Let me Check my Schedule

I wonder if I should be concerned about the amount of time I spend alone.  I spend a lot of time alone.  I'm actually a little bit embarrassed to admit how much time I spend by myself. 

I have reasons (excuses). I work very hard.  I spend 8 hours a day with my *A* game.  I need to know multiple business processes and recognize multiple product types.  One mistake and my company can lose money.  I like to think I have a strong work ethic and I don't like to make mistakes.  I carry it personally, so screwing up is not an option.  I need to be decisive.  Work can be stressful only because I make it so.  I manage people and my job is to be really super personable.  It's not just my job, though.  I enjoy being kind and compassionate towards people.  I think it's important to be caring towards others, because everyone is fighting a battle of some sort.  But sometimes, it can be taxing to be nice to that person in the grocery store when all you want to do is tell them to move their slow, fat ass out of way so you can reach the Activia yogurt.  Or to the guy banging on my car window this morning - while I'm in the drive thru line with my son in the back seat - because I won't give him a quarter so he can go buy a smoke off someone. I had some choice words for this guy telling me I have more money than he'll ever have.  That may be so, dude, but I've also worked my ass off for it, so why don't you go get a job and then we'll talk.  Instead, I just smiled.  

I'm a single mother to a very busy 7 year old boy, and that's a full time job in itself.  Homework and reading and hockey and soccer and he asks, "Why?" an awful lot.  He's an only child, he needs (wants) me to play with him and entertain him and interact.  I can't say, "Go play with your brother."  And I don't really enjoy playing hockey.  I'm a 'Game of Life' whiz, let me say.  Me time, often, is quiet time.

I have friends.  Really, really great friends.  Like awesome friends.  I have single friends and married friends.  I have new friends and old friends.  I have friends with kids and friends without.  I have friends that have been there with me through thick and thin, and friends who I know would be should the need arise.  I am so blessed by the people I have in my life.  But schedules are difficult to coordinate, and a social life is expensive. 

I'm tired.

I'm exhausted.  I look forward to getting home and putting on my fleece jammie pants, my favourite hoodie, flipping on the t.v. and watching 'Dancing with the Stars'.  I look forward to eating chocolate when no ones watching.  I look forward to Grey's Anatomy.  In fact, it's a highlight of my week.  I love my computer and my iPhone and stupid little word games that shut off my brain. 

I'm a homebody by nature.  I can easily watch a documentary on Thailand and feel completely content that it's there and that I've seen it without actually having to experience it.  I can read a book about a love story written in France and feel as though I've lived in France for my whole life.  I can imagine stories in my mind and feel as though I'm missing nothing of the world.

I love going to bed.  I have a really, really comfy bed and an awesome duvet.  After Q was born and I suffered post partum depression, sleep was instrumental in my recovery.  I notice whenever I get silly and super stressed and anxious, it's usually because I haven't had enough sleep.  And enough sleep for some is 6-8 hours, but for me...10 hours is perfect, but I can function on 8.  Sleep is my coping mechanism.  It keeps me sane. 

But I have to wonder if there is more to life than the one I'm living.   While I'm sitting at home scrolling through Pinterest, people are out there....living.  While I'm playing 'Words with Friends', there are real live friends out there for the taking.  I wonder if I'm missing out on the finer things in life, and why am I okay with it?  Is it fear? Am I so comfortable in my bubble, too fearful to see what's outside?  Is it complacency?  Coming home to my jammies is so easy.  I'm so concerned with my life meaning something and yet I'm not really doing anything to make it so.  My greatest fear is dying and my tombstone reading, "Who?" but at the rate I'm going, people might just wonder where User 3738499 went on Draw Something. 

Even my mom (extreme irony here) says I need to get out more.  She gets out more than I do, and she's more than 20 years older than me.  I mean, if anyone should be getting 10 hours per night, it's her.  Right, Ma?

So, I guess what I'm saying is....have a free evening?  Give me a call.  I'm free.  I'm reaaaaaaaaally free.  Except on Thursdays, cuz that's Grey's Anatomy.  I guess there's PVR, though.  I could PVR it...Okay, so ya I'm free.

