I am tired. I'm sitting here eating chocolate chips and blankly staring at the computer screen, listening to a podcast, wondering if my hands are larger than normal for a girl or if they're just regular-sized. I kind of want to go to sleep, but the bed is all the way over there, and Barclay will be home any second, and, besides, there's still 14 minutes left of this episode, which I have been unintentionally tuning out and will have to listen to all over again tomorrow.
Also: it's only 9:16. On a Friday night. There is a crazy part of me that feels like Past Me will somehow know that Present Me went to bed at 9:16 on a Friday night and feel really let down or something. And I just can't do that to myself.
Sullivan hates sleep, as I've mentioned. People ask all the time how he's sleeping, so I feel like I'm constantly talking about it. I'm not trying to complain or steer the conversation there, but there it goes. Like a shopping cart with a wonky wheel that just keeps veering off into the shelves and into other customers. (In this simile, you are the other customers, I guess, and I'm sorry about that.) It's probably because I walk around with my eyes half shut and a fine strand of drool pendulating from my lower lip. Gross. I know. I'm sorry.
Not only am I constantly talking about it, I'm constantly thinking about it. I obsess over it. I dream (daydream) about it. When I finally get a couple of hours of it in a row, I think about it the way a person thinks about a recent vacation to a white beach. I want to go back, but I know that I probably won't be able to anytime soon. And when you tell me about your recent vacation, I'll try so dang hard to muster up feelings of joy for you, but I admit right now that it's getting harder and harder to do that, because my son only usually sleeps for 30-90 minutes at a time, night or day. A friend posted on Facebook recently that her five month old has been sleeping through the night since he was six weeks (#soblessed), and it made me cry twice: once right when I read it, and again at midnight that night as Barclay and I were trading off rocking Sullivan for four straight hours because he seemed to think that his crib mattress was made of molten lava instead of soft crib mattress-y mattress material.
(I feel bad when I cry over it. It's not the end of the world, it's not a big deal. Tears just kind of fall out of you, I guess, when your eyes are propped open with toothpicks. Another gross visual; I'm sorry.)
Anyway, I've been napping when he naps and following a bunch of carefully curated advice and someday hopefully it'll all work out so that I can be a rational human being again. And somehow, being a mom is still my favourite thing. I suspect this has something to do with love and oxytocin.
A thing to be thankful for, though: today, the temperature climbed above zero, so I went for a walk. Someone said this to me the other day and I was thankful for the reminder: sometimes exercise is even better than a nap. It's weird, but true.
I didn't know where to walk to, so I just went over to the grocery store. I bought some cream cheese and some cottage cheese and some cheddar cheese (cream cheese for me, cottage cheese for Barclay, cheddar cheese for TO PUT ON EVERYTHING).
In the check-out line, I saw a tabloid magazine with some trashy headline about a celebrity couple who was trying to survive some kind of horrible marital tiff, and across the top of the cover I read, "OVER $16 WORTH OF COUPONS INSIDE". Really? Do people really buy tabloids for the coupons? I feel like the kind of person who cuts coupons is not the same kind of person who wants to look at pictures of celebrity cellulite and relationship train wrecks. Unless the coupons are for TV dinners. Then maybe.
I might just go to sleep, actually.
Also: it's only 9:16. On a Friday night. There is a crazy part of me that feels like Past Me will somehow know that Present Me went to bed at 9:16 on a Friday night and feel really let down or something. And I just can't do that to myself.
Sullivan hates sleep, as I've mentioned. People ask all the time how he's sleeping, so I feel like I'm constantly talking about it. I'm not trying to complain or steer the conversation there, but there it goes. Like a shopping cart with a wonky wheel that just keeps veering off into the shelves and into other customers. (In this simile, you are the other customers, I guess, and I'm sorry about that.) It's probably because I walk around with my eyes half shut and a fine strand of drool pendulating from my lower lip. Gross. I know. I'm sorry.
Not only am I constantly talking about it, I'm constantly thinking about it. I obsess over it. I dream (daydream) about it. When I finally get a couple of hours of it in a row, I think about it the way a person thinks about a recent vacation to a white beach. I want to go back, but I know that I probably won't be able to anytime soon. And when you tell me about your recent vacation, I'll try so dang hard to muster up feelings of joy for you, but I admit right now that it's getting harder and harder to do that, because my son only usually sleeps for 30-90 minutes at a time, night or day. A friend posted on Facebook recently that her five month old has been sleeping through the night since he was six weeks (#soblessed), and it made me cry twice: once right when I read it, and again at midnight that night as Barclay and I were trading off rocking Sullivan for four straight hours because he seemed to think that his crib mattress was made of molten lava instead of soft crib mattress-y mattress material.
(I feel bad when I cry over it. It's not the end of the world, it's not a big deal. Tears just kind of fall out of you, I guess, when your eyes are propped open with toothpicks. Another gross visual; I'm sorry.)
Anyway, I've been napping when he naps and following a bunch of carefully curated advice and someday hopefully it'll all work out so that I can be a rational human being again. And somehow, being a mom is still my favourite thing. I suspect this has something to do with love and oxytocin.
A thing to be thankful for, though: today, the temperature climbed above zero, so I went for a walk. Someone said this to me the other day and I was thankful for the reminder: sometimes exercise is even better than a nap. It's weird, but true.
I didn't know where to walk to, so I just went over to the grocery store. I bought some cream cheese and some cottage cheese and some cheddar cheese (cream cheese for me, cottage cheese for Barclay, cheddar cheese for TO PUT ON EVERYTHING).
In the check-out line, I saw a tabloid magazine with some trashy headline about a celebrity couple who was trying to survive some kind of horrible marital tiff, and across the top of the cover I read, "OVER $16 WORTH OF COUPONS INSIDE". Really? Do people really buy tabloids for the coupons? I feel like the kind of person who cuts coupons is not the same kind of person who wants to look at pictures of celebrity cellulite and relationship train wrecks. Unless the coupons are for TV dinners. Then maybe.
I might just go to sleep, actually.