much information even for this blog!). I am just about to purchase a massive pack of yellow foam ones for a fiver which market themselves as being ‘the best available’. We’ll see.

Snoring is a very odd thing isn’t it? Why would nature design our throats with such an obvious flaw? There is all sorts of science around snoring, including nose strips, machines which mean you have to wear a mask all night and have cold air artificially blown down your throat to keep the soft palate open and old wives remedies involving sleeping in a pyjama jacket with clothes pegs or tennis balls sown into the back seam. They all sound incredibly uncomfortable.

I don’t think the problem is that bad, so earplugs it will have to be and we will see if it makes any difference. I can’t tell you how wearing it is to be permanently tired because you wake up every two or three hours, struggle to get back to sleep and never get an uninterrupted eight hours. It turns you into a proper witch and yes, you can tell the difference between that and my normal sweet natured state, all you rude people out there!

I’ll give them a try for a few weeks and then let you all know how I get on – although you might be able to tell for yourselves !!

The menopause - oh, God!

I am definitely experiencing symptoms of the menopause. Feeling hot and sweaty with no reason, feeling a bit scratchy (as in bad mood, not itchy) with no provocation and an irregular sleep pattern which makes me permanently tired. My blood pressure has shot up and my skin has reverted to its teenage tendency to break out in zits for the slightest reason at the most inconvenient time. But by and large, nothing too dreadful and so far, The Hubby is getting off lightly.

I say getting off lightly because I have not yet felt the urge to take a large kitchen knife to him or thrown anything across the room at him, which, if you believe the trashy women's magazines, is what we are supposed to do when we hit 50 and the menopause. And of course it's my opinion, I don't know if he would agree and I haven't asked him. I might not get the right answer!

To be honest, the worst of it all is the poor sleeping. I can go to bed really tired, feel my eyes drooping and put the light out, the lie there for hours not able to nod off. The longer you lie there the more active the brain seems to become and it becomes more and more impossible to sleep as you start thinking of more and more things. More than once, I have given up in disgust and got up at 3am to make a cuppa. Let me tell you the cats look pretty startled to see me at that hour! And after a couple of days of it, I start to feel really ill. As someone who needs their eight hours to function properly, trying to survive on three is a nightmare (no pun intended!).

I know that lots of women suffer much more than me, and really if this is the worst of it I shouldn't complain. For the moment it's more of an inconvenience than anything else and after a couple of nights of sleep problems I know I will have a night of solid out-for-the-count sleep as I will be so exhausted. But it is debilitating while it happens and affects the rest of your life in terms of concentration and application. I perform less well at work, and can't concentrate at rehearsals or at home.

Do men have a menopause? I'm not sure. It seems pretty unfair if they don't. After all, we women do all the conception, birthing, child rearing and so on, and Mother Nature has dumped us with all the hormonal imbalances which affect us in later life too. All men seem to get is a beer gut (or, as The Hubby would call them, love handles!).

I am determined not to resort to HRT unless there is a compelling reason to do so. It seems to me that women who take it end up on tablets for years and that it can cause as many problems as it solves. I will just sit tight and live through it hoping it doesn't get any worse. And in the meantime, put a combination lock onto the knife drawer just in case and get The Hubby to change to combination!