Karma, anyone?

As I sit here writing, I'm worrying about a number of things. I'm worried that I might forget to do Small Person's packed lunch, and that even if I manage to make it I'll leave it in the fridge tomorrow morning like I did last Monday. I'm worried that downstairs will leave their tv at the current volume (I feel as if I'm actively participating in this week's Songs of Praise) and that I won't be able to get to sleep tonight. I'm worried that Stephen Hawking witnessed our juvenile defiance on returning, drunk and triumphant, from another top night out watching a band (who, incidentally, love us so much that we have our own encore. The shame.....) and making the universal sign of the spaz outside his front door in protest at him keeping me awake yet again last week. I'm pretty sure he doesn't spend every night propped behind his front door with his eye to the spyhole but it worries me anyway. I'm worried that my new boss who starts tomorrow will, in addition to being eight years younger than me and in receipt of eleven grand a year more, also be an insufferable twat in the manner of my current boss. I'm worried that Small Person will one weekend starve to death as her father has once more singularly failed to feed her anything more than breakfast and sweets today. I'm worried that his planned trip to New Zealand next month is in fact an elaborate kidnapping plot and that I'll have to fight for Small Person's return via Interpol and the Daily Mail. I'm worried that we won't be able to get tickets for Robbie's tour when they go on sale next month. I'm worried that the Other Half's recent trip and his resulting close proximity to a number of men who have been at sea for a long time has awakened some latent neanderthal streak in him and that I will forever more be subjected to fart jokes and talk of vomiting at the dinner table.

All of this is symptomatic of my underworked, overstressed mind. I simply can't not worry. Evidence of this is vastly apparent, even to me. There's a local building supply firm whose name and logo is effectively the Camel cigarette branding. Every time I pass one of their trucks I worry about what would happen if someone from Camel or their owners were to see it - what if the Camel Building Supply people have just bought houses? Or had children? How will they pay the court costs? What will become of them? What if somebody relating to the tobacco company randomly Googles "Camel" and ends up here and finds out about the local building supply company and sues them and I am therefore directly responsible for homelessness and hungry children as, without this post on my blog, they would have remained otherwise undetected? If we go for a walk in the forest, or even through the wooded parts of the park, I'm worrying about what the procedure is on spotting a corpse in the undergrowth. Do you call the police and stay next to it, or go home and ring them? Should you take a photograph? Make some notes? What if the killer is still lurking? On Friday night, even when I knew the Other Half was on the way home, I still couldn't relax. I knew he was due home at around 4am so I woke on the dot of four and paced the floor for the next hour, visions of botched emergency landings and falling-asleep-at-the-wheel taxi drivers filling my mind. I finally texted him at 4.50am and was properly, actually relieved when I received a response.

A great deal of my worries are presumably the same things that other people think about. My fears for Small Person's future, for mine and the Other Half's life together, whether I can pay the rent this month. All of those things are normal, but I can't help but worry that I'm the only person leaving ludicrous notes around the house bearing warnings such as "School Starts Tomorrow!!", "Hospital Weds and Friday UFN!!", "Breathe in, then out again!!" (okay, I made the last one up). I am convinced that if I don't remind myself of the things I do most days as a matter of routine we will end up baffled and hungry, or that Small Person will be sitting quietly on the childminder's sofa wondering why I am an hour late even as I blithely do the grocery shopping, unaware that I am in the wrong place at the wrong time owing to the fact that I have left my phone in the office (I didn't leave myself a note, you see). The thing is, I don't know how to stop worrying. If I rationalise my fears I then worry that I have dismissed a potential catastrophe and that we will burn in our beds as a result of my not reminding myself to change the smoke alarm batteries. Maybe I am what my Nan would have called a "born worrier". Maybe I'm mental. Whatever it is, I wish it would stop (oh lord, am now worried that I am mental).

In other news, the Other Half's divorce came through while he was away. I am now officially stamping my foot and declaring that it's not fair, I want one. Soon.....please let it be soon.....

Carry on.