Sleep

I normally look forward to the end of the day when I can close my eyes, breathe deeply, and let thoughts of the day play through my mind as I drift off to sleep.  It usually takes me all of five minutes to be asleep once I lay my head on the pillow and snuggle into the covers.  I generally sleep like a rock until the alarm rings at 6 a.m. – though I have this crazy habit of talking in my sleep on occasion, and I usually wake myself up when I do.

Good deep sleep has been somewhat elusive for me lately.  In fact, I actually told Jared just tonight that I dread sleep these days.  He wondered who I was and what I had done with his wife.  My sleep talking has progressed to attempts at acting out my dreams.  Would you call that sleep acting??  I’m sure it would be quite comical to witness.  But for me, it’s terribly frustrating.  You see, the dreams I’m acting out are just a continuation of what I do all day long: PARENTING!!  I don’t even get to take a break to catch my breath.  I spend the night trying to figure out why in the world Josh left an entire brick of cheese on the counter – and then wake myself up as I’m actually getting out of bed to go take care of the stupid cheese!  Or I’m embarrassed and frustrated because Rachel has just knocked over a bunch of stuff in Grandma’s living room – and I sit straight up in bed expressing my frustration that she didn’t listen when I told her not to go in there!  And then I tell Caleb to not climb on that fence – and I jump out of bed to catch him because he’s falling.   I wake myself up multiple times a night, and it’s exhausting!!  And Jared sleeps through it all  Though somehow he manages to always grab me as I’m diving out of bed to save someone from being injured.  But he never remembers it in the morning.  I guess getting 4-5 hours of sleep for 10 weeks straight will do that to a person.

So here I sit.  It’s 10:45 p.m.  Jared has been sawing logs for the past 45 minutes, and I don’t want to go to my crazy world of pseudo-sleep.  I’m pretty sure I know what my problem is.  Stress.  Uh huh.  I know, I know.  I need to learn how to relax, let it go, turn it off, shut it down.  Believe me -  I would love to!  Not only is it exhausting, but I’m really worried that I’m going to injure myself one of these nights!

I’m just no good at single parenting – and I admit that freely.  And perhaps I’m a little too high strung…but just a smidge, not much.  I’m pretty sure things will calm back down after tax season is over.    And then it will all catch up to me, and I’ll be the one sawing logs by 10 p.m.  But until then, I might have to pad the walls and all the furniture!!