just enough time to be preoccupied

I had this tab open before, but I've only gotten around to reading it properly now that it seems to echo that emotional literacy thing.

It's the arousal-valence model.

By identifying your current level of arousal and valence, you can start to build awareness of your bodily sensations and the connection between those sensations and your emotions.

It looks like a good next step for me in "what to do next," like it's all well and good understanding that I'm bad at identifying and acknowledging my emotions, but now what can I do to make this less of a problem for me.

Thanks everyone for the kind comments.

Surprisingly, I slept fine -- well, I was surprised anyway. I don't remember any of my dreams.

I am very amused that two of the smartest people I know (one of whom is a psychotherapist!) told me to play Tetris.

There are studies on this, often in particular groups of people who might acquire PTSD like healthcare workers or combat veterans.

I'm good at games like that and I love them. I have not literal Tetris but a similar simple colorful block-positioning game on my phone, which I play all the time anyway -- usually as something to keep me busy enough to be able to listen to a podcast or sometimes to watch something on TV, or sometimes to tire my eyes out enough to let me go to sleep.

But now I can tell myself it's medicinal!

I had a nice day: walking to and from angelofthenorth's this morning to help unload the van into her flat, enjoying the nice springlike weather for a change, and by the time I was home and showered it was almost time for said psychotherapist and her wife to visit, which is lovely as they are friends I rarely/never get to see, who were just nearby for the afternoon. I made dinner for us -- curry with sauce from a jar and added peppers and leftover chicken the others had last night. We're all pretty floppy, after those two had to take on tasks that were meant to be done yesterday by the two of us who were in Wales so much longer than we planned to be. But in a nice cozy way. No plans at all tomorrow, which I'm very much looking forward to.

The plan for today was to leave early, drive the four hours back to Manchester, and unload the van at angelofthenorth's flat.

I planned to be home by mid-afternoon. I was planning to make dinner, and I hoped to be back soon enough and with enough energy left over to walk Teddy at the usual kind of time, 4 or 5 in the afternoon.

We checked out of the hotel at 8, went for breakfast at the Starbucks in the Travelodge parking lot, and got on the road maybe half an hour later.

We'd just gotten out of town and on an A road/highway, I was just thinking about texting a quick "on our way!" for V and D to wake up to, but before I could fish my phone out of the pocket trapped by the seatbelt, ( details of car crash which sound scary so please be assured no one was injured! )

( And my pitch-black humor about the situation. )

The van was being driven by a friend of angelofthenorth's who has rented lots of vans, used to drive one for Argos, and was a very careful driver. He is a retired cop, so when we made it to a nearby lay-by/rest area, he called the rental company to report the accident, he described it very calmly and precisely, in slightly more technical terms than the lady on the other end was expecting. He said he hadn't been in an accident himself since 1990something, but all his skills were clearly intact from the many other incidents he'd called in like this.

The van wasn't badly damaged but wasn't safe to drive without the passenger side (he called it near side) mirror, and indicator/blinkers on that side too. (The mirror hadn't actually exploded, but all these things were hanging by the wires from the damaged housing.) So we had to call AA too, and wait for them to be able to send something big enough to haul a loaded Peugeot Boxer van.

The accident happened a couple minutes before 9am. After we were told "before 12.20," 11.40, 11.45 and 12.45, a nice man with a big yellow AA truck pulled ahead of us at 12.50, eliciting such cheers from the other two (who of course recognized it more quickly than I could) that I jumped a little.

We had to wait in the lay-by not far from where we'd set off, for a length of time that should've gotten us basically back to Manchester (minus stops to pee/get lunch/etc.). We were waiting there so long that angelofthenorth's blood sugar was a worry, but luckily it remained okay.

The AA man was efficient and kind, and it was a little bit exciting to get to ride in the back of his truck, which had such high steps that it reminded me of getting into tractors. He got us to the body shop he was told to take us to, we were told they would have arranged to swap our van for another one, but when we got there it was closed.

There was time pressure here too because we were also coming up on, and then quickly past, the time this poor guy was supposed to finish his shift, and his commitment to not abandoning us and our burdened van on a street somewhere in Swansea was coming up against not only the end of his shift and the beginning of his weekend, but the end of the time he'd be safe to drive -- he woke up at 4.30 this morning and I bet that seemed like a very long time ago as he was stuck with us while a surprisingly large number of telephone conversations were needed.

The looming fact that it was Friday suddenly loomed into relevance. The AA driver talked a lot about places closing early on a Friday, and already mid-afternoon I was seeing queues of traffic in Swansea as he drove us around. I hadn't expected we'd have to deal with Friday rush hour traffic of course!

Way too many frustrations, shenanigans and phone calls ensued. I'll spare you the grumbling and details but we by 2.45 we had the chance to use a toilet, by 3 we had access to a new van, by 3.30 we had swapped everything from the broken one to the new one (which while not ideal left me a little reassured by exactly what and how difficult it'd be to get it all into angelofthenorth's flat: before this, it'd been difficult for me to mentally separate what actually went in the van from the much greater amount of work I'd ended up doing in the sliding tile puzzle of moving things out of but then back into the storage containers).

Finally, we could set off.

It was 3.45.

Manchester was still four hours away.

I'd been hoping to be home by that point, showered, maybe had time for a little rest before I thought about walking Teddy.

At this point, the three of us determined that the best thing to do would be just to get home tonight, and unload the van early in the morning before it was due to be returned at noon.

It took longer than four hours, because we stopped for much-needed food in Abergavenny around 5, and maybe because this new van was limited to only going 60mph so we didn't benefit from the motorway/freeway driving as much as we might have.

I got home about 9.15pm, after an otherwise-uneventful trip back. angelofthenorth texted the group chat saying that a 9am start is planned for tomorrow morning, and then also saying "I feel like Erik should have a "please look after this goblin" sign round his neck."

I was very well looked after: helped to find food, to tidy stuff away that I literally just dropped when I opened the front door, hugged, and shooed off to a shower and bed.

I've never been so happy to be in my own house, hugged by my humans, and now in bed.

I am sure there was toothpaste in my washkit the last time I traveled... But there is not now.

Apart from this and lack of snacks (why didn't I think to bring snacks, ha), I am doing alright. I slept decently last night, and slept a lot more this afternoon, once the van was as loaded as it was going to get.

I feel for angelofthenorth, who basically has the same level of difficulty extracting the things she wants from the two big storage containers that I would've had if Andrew had decanted all of our house into similar, since that's more or less what has happened here.

Everything has been a sliding-tile-puzzle of needing to move things to get to other things, and all the tiles are heavy, and you also have to think about whether they're packed in a structurally sound condition and whether they can get wet.

We have been remarkably successful at furniture, but also some things have just been too difficult to unearth, particularly in the worst weather possible for this: rain and heavy wind. She has dealt with it all very well, being very practical about what can be replaced via Manchester's charity shops or Ikea.

All of this is such an emotionally exhausting undertaking. I'm glad I can at least handle some of the physical burdens for her.