Sleep

It struck my like a brick wall about 2 minutes before Sadie came to join me on the floor of the office, crowding me out of my spot more assertively than usual.

Hours before that it was ready to strike, but we had to get the kids bathed and ready for bed and stuff, which turned into a more than three hour ordeal that was finalized only by Valerie earning a convincing spanking.  The urge was held off artificially.

I went in Sadie’s bed, logically, and couldn’t fall asleep there.  Too hot.  Inexplicably uncomfortable.  And apparently the warmth makes the smell of the air bed worse, or perhaps it was just an ongoing bout of the scratchy dry throat I’ve been having.  I sure miss the newfangled Hall’s pectin fruit drops.  We ran out while I wasn’t looking, and price-wise they are in the class of “buy these, or just keep sipping water and keep the kids in milk?”

I ended up at the computer. in that odd, almost sickly feeling state of not awake but can’t be asleep but will drop any second without it.  I generated an entire list of relevant (mostly) birthdays for my father and stepmother, which was a fairly substantive project.  It’s 2:55, which means unless she has a good night (counting good as sleeping through, ignoring being absolutely heinous about going to bed), Valerie should be screaming and wandering out of her room any time.

I’m still too hot.  I’m sitting here sweating, because the temperature outside dared get into the forties.

I’ll maybe try fitting in beside Sadie.  She may have moved enough to allow it.

Nights need to stop being so rough around here.  The norm is for me to stop whatever I might be doing between 4:00 and 5:30 to start making supper.  From that point on the day consists of making supper and any preliminary work to make that possible, fighting with the kids over staying out of the corner by the stove in my way and dangerous particularly, and the whole stretch of kitchen adjacent to the counter more generally, eating, bathing the kids, then engaging in the battle of drying and dressing and getting them into bed and asleep.  By the time that’s over, I’m lucky to be awake enough to do anything mindless, and we end up sometimes with bounces as soon as an hour or two in.

In the morning I’ve gotten out of the habit of being up before them enough to start drinking coffee, catching up on stuff online (general surfing, but also industry news), and posting in what is often my most creatively fired time of day for it.  They can be a bundle of needs first thing in the morning, but then they don’t stop all day either.  It feels like we need a third adult, often as not, and that’s with both of us here and able to devote reasonable time and attention to the kids.  It’s very hard to balance the need to be “at work” several hours a day against the impossibility of one person handling them without requiring help or going stir crazy.  The effective working window during the day is remarkably short.  That can’t be the default.  If only because certain things can’t be done in short.  If only because I could spend several hours a day for a surprisingly long time just countering entropy and unloosening ends, even where no new revenue was involved.  I used to be able to do some of my best work late at night, but I’m always too exhausted now.

But I digress.  It’s 3:26 AM as I write this sentence, and except for two or three drift off for a moment or two instances, including in this very chair when we got home from the family Christmas gathering, I haven’t been asleep yet.  I’ll feel guilty if it’s after 9:00 when I wake up again, even though I didn’t make up yet for the two nights ago up for the day at 5:30 AM and awake for the next 20+ hours fun, and even though, well, 9:00 is less than six hours hence, and even though it’s the 24th.

Okay, let’s see about sleep now…

Posted by on 12/24 at 02:39 AM

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