Cycle

This not being able to fall asleep business is for the birds, as my mother would say.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been plagued with this cycle of being exhausted all day and unable to sleep at night.

It stems from work – business has picked up. I don’t have a physically demanding job, but more so a mentally challenging work load. Problem solving and working with the public, both customers and vendors. Knowing what to say to who to get a sale and when to push back on a quote or invoice, not to mention the scheduling of work to be completed . . . How to word something to a higher up to get your point across without being disrespectful. . . It’s a gift. A gift that at the end of the day makes me absolutely brain dead when we are busy. I’ve given up energy drinks but not coffee, and I can easily put away a pot worth of the magical elixir from the time I wake up to the time I punch out. Here lately I’ve been ready to collapse when I walk in the door at 630pm, and there’s still dinner and homework and bathing to do, arguing about these items with my hooligans, not to mention I need time for me. Usually I have time to make a witty Facebook post about something these crazy offspring of mine have done, share a couple funny and/or interesting memes or stories, have a quick yoga session, shower. . . Then it’s bedtime so I can do it all again tomorrow. In order to have the energy to accomplish all this mom awesome though, I need just a little more caffeine. So with the invention of the keruig, I brew one more cup of awesome to get me through the evening.

Que sleeplessness. Meaning I wake up tired. Repeat cycle.

So, tonight I am thinking about my visit to brother this weekend, lawn care at work, the two move ins I have Friday and if my apartments will be ready in time, debating spending $40 on a planner, how I’m going to purchase and get home a basketball hoop without the boys seeing it before Easter. I remembered that I needed to update apps on my phone and ended up scrolling the recommended section for 20 minutes. And then, there’s this.

My friend Mary posted this on Facebook – thanks for that if you’re reading this btw, I appreciate it – and as I actually was falling asleep it popped in my head. Well, fuck. 1. I don’t know about you, but I legit wake up quite often at this time. 2. There are times I wake up at this time scared thoughtless. 3. Why did they have to include a ghost kid? I don’t do well with creepy kids. And the bitch bending over the headboard makes me wanna get rid of my headboard.

I know there’s no way any sort of expert proved anything even close to this because if that was the case, they’d have proven that spirits/ghosts/apparitions are real, and that hasn’t happened. So. If I could just reason with my overactive imagination, that’d be great.

Also, I’m feeling a bit of pride this evening over my boys. Matt had a great day in school with his quarter end projects. His dragster won the race in his Gateway class despite an issue with the engineering process. It pulled to the left while moving down the track, and Matt came up with a way to modify it – moving the axle to accomadate the pull – thus winning the race. In his advanced reading class he created a board game for his final project, based on the book The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and got rave reviews. I have mixed feelings about the fact that he included a space on the board that makes you instantly lose. “Go to the gas chamber.” Sigh. Hello shock value. Had he asked me I would have told him not to include it. He didn’t ask me, and he did include it, and he got bonus points for creativity. My boy does not sugar coat anything apparently, even in an educational board game about the Holocaust.

Chase is learning to read so quickly I can barely keep up. He has gone from level 1 to level 9 since the Fall in his practice books, and watching him learn and progress is amazing. He struggles with people’s names, however. In trying to help him remember more common names, I pointed out that the character in one book in particular shared the same name as his grandfather. This completely floored Chase. He knew mom and dad had different names, first middle and last, but he thought his grandparents just went by their grandparent names. Very cute to watch his expression go from surprise and shock to understanding. This happened about a week ago, and every once in awhile he’ll ask me to tell him his grandfather or grandmothers “real” name again. I really blew his mind tonight when I informed him that sometimes people shorten their names – Sue for Susan, for example – and told him not just his grandparents shortened names, but their full names. I love watching him discover. Things as simple as this, things we take for granted as adults, are mind boggling to new humans. I’m very lucky that I get to teach not one human but two about the way our world and language work.

It’s getting on towards 1am now, and my eyelids are feeling a bit heavy. I should be able to quiet my mind enough to sleep now, and hopefully not wake up between two and three a.m. – if I do, I probably won’t fall back asleep. I hope all is well with you and yours. Until next time.