I contemplated calling my walking partner this morning at 6:17 a.m. I dialed her number in my head and rehearsed the words, “I just can’t walk today. I’ve got to sleep.” And yet, a miracle propelled me out of bed at 6:19 a.m. I threw back the covers, stood and felt around in the gloom for my walking clothes. My daughter woke up as I was brushing my teeth and with great distress informed me, “I don’t want you to exercise!” and I said, “Yeah, well, I don’t have time to argue. Go get into my bed.”
Once I’m awake and in motion, I’m fine, although I did consider today that my life has been a long struggle to simply get enough sleep. I’m a night-owl who has always had early morning obligations. I returned home after walking, fixed my 9-year old’s school lunch, ate some oatmeal and showered in preparation for the arrival of the kindergarten boy. He’s supposed to arrive at 9 a.m. and at 8:40 a.m., his mother called to let me know he wasn’t coming.
And I did what any sane person who slept only five hours the night before would do: with a towel still like a turban on my wet hair, I laid down on the bed and slept in fits and starts until 10:00 a.m. (Interruptions: turning off daughter’s shower, opening a packaged Rice Krispie treat, hearing odd news-stories on the television, noticing boys coming upstairs to shower, thinking that I must get up . . . ).
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I started this post hours ago . . . life interfered and now I’m heading to bed, after midnight . . . and I’ll have to talk myself into getting up again when the alarm rings in only six hours . . .
By the way, I must say that the high-school version of online school makes me want to stab myself with my red pencil. We just started on Monday. I’m doing my best to hide my hatred of the set-up.
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Oh no. I can unfortunately relate to some of this. If you added up my sleep since Saturday night, it would barely equal one good night’s sleep for a normal person. I am beyond exhausted. It’s hallucination time here. I told hubby as he went off to work that he just might find me rocking myself in the fetal position in the corner when he gets home…
Maybe we all need to go away to a spa where you can just sleep for 3 days straight and all thoughts of guilt and worry about what our kids are doing are sucked out of our brains. I would pay big bucks for that.
Steph
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“Once I’m awake and in motion, I’m fine, although I did consider today that my life has been a long struggle to simply get enough sleep. I’m a night-owl who has always had early morning obligations.”
This describes me exactly. Almost every morning I think “Tonight I’ll go to bed early for sure”, and almost every night I stay up late.
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I really can relate. And the problem is all my fault now. I have trained myself to go to bed at about 11.30 regardless of how I feel. Well, I’m usually so tired in the evenings that the things I say barely make sense anymore. I sit there and stare blankly at a screen or my poor husband. Each morning when I get up I feel exhausted and vow, “Tonight I’m going to bed early! Really!” And then it’s 10 and of course way too early and then, oops, it’s 11.30 again. Stupid of me, I know.
Sometimes I long for somebody to tell me when it’s bedtime.
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My family started a “collection” for me of owls (which I love cuz they are soooo me) – because I am the night owl in the family. I love the nights. I sometimes think that it is a little strange how much I love the darkness; the quiet. Maybe we were vampires in a previous life (I really don’t believe in previous lives). But … I don’t think I rank amongst those that are “sleep deprived”. I’m lucky that I trained my husband (early on) to handle a lot of the morning stuff with the kids (he’s up anyway) and I always schedule as many appointments as I can in late morning. I alert people constantly, “I’m not a morning person”, so they don’t expect me anywhere early. I am not ashamed to admit that I get a good amount of sleep – it took me many years to reach this point. I hope you get caught up -it is difficult enough dealing with “our” days on a full night of sleep.
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ONLINE HIGHSCHOOL is without a doubt 1000% harder on Mom than on the student. We did 10th Grade last year and now she is in school for 11th because I didn’t think we could do another year like that…
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I try to talk myself out of getting up at 6:30 to go exercise every morning. So far it hasn’t worked. But I try very hard every day. 🙂
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