I fell asleep around 11:15 last night only to be wakened by my husband turning on the tv at midnight. He wanted to watch a British comedy and was hoping to get away with it. LOL I managed to fall back into a sound sleep until 3:45, when the dog started barking to be let out. I waited a good 10 minutes for her and she wouldn’t come back in. It turns out that the stairs leading up to our porch are covered in snow and ice and she couldn’t ge up! I had to go all the way down to the basement and let her into the house that way.


4:15am….back in bed, listening to the sound of dh snore. Zoe woke up and cried for a drink. I obliged. 4:30am…I knew I was awake for good.


Sleep is my absolute biggest issue and I think it has the worst impact lately on my mood and ability to manage stress. We can’t seem to clear our bedroom of kids and cats and I just don’t sleep soundly enough anymore. Every night, we have Zoe with us. The whole …move her to her bed… thing…. It didn’t work. Part of me is also ok with that. I’m not completely ready to let go. But…every night Aidan crawls into our bed once I’m asleep and Alex often sneaks in too. Sometimes Alex pulls the crib mattress out from under our bed and lies on it and other times….he snuggles in between Aidan, Zoe, Thomas and I.


The cats refuse to sleep anywhere else but in our room, and … they are in and out all night long. If we leave the door to our bedroom open, I can hear them playing out in the hallway throughout the course of the night and…I hear the sounds of the house. With the door closed, they demand to be let in and out. It’s a control issue, I think! “Oh, look..mom is sleeping soundly…I better show her who’s in charge”! LOL


The good news is…I’m going to get to see the sun rise this morning…which…I love.
The bad news is…I’ll probably be crabby by dinnertime….oh, who am I kidding…lunchtime! LOL


I’ve been crabby anyway lately. Maybe this early morning awakening is just the chance that I need to get caught up on my blogs and sort through the last couple of weeks.
My mom turned 65 on Feb. 11th. I haven’t been home in ~10 years and so this year I worked it out with Thomas that I could go to celebrate her birthday with her. It was a whirlwind trip. I stayed up on Feb. 10th all night because I had to leave for the airport at 3am and was afraid I would miss my alarm. I drove to the Twin Cities and caught my flight at 6am…and arrived in TX at 8:30.
My mom picked me up at the airport and then when she went to work, I got busy with her Birthday gift..which was going through her closets and kitchen drawers and cleaning things out for her. She had boxes and bags of papers, letters, folders, advertisements…you name it…tucked away throughout her room and closets. Both of her walk-in closets were so full that … it wasn’t possible to even use them for clothing anymore. She had a trunk full of old letters… I felt really concerned for her when I realized how long this had been going on. Her mail dated back to 1998/1999. Much of it was unopened. Her nursing journals dating back to 10 years were mostly still in the plastic wrap that they were mailed in.
I’m not judging her…I understand what it is like to get that overwhelmed…I just felt sad for her that she was at that place.
I threw away a good 8 garbage bags full of junkmail and sorted the rest into 3 small boxes for us to go through.


By the time she got home, I was exhausted, but happy to be able to go out with her. We went to a nice steak house with my brother and then came home to watch a movie…where I promptly fell asleep.
Speaking of sleep…that night I slept better than I have in at least 10 years! My mom and I were sharing a bed and she said that I slept so soundly that when she got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night I had sprawled out across the bed and she couldn’t wake me or get me to move. She had to go and sleep on the sofa! I, on the other hand, slept soundly in the bed and woke up feeling great!


That morning, we had breakfast, sorted through some papers, went shopping, came home and did some last minute spackling and then we were headed back to the airport.
The best part of the trip besides spending time with my mom? Spending time witout little ones jumping all over me. Don’t get me wrong…I love my children..but I feel so drained lately. I am dealing with hard ages and a lot of them at once…and even though I spend all day alone, I’m not alone. I have no adult contact, but I have children with me all of the time. While I was at my mom’s house, when I cleaned something it stayed clean. I could sort through things without a toddler ripping things out of boxes. I could clean up the kitchen and walk away and not have kids follow behind me and pull out the cereal and spill it on the floor.


I feel really burned out lately by the constant cycle of mess-making and cleaning up. I miss having a space in my world that is just mine.


I got home from the trip late Thursday night. Friday, I worked on 2 papers for my Readings in Biology class, Saturday I cleaned for 8 hours for card club and then hosted the card club valentine’s party. Sunday I finished 3 more papers for class, went to book club, took a quiz for med term and started preparing for the next chapter quiz. Monday I took the next quiz and finished a patient chart review.


By Tuesday, I was worn out, but I had 2 med term exams to study for.


The exams were Friday and between Tues. and Friday…well…let’s just say I didn’t manage the stress well. I don’t get uninterrupted study time and as the week came crashing to an end, I felt overwhelmed and panicked.


In all honesty, I put too much pressure on myself to get top marks right now. I taught with the professors in charge of these classes and I’m afraid if I am not at the top of the class that I will be a private joke to them. So…my goal isn’t just to get an A, it is…to get the highest A. So far, I’m pretty close to that in both classes. After turning in 10 essays for the readings class, my average is a 97.5. In medical terminology, my average going into the first exams was above a 100%. I got a 100% on the pronunciation exam and the written exam turned out to be easy. I didn’t get my official score yet, but I went through every question at the very end and there were only 2 that I didn’t know for sure…out of 70 something. I think I’m safe there.


That’s good…and bad. I have set myself up to be too stressed about it all in part because it is the only thing that I have outside of the kids right now. I made my whole family miserable though studying for it!
It wasn’t just the studying making me miserable though. I have been going through a bit of a winter depression of sorts. I’ve been feeling lonely and overwhelmed with the kids. We’ve all been stuck indoors for the last several months and it is wearing thin on all of us. Every day, I hear myself say things like “don’t jump off of the piano. The living room is not a play area!” LOL I love winter, but I am ready for spring.


I was so depressed last week that I choked back tears most days. I couldn’t sleep, felt sad and was really down on myself.

Friday I went in to take my exams. I ran into my lab partner from Anatomy who was coming out of the testing center as I was going in. We talked for maybe 5 minutes, but just that brief conversation and connection completely turned my day around.


I feel like I need to listen to what my body is telling me…something isn’t working about my life…and that is that I don’t have regular contact with people and feel competent. There is nothing wrong with recognizing that and then coming up with a plan to change things.


The kids have also been struggling with winter. Andrew is as moody as it gets and is nearly impossible to get out of bed. Alex has pretty much given up on homework and just wants his friends over all of the time. Aidan doesn’t want to get up for school anymore and he is just a live wire in the house..running, jumping, throwing…Zoe is absolutely a wild child. She is an absolute whirlwind of mess and tantrums. I can’t wait to be able to take her outside in the backyard this summer to feed the fish and run in the backyard.


My saving grace right now is Amanda…who has been cooking with me every night since Christmas-time. We cook together, she sets the table….and on Wed. nights she has been making the Kaesspaetzle all by herself for the family. She helps with the babysitting and has been a real help. I don’t know what I’d do without her! She has been amazing lately!
So…big rant aside…what am I going to do about this?


Well…I signed up for YMCA membership for starters. They have $1/hr childcare and a wonderful kid’s play area attached to it. I already started going. I’m going to try and get there at least 3-4 times a week just to get a break. I figure that I can exercise (which is good for me) and Zoe will have some playtime away from teh house (good for us both). If I have to, I can even just sit in the locker room if I want…but at least I can get a break!


I’ve gone swimming twice and worked out on the bike once….


I can’t just sit back and do nothing to help myself.


Today …I’m also buying myself a pack of ear plugs!