Dream a Little Dream With Me

I don't know why - but all of my life sleep has eluded me. I love to sleep. When I lay down, it is usually only a matter of minutes before I'm out like a light. Typically this is because I don't go to bed one second before I'm utterly exhausted - which just so happens to be most of the time. With my new work schedule - 1/2 am is becoming pretty common which means I need to sleep until about 8 or 9. But, here it is 6 am and I am wide awake - well maybe not wide - but I am awake which is the opposite of sleeping which is what I want to be.
The hardest part is that I am often awake for reasons that could be prevented. I can't seem to make members of my family understand that I need peace and quiet to sleep. Conversations, doors shut too loudly, lights left on that stream into my room, etc. are all interruptions of my sleep and typically once I'm awake - I cannot go back to sleep. I am also not a napper, so I wake up without having had enough sleep and do not recover over the course of a day. If this happens several days in a row I manifest signs of insanity.
Growing up with a mom who was mentally ill, and one of her biggest problems was insomnia, I saw the effects of severe sleep deprivation. She would stay awake and not sleep for days on end, and then crash and sleep for days. The hard part for me was that if she didn't sleep, she did not allow me to rest either. She would call me for me from her room all hours of the night to get her cigarettes, "refresh" her tea, or wipe out her ashtray. Even if she went out, she would call and ask me to do things. It was such a huge issue that said "I'm more important than you" everytime she decided that her need for whatever it was superseded my need for sleep. A lot of that comes back now when members of my family disrespect my need for rest - and I stick up for myself in a way I couldn't back then. Proper rest is so necessary to a clear mind - and I'm not getting it lately. I am in one big fog.

Is This Feminism?

I have described a slight shift that I've had in my thinking of late about male and female roles. After hardly blogging for a while, being rudely awaken at 6 am on a Saturday morning and now being unable to go back to sleep has me feeling a bit thoughtful, and edgy.
The roles that I took on as a homemaker, wife and mother were things that I enjoyed. The duties that I carried out on a daily basis were important to me, not because someone said I had to do them, but because it was my heart's desire to make a nice home for my family. However, none of this negates the fact that it takes a whole family living in a home to work together to make it all run smoothly.
This morning, before work my husband woke me up and asked me if I knew where there were any clean towels in the house. I started running through all of the things in my mind that I knew we had washed over the last several days and my mind eventually made it to the towel hamper. Sure enough, I had washed a load of towels last night, but they never made it to the dryer. He starts to mumble under his breath while walking in and out of our bedroom throwing lights on in both bathrooms about how our daughter should have gotten the towels washed. While it is a job I ask the girls to do to help around the house, he was home with them yesterday all day long while I was out running errands such as picking up medicine for my son who spent the previous night in the ER with a severe asthma attack and grocery shopping. He was home with the girls all day. They watched movies together, the girls took walks around the neighborhood, painted, did some drawing, read books, etc. I got home and both sinks were full of dishes, and of course nobody thought to do the things necessary to keep the household running smoothly. Did Dad remind them? No. Did he wake up the daughter who is responsible for the towels to ask her if there were any clean? No.
As the complaining and grumbling went on, I asked him if he was trying to pick a fight. Seems just two days ago when I got home from driving for 3 days, there wasn't a clean towel in the house. I mean it - not one hand towel, washcloth, or any of the 30 large towels, including every beach towel that we own in the entire house. Thankfully we had all taken showers in the hotel that morning, and I had the time to wash a load of towels before we would need them again.
Did the grouchy towel-less husband move the towels from the washer to the dryer this morning in an effort to assist with the household needs? No. I could possibly conjure up some sympathy that he had to drip-dry after his shower if I worked really hard at it but I don't have the energy. I am exhausted from this life. I don't know how to engage a partnership for these duties, but I know that I am wearing out. I am tired. I think it's my turn to have a wife. I want somebody to take care of everything and a job that I clock in and out of for 8 hours a day. Does that make me a feminist? I don't know - but it is what it is.

Feeling a Wee Bit Better

After I picked up the girls at work, we all clashed as my mother-in-law would say, "big-time". The ride home was pretty miserable. Within minutes of being home one of them was in tears over a demanding customer that told her she needed to get some communication skills. The other one had gone into her closet, put her head down and fallen fast asleep. Then it dawned on me - we are all utterly exhausted. We were in the city until after midnight last night, stopped at Walmart on our way home, and stayed up until almost 3 am once we got home. In the last week and a half there has not been much if any down time. I gathered the girls up and put them in my dark bedroom on my soft cozy bed, covered them up and got them both to sleep for an hour. I wish I had a chance to do the same, but for now things seem a little less short-circuited. I took some pictures of them in my bed - they looked so cute and sweet - just like when they were little. I would suffer a painfully gruesome death if I posted them here, so you'll just have to imagine it.

