one of those days

I stayed up a little too late last night trying to finish my book (Attachments)(love it)(reading for the second time)(you need to read it), and it was only just after 11pm when I fell asleep, it wasn’t 2am or anything, but I was a wreck. Just completely exhausted. Anyway, so that was fine and all, but then Preston decided to get up at his usual-as-of-late wake-up time of 5:30am. Dude.

So, whatever. He’s two. He can’t read a clock, and even though we darken his room, light still gets in around the edges of the window covering, so maybe he’ll sleep in when he’s 12 or something. But really, his early wake time is not something that would ruin my day. At the same time, I do not have the ability to fall back asleep after being woken up, and maybe you can function on six hours of sleep, but I need more to be able to be a contributing member of society. And lack of sleep can make some other things a lot worse than they really are.

For instance.

My right knee was still hurting from the race on Sunday, my teeth were still hurting from the fillings I got on Friday, and my clothes were fitting a bit tight from all the emotional-eating I did on the weekend. Either Noah or I have been out every evening for longer than I can remember and I was burning out just a little.

Noah usually drives himself to work, and then I hop into the driver’s seat and drive back home. Except this morning the kid mirror was down and I hit my head on it HARD and, well, I just kind of broke down. I’m not a crier, but goodness, that sent me over the edge.

So, we got home and I was carrying Preston and my smoothie, and I went to unlock the door, and spilled said smoothie all over myself and the front step. To which Liliana said, “You spilled your smoothie AGAIN?!” Yes. Thank you for pointing that out.

I told Kaylie she could meet her friend so they could walk to school together, and then I misread the clock when I went to take a shower and made her late by 10 minutes. Super.

I had McDonald’s for breakfast (BLT bagel) because I was feeling self-destructive.

The younger two kids and I met Venessa and Ronan at Costco because we haven’t done groceries in about two and a half weeks and things were getting a bit desperate. (Or, you know, as “desperate” as it gets in a middle-class North American home.) I didn’t handle it well. By the end I was ready to lose it, and then Preston started yelling, “MEH FEN! MEH FEN!” and a cashier had to come stop me and say, “He’s trying to tell you that he sees his friend.” And there was Kesler, at the till right behind us. I clued into what he was saying, but couldn’t figure out why he was calling the cashier his friend. Because I didn’t see Kesler. Whoops.

When we finally got to the van, I couldn’t put the groceries in the trunk because the Chariot was still in there. Again. Now here’s the thing: A month and a half ago, I asked Noah to take the stroller out of the trunk. I did THREE MORE GROCERY SHOPS (and three more angry texts to Noah) before he finally took it out. And then I put it back in to take the boys walking with Venessa and Ronan a few weeks ago and forgot it in there AGAIN, so when I opened the trunk, I may have sent Noah an all-caps, full-of-curse-words text. Because at this point, that stupid stroller in the trunk is just a really, really bad joke I’m playing on myself.

I got the kids Costco hot dogs for lunch, as we do, but took them home to eat because I had a lot of perishables and I didn’t want them sitting long. So when we got home, I brought the kids inside and set them up with lunch, and then completely forgot about the groceries. FOR THREE HOURS. It is WARM out there. I felt like the biggest idiot ever when I realized they were out there still, and may have sprinted outside. Thankfully, the meat I bought was kept cold by the frozen strawberries and blueberries. I don’t know that the berries are going to survive, though. I don’t know if any of it is going to survive, I just put it all in the fridge/freezer and am hoping for the best. “The best” being “no food poisoning”.

At that point I was just ready to give up. It would be better that I just quit the day right then before I screwed something else up.

But thing looked up. Preston napped for 2.5 hours (his usual is 1.5), Liliana coloured quietly all afternoon, I got to spend a few hours in my garden after picking up Kaylie and Noah, I caught up on a bunch of things I needed to get caught up with, and I hung out and watched a movie with Noah for the first time in forever.

And tomorrow is another day.