I have been exhausted since I woke up this morning.
Doug's sleep continues to be an issue, which means it's an issue for me. He falls asleep with no major problem, but then wakes up around 2-4 AM, as in wide awake, talking and playing. Today I met with his psychologist who tested him. (I found out at the appointment that he does have ADHD and will need medication. Now the next hurdle is to get him in to see a child psychiatrist, but I've got an appointment set for January.)
Anyway, I woke up to use the bathroom and discovered Doug in bed with us, playing with a plastic shovel. I don't know what he was playing (there are a lot of great narratives in his head) and I didn't care to ask. I did my thing, came back to bed, put my mask back on and started watching YouTube.
Here's the thing. 2-4 AM is not a great time of day for me. My brain, which up to that point in the evening has been playing crazy things in my head. Sometimes those dreams wake me up in a panic or cause me to feel very unsettled.
But once I'm awake, it's like the deejay in my brain switches. It goes from crazy to the oldies. What I mean by that is, I start reliving any painful, embarrassing, uncomfortable experience I have had at any time over the past 39 years of life on Earth. It plays in slow-motion, there's instant replay and even color commentary.
Just for fun, it's also a time when my brain likes to play the ever-popular "What If?" game. This means that I lie in bed and consider all the awful things that could happen. I worry about concrete things, like what if the bathtub from our hallway bathroom falls into the TV room. I also worry about emotional things, like what will happen if the person I said I was going to talk to doesn't talk to me or decided (s)he hates me?
So, really, good, good times. So much fun.
When I finally drift back to sleep, it is under the veil of the negative feelings I get from playing these two games (I hardly ever win). Any sleep I get is minimal and fractured.
But I'm a mom and so I don't get to sleep in or parent from my bed. I have to get up and get going right away, which I did this morning.
The problem was, the morning took a sideways turn before I could even get downstairs.
Jeremy, who is normally dressed immediately upon awakening, was still not dressed at 8:10, when I descended the stairs. I knew this because I heard Brian (my husband) shouting at him at least once to get dressed. I had to yell at him two more times before 8:30 (when my kids leave for school).
Meanwhile, he let me know that he lost his medicine. When pressed, he couldn't tell us what had happened or which medicine he had lost. I called Brian back down (he manages Jeremy's medicine) to determine what medicine Jeremy had lost.
At the same time, I have to get out of the house around 8:30 to get Doug to his therapy (play therapy) appointment. Doug has come downstairs, but is in a pull-up and groggy. I employ Bekah to help me distribute lunch boxes to everyone's backpack. I manage to send her off to school. Jeremy, who has been yelled at about a dozen different times, ends up with a nosebleed. I send him off to school with a wad of tissues and a directive to seek out the nurse if he needs her.
Then it's time for me to take Doug. This means I have to change Brooklyn's diaper, get a coat on her, get her in her carseat, get my lemon and ice water, get graham crackers and get in the van.
The therapy appointment went okay, but afterwards Doug left the building without waiting for me, which didn't make me happy. I dropped him off at school and headed home.
I had volunteer duties at Jeremy and Bekah's school today. I hadn't showered since Sunday (possibly Monday, but I really think it was Sunday), so I felt like I needed to shower. I figured I'd put something on TV for Brooklyn, sneak up, take a shower and dry my hair (cause it's cold outside). (Um, I am shaking my head at 11:00 AM me for thinking I would have time to dry my hair. Bless.)
After showering, I went downstairs and decided I should unload and reload the dishwasher. No biggie, takes me hardly any time. Except that there was standing water in the bottom of my dishwasher. Like, a lot. No biggie, I'll run the garbage disposal, it's probably backed up. Nope, that does nothing. So I start scooping water with a ladle into a bowl and pouring it into the sink. Which is fine, until water starts spilling out of the cabinet directly under the sink. In no time flat, there is water starting to spread all over my kitchen floor.
It is now 11:30. I need to be at school at 11:45. I have no time for this horsecrappery. I urgently call Brian down, we empty the entire cabinet and start trying to dry it out. I am trying to gauge how long I have to wait with him until I can discreetly leave for school.
(Luckily, we have a plan with Nicor where things like this are covered, so we just have to call and start a claim. The process is tedious but manageable and far cheaper than having to pay for crises out of our own pocket.)
After volunteering, I head to see the psychologist who evaluated Doug. Then I find out the plumber can't come out until Tuesday.
You guys.
I cook in my kitchen almost every single day. I make lunches for the kids, I make myself a salad and I cook dinner. I make bread. I make sauce. In short, my kitchen is not for show. I definitely am a heavy kitchen user. I can't wait until next Tuesday to discover the source of the issue (that's not even to fix it, it's just for them to come out and figure out what went wrong).
As I'm leaving the doctor's office, I notice that the gas light has come on, indicating that I am low on fuel. I know Brian has to take Bekah and a friend to dance class, but guys, I'm not kidding. I was so tired and I hadn't eaten lunch and so I just went home. I figured he could work out the gas situation on his own time.
I got home, had lunch and laid down for like 25 minutes.
The rest of the day went off without a hitch, but the string of bad luck made me seriously doubt we were done having our hats handed to us.
Now, I felt down in the dumps and mopey all day long. I can normally rally and send an encouraging text to someone to jump start my own good feelings, but today I just didn't have it.
It is 9:48 and I am absolutely exhausted and sleepy.
The big victory, though, is that none of these bad things that happened caused me to eat outside of my protocol. I felt bloated and gross for part of the day, but even that didn't make me feel poorly enough to dive into the kids' buckets of Halloween candy. So guess what, Wednesday? Suck it, cause I didn't let you completely defeat me.
