Oh, the cruel nature of a twisted sleep cycle. For two, maybe three nights last week, Jamie slept through the night. Still no new teeth. Now he’s back to being up all the damn time and I’m more exhausted than ever. I forgot to put shoes on him this morning. Shoes!
My sanity has been mostly saved in this time of sleep turmoil by help from my mother and my friends. I used to think it was so nice that my parents lived just far enough away that visits had to be planned. No drop-ins, you know? Enough time to hide the porn and the crack pipe (or whatever I felt was incriminating that week). But now that their grandchildren live with me, I sure wish they lived next door. Tony was away this weekend and my mom is the reason I was able to do this:
Sunday was the Muds to Suds run in Ferndale, and my Baby Boot Camp team went all out. We were filthy. And mom watched the kids for the entire hour I was running and then cleaning off mud. She also watched them the night before when Charles threw an epic tantrum, complete with vomiting, and Jamie had a blowout diaper. That woman is amazing, and I’m so, so glad she was there to help. Doing things like the mud run make me feel almost like I have a life outside of motherhood.
Despite the general busyness of our schedules in the Cook household, I made a date to see some girlfriends last night. It helps me stay, um, no grounded so much, which is what people always say, but something else. Smart? More than just a mom? Grounded is washing out poopy diapers and doing the dishes. With my girlfriends, I feel elevated. Once more, it’s a chance to have a life outside of motherhood. It’s a chance to discuss ideas rather than things and people, a chance to look beyond our insular lives (well, mine’s insular; everyone else’s in the group might be much more expansive).
A few months back, a small group of us started a book club. We have read two books so far, two very different books, both totally engrossing. I’m excited for our next selection, though it is yet to be determined.
What I’m not excited for is the infringement of this new sleep non-pattern on my reading time. I’m so tired after the kids go to bed that I don’t read more than a chapter or two of whatever book I have at the moment. Not my preferred method of working through a book.
I recently read something amazing, and maybe you’d like to read it, too: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. It was psychotic, in a good way. I didn’t know who I was rooting for until the very end. I was honestly surprised, something that doesn’t often happen. And the surprise wasn’t contrived, like how you sometimes are sure that one person is the killer but then it turns out that all the novel’s clues were just coincidences and the killer was another character entirely but none of events leading up to the reveal would have ever allowed you to figure that out. I hate those. No, this was better than that. It was awesome, really, and I guess I kind of liked being jerked around by the author in that way, made to like both characters even though they were both totally reprehensible.
So yeah, read that. If you can stay awake to do so. I can’t. I’m reading IQ84 and am totally lost because of lack of continuity; I keep falling asleep, and not because the book is boring. At least I’m falling asleep reading my own books, though. Tony keeps falling asleep while he reads books to Charles. He just gets slower and slower and quieter and quieter until he drops off. Charles takes it pretty well, coming to find me or just going to sleep himself. I just laugh.
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