Struggling again

It was a bad week to have a bad week. We have a roster at work for handling all the email queries and last week it was my turn. It's part of my job I struggle with at the best of times, but when my head is like mush and my feet are shaking it's like you're running through treacle. I tried to keep the emails down to one scrollbar-free page. After work on Wednesday I read my book in the sun (so I couldn't have been that bad - there have been times when I couldn't even do that) before going to the depression meet-up at 6:30. There was a woman in her late thirties who I hadn't seen since before Christmas. What a Christmas she had. She lost her father and broke up with her husband of twelve years, all within a week, and ended up in a psychiatric ward. In comparison my Christmas was an absolute breeze. I had to leave the meet-up at 7:30 to go to the tramping club and sign up for a trip or two. They had a meet-and-greet session; the guy from the autism group was there which was a bugger because the place stank and was too hot and I didn't want to be there any longer than absolutely necessary. A woman gave a shortish slide-show presentation which, as it happened, was hilarious. It was her deadpan delivery. The autism guy and I chatted for ten minutes; we agreed to catch up at my flat on Sunday.

Work has just started doing health checks on its staff and on Thursday I had mine. She checked my blood pressure, cholesterol, height and weight, then asked me a few lifestyle questions to come up with a rather crude measure of my risk of heart disease. I got one black mark just for being male (!) and another for my cholesterol: my reading was 6.14. I eat less dairy products and fried food than I ever used to, but my damn cholesterol is still up there. Someone suggested porridge as a virtually guaranteed cholesterol buster. I like porridge, and have it every day in winter, so maybe I need to make that a permanent fixture in my diet. I wish they'd given me a breakdown of my cholesterol into the large fluffy (good) stuff and small dense (bad) stuff: the previous time they said I had oodles of both.

I had a long chat on the phone on Thursday night, mostly to Mum. She tried to make me feel better: "Other people have problems, you're not alone." Well yeah, I guess. Like the woman who was back at work last week after breaking her arm in early November. She now goes to the depression group. I think her arm was the least of her worries. The woman who sits right next to her turned up to work two weeks ago with a completely new face. Well that's what it looks like. I'm guessing it's Botox.
On Friday (I was feeling a bit better by then) I joined the French society, like the one on the North Shore but bigger. I don't know whether that was a good idea. The more things I do and clubs I join, the less involved I am in any of them, and the more I find myself going through the motions.

For at least the fifth weekend running it's an absolute cracker here in Wellington. This can't last.