Sleeping

I don’t actually know what happens to time. It’s now almost late May and I haven’t put anything up here for months.

I don’t know where those months have gone, but I do know that that at least part of me seems to have gone to sleep in that time. I don’t mean that I’ve been depressed or had issues or that anything has gone wrong. I haven’t taken catatonic drugs, become a Valium fiend or had a lobotomy. I’ve caught no African sleeping sickness and no one has had to call in Dr Gregory House to explain my strange lethargy.

No, I actually can’t really remember what I’ve been doing. Working, yes. Eating (too much), sleeping (never enough), talking, meeting friends, having the odd working weekend, trying to remember birthdays and failing. I’ve thought about the blog, I’ve planted veges, avoided plastic packaging and eaten no meat. But writing anything has seemed too hard. Basically I’ve been in survival mode.

At least part of the above paragraph is a load of crap. Fact: I wouldn’t recognise a survival situation if it leaped out of a clear plastic bag in broad daylight, was 90 feet tall and yelled ‘Boo! I’m a survival situation!’

Nope. I’m experiencing middle class survival mode.  This means that you still have enough to eat, still wear sufficient clothing and still make exhausting choices about which shampoo to buy.  You’re just busy. And tired. And you have enough bullshit language at your disposal to coin a term like ‘survival mode’ to describe the situation. My survival has never been in question.

I am going to stop this sleepwalking state. I’ve suddenly found a lot more energy. Funnily enough the lack of energy appeared about the time I gave up meat, and disappeared about the time I began wondering why I kept having such long naps on weekends and began taking iron pills to counter this.

Who would have thought?

The problem is that I’m now behind on everything I meant to do this year. We’re coming up to winter and I haven’t yet thought about a whole heap of changes I should have made. And as far as the not shopping thing goes … well, I’ve done better than previously by not buying any cheap, easily disposable, made in China items. The NZ fashion industry (those members of it that still make garments here) has benefited a little from my lack of self control. Shhhhh! Don’t tell the boyfriend.

Well, I did make my own washing powder a few weeks back. I can’t remember how many weeks.

All you need is Borax, soap flakes and washing soda. It actually works a treat as well. Borax is hard to get hold of, but you can buy on Trade Me or get it at Bin Inn. Washing soda comes from the supermarket and so do soap flakes. If you want to be especially industrious buy an old fashioned bar of sunlight and grate it.

According to some reading I’ve been doing on the net though, you shouldn’t use Borax if your waste water goes onto your garden. Too much boron will kill plants. And too much exposure to Borax can affect your fertility. Read all about it here:

http://chemistry.about.com/od/howthingsworkfaqs/a/howboraxworks.htm

But it does seem to be the lesser of many evils … and the resulting washing powder is not expensive at all.