Still awake

It's been a while since I've had a sleepless night, a night when getting up and doing something is preferable to tossing and turning. So here I am at 2.30am sitting at my kitchen table catching up on reports. This will be good for me tomorrow as I will be ahead of the game reports wise, but bad because I will be a grumpy bum all day. This I know from past experience and I'm sure others will vouch for me.

There are several reasons for the tossing and turning tonight. The first is a stressful day, one of those days when everyone wants a larger piece of you that you are able to give. A day of dealing with people who are stressed and busy, unhappy in aspects of their lives. That's OK, people are allowed to be unhappy, stressed and busy. Add to that unreasonable and uncommunicative and then there is a problem, mine today. This all goes with the territory of managing people really so I just have to suck it up and get on with it, keep smiling when groaning inside.

Probably the major reason I am up is that I hurt my back on the weekend and can't lie comfortably in bed, can't actually toss and turn because only the left side is fit for turning too. I hurt my back by being silly, forgetting that I am a petite female of middle years and indulging in some extreme gardening. Anyone who has been to my place will by now be nodding their head in understanding. Extreme gardening is what you do when you live in the hills, the pay off for that great view.

I did some work in the orchard a couple of weekends ago cutting down some feral plum trees and pruning the trees that mean birds get to poop on my washing. I left the pruning to dry and dragged them down to go to the green waste dump this weekend. Dragging large branches and what not from the orchard to where they can be loaded onto Tim's ute for the dump trip means dragging said branches down a slope almost too steep to stand on, bracing oneself so the branches don't drag you down in a heap underneath them. Making sure the falling piles don't take out the laden grape vine growing on the retaining wall requires steering the pile that's rapidly gathering momentum.

OK, safely down to the next level. The branches then have to be taken down a set of steps to the house level, then dragged along the flat terrace, down yet another set of steps to the drive way, narrow tree lined steps. Imagine about 20 trip of this and you can see why I have a sore back. The photo doesn't really show the steepness of the orchard but the levels can clearly be seen. I really should have listened to my body today and gone to the chiropractor, I suspect I'd be sleeping now if I had of. First on the list of tomorrows jobs then.