The Ever Expanding Duties of Motherhood

About 2:30 am I got a phone call. It was one of my children who shall remain nameless, having a sleepover at a friend's house. They were having difficulty sleeping, although they repeatedly asserted that they weren't scared. We talked for a bit - I had been sound asleep and was struggling to be encouraging. Then the little voice asked the question, "Mom, can you come get me?"
This particular request has never been denied any of my children - and in fact, I get them happily and cheerfully because I never want them to feel like it is wrong to want to come home. Ever. My own personal comfort is secondary in these situations.
But the child was 40 minutes away.
I talked, sang every song I could think of, etc. until we came up with a solution - we would fall asleep on the phone together. "I just want to hear you breathe, okay mom?"
And we did.

Once a Mommy.... Always a Mommy

I have a little confession to make - I have rarely seen my 17 year old daughter sleep. Kendra was a high-strung baby. I say this with much kindness as she likely inherited the trait from me. She hardly ever slept. My parents have few memories of my childhood, but they both agreed that I would lay in bed even as a very small child and recite every nursery rhyme, sing every song I knew, etc. to keep from going to sleep. I hated the thought of missing anything.
Kendra has not ever had the "in bed by 8" routine. Perhaps it was Kendra who trained us to let her sleep when she was tired instead of an arbitrary bedtime. When she was a baby, her daddy worked nights, so she and I would wait until he got home from work around midnight before we went to bed.
Last night we were all up very late, but she had to go to work this morning. She came home a little while ago and was laying on the floor in her bedroom listening to Frank Sinatra on her MP3 player because she was too tired to remove the clothes and paper and books off of the bed. I cleared it off and suggested she lay down. To my surprise she did just that, and she has been sound asleep for almost an hour now. I keep finding myself tip-toeing down the hallway to peek in on her, just like she was a baby. I am so not used to her being asleep when I'm awake. We never do things quite the orthodox way - Kendra and I - but we seem to figure it out along the way together. Sweet dreams baby girl.

Afternoon Delight

The most delightful 3 letter word in the English language. Yet it seems to elude me. Ideally, it must last at least 15 - 20 minutes. If it lasts less, I feel dissatisfied. If it lasts longer, when it is over I feel like a big bundle of nerves. I need it every day. What is this bliss that I chase, only to capture once in a desperate while?

A nap.

Oi Vay!

What a day it has been! Yesterday evening, the girls and I ran some errands and stopped off at the end of the evening for lattes. Bad idea - because ding-dongs that we are, we did not order decaf and I was wide awake until 1:30 this morning. Kendra woke me up at 6 am to sit on the front porch with her and have coffee and enjoy the cool fall-ish (as she says) air. I muttered something about being crazy and an untimely demise, but with just that much disruption, I could NOT go back to sleep. Let me tell y'all 4 1/2 hours just ain't pretty. It is like PMS and a handgun - Julie and lack of sleep - a very toxic mix.
We were at co-op most of the day and afterwards I ran a quick errand to the pharmacy - quick being the operative word as I was desperate to get home for a nap. After waiting for 45 minutes they tell me that they are sorry, but my husband's prescription that I dropped off on Tuesday morning was ordered incorrectly. They don't have the medication, nor does any other pharmacy in the area and they won't be able to get it in until sometime on Monday. I had to drive an hour north to the town we used to live in, knowing they keep the medicine on hand just to get it filled. The hubby-man is an electrician, and his ADD medicine has to be at a consistent level in his system or he is a major hazard to himself and anyone else he may be working with - so it HAD to be done. I almost fell asleep on the way home, and had to pull over at one point in a church parking lot and sleep for 10 minutes before I could drive again. Thankfully that helped me endure.
This evening we went to a bonfire - the same one that we attended last year at the local high school in celebration of homecoming. This year we missed the parade of football players on 4 wheelers, and girls in tiaras in the back of pick-up trucks. My girls enjoyed watching what amounted to a teenage mating ritual around a large fire. For us, "homecoming" is and always will be a permanent marker of the time we've spent here. Almost a year. Wow.
On that note, I say good night!

IN-SOM-NIA

In a couple of hours my husband will be getting up for work - but I can't even go to sleep. I am not sure what exactly has me so restless, but I had to get out of bed and do something else for a while. I am on a way late sleeping cycle as it is, and the more I lay in bed thinking, "I have GOT to fall asleep" the further it eludes me.
I used to transcribe counseling sessions for a friend at church that was a psychologist - which I found to be very interesting work - unless of course you were transcribing a session with a low-talker, an emotionally distraught person, someone with an accent, or the batteries happened to be low on the recorder. Several of her patients had sleep disorders which seems to accompany many forms of mental illness (hmm.....). Anyway - one thing she says and it is advice that has held true - is the longer you lay in bed unable to sleep, the more you will train your body for insomnia. If you tend to get in bed and fall asleep, this will be the pattern, but if you get in bed and lay there tossing and turning for two hours, you could set yourself up to require this "settling" period more and more. So she suggested to patients that if you don't fall asleep within 15 minutes, to get up and read or do something else for 30 minutes to an hour.
Aren't you lucky? I decided to get up and blog! Rats! This only killed 10 minutes - I'm going to read now!

