It was a conspiracy!

It was a conspiracy. A conspiracy against me sleeping!

As predicted, I was not ready for for bed at the same time as Helen last night, and while she was nodding off on the sofa shortly after 9pm, I was still wide awake. After convincing Helen to retire to bed for a good night's sleep, I stayed up not wanting to head to bed until I was convinced that I'd fall asleep without hindrance. Yet, after watching the NFL highlights show and reading a few more pages of my book ('The moneyless manifesto' by Mark Boyle) I was still no sleepier and it was gone midnight, so decided I should give sleep a go.

At 2:15am, still awake thanks to my ever present friend jet lag, with two cats sleeping close up against my legs, heart palpitations in full swing and a mosquito dive-bombing me, I angrily got up to leave Helen and the cats in bed and went to the office to stare at my tablet PC for another couple of hours until I eventually fell into a fitful sleep. The world seemed to be conspiring against me and it felt as if  I'd never have a decent sleep again. Helen came in at 9am after her workout, at which point I stomped upstairs for another hour's sleep until Helen arrived (on my instruction) to wake me with a cup of tea (not on my instruction).

It took me another hour and 20 minutes to drag myself out of bed. I'm not usually one for just lying in bed (well, not since my teens anyway), but that was all could face and I was trying to decide what job I could tackle - even the tiniest of jobs felt unachievable. I hadn't yet realised that I was having a bad thyroid day, although I guess the palpitations should have been a warning.

I finally dragged myself out of bed and promptly slumped on the sofa, browsing the web for inspiration for our eventual kitchen revamp, so it wasn't completely wasted time, but could definitely be classed as procrastination.

Lunch(/breakfast) was under the shade of the patio umbrella. It was another beautiful day today - hot, but a couple of degrees cooler than of late, making it a very comfortable temperature. All I could think about was finishing my breakfast, getting one of the sun loungers from the guest patio and going back to sleep in the sun.

I didn't though, and instead the pair of us headed out to the supermarket as we realised we had missed a couple of vital bits on Tuesday in our attempt at shopping while jet lagged. It was around 2pm by the time we arrived, but thankfully it was still nice and quiet in Esselunga and as we didn't need much, were in and out quickly.

I caught sight of my face in the rear view mirror while leaving the car park park and was shocked to see how rough I was looking. I looked like I'd literally just woken up, one eye more closed than the other, with a full set of luggage beneath each eye and still sporting bed hair. I didn't care, but it was poor Helen I was feeling sorry for, who must have been wondering exactly what she'd married.

Once we got home, Helen went to work on finishing the fencing on Goose Island and I decided I could at least wave a brush (dipped in wood stain) at the goose house - no matter how rubbish I was feeing, at least I'd ease the guilt of being lazy. After she'd finished with the fencing, Helen got another brush and came to help with the painting.

By the time 6pm chimed in, we were done for the day, the fence now finally finished and (hopefully) fox proof, and the house now with locking doors and a first coat of stain on it. We still need to fit a roof covering, sort out some form of easy access up the terraces for the geese, fit a gutter and small water butt to the back of the roof, and put in a pool. Yes, our geese will be getting a pool - a small one, but apparently it makes geese very happy, and happy birds lay more eggs!

We make no apologies for yet another photo of the goose house, it's all we have for the day:

Not the colour of wood stain we would have chosen, but it was free (found in the woodshed)...

We sat on the patio with a glass of beer and a bowl of nuts for an hour before retiring indoors for dinner and hopefully a wine-induced coma on my part. I'm taking no chances and hoping to wake up with a settled thyroid. It seems that missing two nights' sleep out of eight, and messing around with medication timings because of the time difference, has just been too much - and quite probably too high a price to pay for a week's work in the States.

We now need to settle back into our rhythm and enjoy the last of the warm weather. Next week we're welcoming more paying guests, followed by Helen's Mum and Dad for a week and then Allison and Q for week after that - so we have an exciting and busy month ahead.