It’s taken a long time to dawn on me that the reason for the cats and I feeling hot and becoming sleepy, to the extent that I turned down the boiler in mid-winter, is very simple. It’s because I had the faulty panes of double-glazing replaced back in the summer.
D’oh!
While it remains true that in the autumn I was going through a generally ‘down’ spell, it’s an object lesson in looking at all the contributing factors to a situation. While I still feel rather tireder than I’d like, my brain seems to be more awake and I’m getting more done.
The cats still spend a lot of time asleep, and they look very cosy while they’re at it, so they’re not suffering. I haven’t exactly reduced the inside temperature to match the outside, but it’s making a substantial difference. I’m fairly sure the main source of my slowness is now ‘just’ the Sjogren’s.
Mystic is not too happy about me working more at the computer, however; he still feels my place is on the sofa so that he can sit on me. He is currently sitting on the landing outside my study, in full pose as a watchful Trafalgar Square lion, to let me know he doesn’t think much of this sort of thing.
I refuse to be bullied. Well, I try to refuse to be bullied, but it’s now only 1.25 hours to their lunchtime so I suspect the others may join in the campaign before long.
It’s still the case that by the evening, Mystic sleeps so deeply that if I need to leave the room he just goes on dozing wherever I put him down on the sofa, and sometimes on my return he doesn’t notice, so one of the others can then grab a sneaky cuddle! At bedtime I carry him to the kitchen and lay him gently in his bed, and he never stirs. But he deserves all this care, so do the other two old gents – they are smelly, importunate, hard work and adorable.
Seasons of Skorn, shadows of the seas: in search of time 