Sitcom Life

Sometimes I wish that life was like a sitcom with intense situations that resolve themselves in a matter of minutes. There are times when situations overwhelm me - I behave badly (even if I was justified in a wrong that was committed against me) and everybody in the house walks around refusing to make contact with me. Then on top of it I have to make amends. I hate that part. Not that I hate apologizing - I hate feeling at odds with people that I love.
Here's the deal - I have felt like a single parent for 16 years. My husband is lovely in a lot of ways but when it comes down to the nitty gritty job of parenting, it all falls on me. I am caving under the pressure. I feel like there are days when it is an uphill battle, and truthfully, I get tired. One kid has had clean towels laying in her room for 3 days - while there are none in the actual bathroom where people are needing towels, and today I find 3 kittens laying on them - and while this is dreadfully cute, I don't want hairy towels. And while she has not found the time to fold them, she has been on myspace, watched movies, etc. etc. Another child, while told they could NOT bring drinks in the living room any longer because every other time they do - there is a spill (and honestly I hate being an ogre - but I am tired of cleaning up spills because they cannot adequately remove the stickiness - I feel it is my right to put a moratorium on this child's living room drinking privileges) - however, daily I have to battle this same child over this same issue. I am just exhausted from the fight - and I feel like I do it alone. But if that wasn't enough, my husband gets tired of hearing it - and instead of roping the bulls, he goes for the cowboy that is barely holding on to the saddle to begin with.
I am tired - and whiny. Ugh. Goodnight cruel world. (I don't mean it! Praise the Lord His mercies are new every morning - and the way I see it - the quicker I get to sleep - the quicker that morning will be coming!)

Sucking the Life Out of Me

I don't like to rant about my children, and what little ogres they can be. Honestly, God spared nothing in this mother's heart of affinity and affection for her offspring but there are days when you can at least relate with the animal mothers that eat their young. Tonight was one of those nights for me. I was very excruciatingly sleepy around 8 pm but was visiting with family and did not get in bed until closer to 11 pm. My 9 yo son was staying up with his sisters and cousins and friend, and asked if he could wait a while to go to bed - so I said he could come to bed at 11:30 but not to wake me. Then somewhere around 11:30 as I was just starting to doze off, he came in and leaned over my sleeping body and asked if he could stay up just a little bit longer - they had gotten into some game and he wanted to finish. I said alright, but NOT to wake me again. At 12:30, I saw the room where I was sleeping was lit up, and heard a loud buzzing sound - and found my son had turned on the light and had started a nebulizer (used for breathing treatments for asthmatics). It was his cousin's and he just wanted to check it out. I asked him WHAT on earth he was doing. He must have realized he had provoked some sort of murderous rage, and turned everything off and left the room. I laid there angry, unable to just drift back to sleep, when the realization hit me that it was almost 1 am and he is still awake and that whatever game he had been playing was obviously over. I am tired, angry and ever so frustrated at the inability to get this child to understand how hateful it is to wake someone when they are sleeping. I have two children that have no regard for this, and I am not sure how they have gotten the idea that whatever they want to do is more important than a person's rest. I stormed out there and drug his little butt to bed. He listened to me as I explained that tomorrow I have to function without having had enough sleep and he apologized. I am trying to consciously parent my children the way the Lord parents me, but the thought crossed my mind a little while ago - as I lay in bed too frustrated to sleep again that God doesn't experience sleep deprivation. I hope He will help me be patient, as He is always patient with me. I have never woken Him up - but I know I have grieved His heart.

SPRING Forward!

Don't forget tonight to set your clocks forward! I was just reading a very interesting article about Daylight Savings time. The article explains why it is more difficult to "spring" forward than it is to "fall" back, and offers some helpful suggestions to keep your sleep cycle consistent.
I also learned that Ben Franklin is the one that originally conceived the idea of "daylight savings time". I suppose the fact that you had to dip candles or burn oil must have made finding a way to make the most of the daylight hours more a necessity than it is now.
I also found this web-page that explains the history of Daylight Savings Time and anything else you could want to know about it. This year it is more than 2 weeks earlier than it was on last year's "spring forward" date of April 2nd. And did you know that there are many places in the world and even in the United States (Arizona for one) that do not observe Daylight Savings Time.
Interesting stuff. I didn't learn this in school people.