This evening, D said he planned to go to Go Outdoors to get some mylar blankets to put over his tent this weekend, when he'll be camping in 30°C heat (that's 86°F), to reflect some of the sunlight from his tent this weekend and he asked me if I wanted to go with him. I did -- to the point of doing this instead of going to the gym tonight -- because I wanted some stuff: better shorts than my ratty gym ones that are too hot for summer, walking sandals (very useful for managing my foot eczema which gets worse when my feet are sweaty...) and maybe a new water bottle because my trusty Sistema one broke last week.

In the car on the way over I was feeling so overwhelmed I couldn't focus my eyes or pay attention to sounds. I managed to tell D this and he was very nice about it, reminding me that it wasn't surprising because so much has been happening: with the house, with V being poorly (the acute levels of nerve pain are receding, but of course dealing with it and the hospital trip and everything has sent them into an energy crash), D being poorly, work, etc.etc.

I found everything I wanted -- I had to get the "women's" version of the sandals I wanted (which just means "blue instead of gray" as far as I can tell! not even any pink trim!) because the "men's" section had every size between 6 and 11 except for mine. And by the time we left, I was feeling a lot better. It's funny because I don't actually like shopping and it was tiring, very hard on my eyes. But maybe it was worth it just to get some random stuff, just to go and do a task that has a tangible beginning, middle and end.

Another cheering thing is that we got takeaway tonight, mostly just because we were either out of spoons or needed to spend them elsewhere. But it was nice to have Turkish food, and a cold beer on a warm sunny evening.

When they were watering plants this evening, V even saw a frog in the garden, the first time they have since the early years of them having this house. They were so excited they yelled and we both came outside -- too late to see the frog, which zoomed away, but it was still lovely to stand there, everything smelled so good in the evening coolness.

discombobulating.

• scaffolding guys re-appeared, wanted me to move cars I cannot move
• can't find my work phone, which made e.g. making breakfast for me and the cat more stressful, I like being able to hear if I'm suddenly needed at work
• also my train tickets for London tomorrow are on the phone
• oh wait no they're not because this time I couldn't find the option for that on the inaccessible website so I have to go to the station to collect them from an inaccessible machine
• I forgot I have a work-adjacent thing this evening, which means I can't go to circuits, which means I haven't been to the gym in like two weeks, no wonder my brain is all fucked up (well this and a million other reasons...)
• also my counselor and I have rearranged on each other about five times now, I had to cancel last week because of a last-minute work trip but rearranged to tomorrow, like a dingdong, because I have a longstanding trip to London tomorrow!!

But the most discombobulating thing is the main thing on my work calendar for the day: an interview for a slight promotion at work. My current manager and someone else I work closely with get to ask me about why I would be good at a job a little better than the job I have now. I've never really done anything like this before and I understand it but it just feels so weird.

And then there was a faff over whether I (and R on my team, who also once again had gone for the promotion) had to do the written task since our manager had forgotten that he shouldn't be using the same one as the abortive attempt to run these interviews a year ago, because we'd already taken part in that. I did remember how exhausting that had been, to work very hard for an hour on this task and then go right back to my regular work which is of course pretty similar. So I was happy to skip it even though I figured that wouldn't be the recommendation once he'd talked to HR.

But the real issue is that just, like a minute, before my interview, V came up to me, very angry and upset. The scaffolders, who'd finished and left by that point, had destroyed many plants in the garden. I'd noticed they had been thoughtless about where they'd stored some of the poles, flattening part of a little wooden border force that surrounds one of the beds.

I hated to turn my back on them and join a Teams call, feels so pointless when someone you care about is suffering, but it was too late to even really say "hey can I have a minute." As it was I got a message from my manager -- who was running this interview -- at one minute past; I was already in the process of joining when he sent it. In the space between him asking me the first question and me trying to answer it, I could hear V sobbing -- and stomping up the stairs, presumably because their laptop is there and they quite rightly wanted to complain. I felt like I was ignoring them and was heartsore.

Which probably didn't help my interview but honestly, whatever. If I get it, cool and if I don't, fine. I don't think I'll know until the beginning of next week, though I guess it may be by the end of this week.

And just after this, the plans that the long-suffering events team had just finalized for the event taking me to London the next day were suddenly turned on their head, so I had a meeting about that where someone tried to tell them the new plan was bad for policy when I had just been thinking it was good!

Then I had this focus group after work, from a very slow-moving but interesting-sounding process of making NHS Talking Therapies more accessible for visually impaired people. I'd been despairing about it clashing with circuits, but I'd determined that if I left a bit early, and D kindly offered to give me a lift, I could make it. No circuits or lift club last week, and I haven't made it to the gym myself in...months? I was really feeling it. By which I don't mean I was de-conditioned (though I was), I mean mentally I felt like one of those coyotes someone has mistaken for a dog and tried to "rescue" by putting it in a cage.

Then home to do a Tesco order for the next day, shower, pack my stuff for the morning, and get to bed for my early alarm the next day.