Three days! Three whole days since I last posted, and the question of the day is, have you missed me? Maybe you thought I went ahead and moved to Yemin Moshe, without so much as a see ya later, ‘gator! Lots of things have been going on, but first and foremost, I am oh, so tired. All I need is one night of uninterrupted sleep and I’ll be good as new. Or good as something; something that is better than tired. I won’t go into why I’m tired because I promised God I wouldn’t. One can’t go around breaking promises to God because Who Knows What Might Happen.
The fact that I’m tired hasn’t gone unnoticed on the home front. It’s not hard to pick up on the occasional (OK, maybe more than occasional) crabby attitude, the dazed look I sport more and more often, and the ever-growing circles that have set up camp below my eyes. Each day I plan to go to bed “early” but it never seems to happen. Whether it’s Alison getting a sliver of fingernail embedded in her throat (and just try telling a child with an aberrant lingual frenulum to stick her tongue out, so you can grab the sliver with tweezers) or Blythe deciding to wake up on the hour, each hour, until midnight – something comes up. So the other day I noticed myself falling asleep at stop lights and was determined to get to bed by 9:00, even if the house did look like a tornado wound its way through our rooms, destroying things in its path.
But then… Alison decided it would be a good night to play the just-one-more-thing-Mommy game. As the clock crept ever forward and I still hadn’t pumped or folded the two loads of laundry on my bed, sleep seemed as far away as it had that morning as I dragged myself to the shower. Finally, Alison stayed in bed and I wearily shuffled to my room and found this…
There are a few things you might notice about this photo.
One: The time on the clock says 7:25, because did I go find my camera and take a picture before diving into bed? No I did not. So this is a re-creation (not to be confused with a dramatization) of what I found, but rest assured this is exactly the way it looked. Although Jeremy may or may not have been lounging there waiting for me the night before.
Two: See the beautiful rose? Alison did get up out of bed one more time and so loved the idea of me finding a rose on my pillow that she asked Daddy to please surprise her with a rose when she woke up in the morning. Which he did, because he’s the best daddy, ever.
Three: There is a note behind the rose. I do have a close-up picture of the note, but I decided I’d keep it to myself because it’s mine and have I ever mentioned that I don’t like to share? But suffice it to say, if ever we find ourselves on one of those game shows where we could win a million dollars by correctly answering the question, “What movie does your husband quote from most often?” the answer would be Indecent Proposal even though he might be tempted to say Forrest Gump.
Four: See how smooth the bed looks? There is no laundry on the bed. Out of camera range, there is no pile of clothing waiting to be folded. The laundry was folded and put away by my husband. The man who hates folding laundry more than any other chore, besides maybe cleaning up diarrhea and even that would be a close call.
Five: A mere ten minutes later, I was asleep. Not just ready for bed, not just in bed, but asleep.
I didn’t necessarily get to stay asleep. But the sentiment? It just can’t be beat.
