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!!

Very tired!

I feel exhausted. I am definitely getting old.

We had a busy time last weekend doing chores on Saturday, then preparing for a social event in the evening, attending and helping clear up, then on Sunday completing the tiling for the bathroom floor in the pouring rain (the tile cutter had to go outside because of the mess and all the water it chucks out when it is operating).  

My back and knees are protesting at having spent all day Sunday getting up and down onto a hard floor and carrying stuff up and down the stairs, and I am not sleeping well due my age and, I regret to say, my hormones.

All this is making me very tired during the day and meaning I am not really focused on my work and not getting through it at the rate I need to if I am to meet my deadlines. And what’s worse is that I am now so tired I don’t care.

I used to think the getting old and tired thing was a myth and it was how you felt in your head that mattered. If you felt young and lively, then you could keep going physically so long as you were in a reasonable condition of fitness. Possibly that is the problem, in that I have been a couch potato for so long now and over indulged in things I know aren’t good for me and it’s a long road back.

I also have to say that work is a nightmare. Not necessarily the people (although they have their moments and life would be a lot easier if I didn’t have any staff with their personal baggage) but the pressure now to do the same or more with less resource. Many people would say that I am lucky to still be in a job and maybe they’re right, but at times it doesn’t seem worth it.

God knows how our generation and those yet to come are going to cope with working until their late sixties or longer, if we are tired of it all in our early fifties. Surely it can’t be right to put a 68 or 69 year old in front of a class of unruly and rowdy teenagers or entrust them with the medical care of someone in a life threatening condition? I know that not all old people lose their marbles and many of them are perfectly capable of doing complex work even into their seventies and eighties, but physical robustness and memory isn’t the same at 68 as it was at 48, and that is impossible to deny. Even with someone fit, healthy and active, things do slow down and deteriorate to a degree.

I can’t help feeling that we will all be working much later and as a consequence having much shorter retirements not just because we are older but because we will all be more worn out with the extra years of work. Our children’s generation will be even harder hit, since at least some of us have protected benefits and have had a few years of decent pay to put something by. They will be so poor with the cost of everything and continuing economic decline they will be even worse off.

It is 2.30pm, and I feel like going home and lying down with my moggies for a good two hour sleep. I know this feeling will pass, and in an hour or so I will feel better, but just at the moment that seems a wonderful idea. They don’t have a sleeping room at the Town Hall – perhaps I’ll suggest it. I bet there would be a queue!