Sleep Training

Oh. My. Gosh.  You guys.  I'm exhausted.

Sleep training a 7 year old is just as tiring as sleep training a 7 month old, and only just a little bit more frustrating.  Or maybe a whole lot more frustrating, because holy moly guys, he's 7.  And you think that you can rationalize with a 7 year old in a way you cannot with a 7 month old.  You think you can talk them into sleeping alone, and talk away all the fears and such.  But you can't.  Then you start to get all angry with yourself because, sigh...you could have done this seven years ago and then you wouldn't be doing it now. 

I haven't slept through the night since Q has started sleeping in his own bed.  Well, that's not entirely true.  I slept through the night last night, but that's because I was so completely exhausted that I fell asleep in Q's bed with him at 9 pm and didn't wake up until 6 am this morning when I had to pee really, really bad.  But before last night, I hadn't slept through the night since this whole *experience* began.

I think it's harder on me than it is on him. 

He either calls for me or crawls in with me every night.  The other night, he called for me and I was in a deep deep sleep, dreaming about talking to an employee and all of the sudden he starts calling me, "Mommy" and I start to get all weirded out and then he says it louder, "Mommy!!" and that one wakes me up...

And I'm all sleeping with one eye open, every sneeze, every move, every breath I listen for, hoping he's sleeping and sleeping soundly. 

Then, just when we start to make some progress - he goes to his daddy's and we get to start all over again.

I always say that I need at least 9 hours of sleep in order to be beautiful...so man, I'm gonna be an ugly momma pretty soon.  All *this* does not just happen.  My sanity also hinges on sleep.  And I'm sure that's not just an exaggeration...

Then I wake up every night and reach for his little hand...and he's not there. 

I Must Be Dreaming

In this very serious post, I referenced a lighter side of me and my sleep - namely my dreams.

To be fair, I do sleep a lot.  Like more than the average single mom who works full time.  My free time is not spent baking or cleaning, it's spent sleeping.  I'm not afraid to admit it, it's what makes me sane.  And beautiful.  At least, that 's what people say...  If I don't get on average 9-10 hours, I'm grumpy as all get out...and the frown lines do nothing for a pretty face, neither do the bags under my eyes.

Dreams.  What do they mean?  How does your sub-conscious come up with that shit?  Seriously? 

I once had a dream that I was at a wedding where the groomsmen were albino matadors wearing fluorescent green and blue sombreros and I was the one who was overdressed.  I'm not even joking.  My conscious can't even come up with something that elaborate.  And no I did not watch 'Say Yes to the Dress' and 'The Three Amigos' back to back.  That might explain things a little better.  But no...

I have a re-occurring dream that I'm going on a trip with my best friend (to Glasgow, Vegas...) and we've booked the trip, I really don't want to go, and I don't have a passport.  We get to the airport, we're checking in, I'm sweating like crazy...they ask for my passport, and I have to tell them I don't have one.  Everyone looks at me in shock, my best friend glaring...and I have to feign stupidity - "I had no idea I needed one"  I say quietly.  We all know it's lie.  Sometimes I actually even get to the boarding lounge before I get caught, but I always, always get caught.

I go to work in my pajamas because I cannot find my work clothes.  Last night, I returned to work after a weeks holiday (totally true) and I didn't recognize any of my employees.  And instead of 16, I had 101.  I couldn't recognize one.  It didn't help that 5 of them were wearing Burqas.  And they had renovated the whole building to make it look like an underground tunnel, so I couldn't find my office, let alone my clipboard.  There were parcels and mail everywhere - on the floor, under tables, piled high on top of tables, in the crevices of the cave.  No one seemed to notice, or even care.  And there was a leak in the ceiling.

While looking for a new home, I had a dream we were out and about looking at houses when a spaceship appeared in the sky.  It was actually shaped like a ship - a cruise ship.  It was totally normal that an alien spaceship landed in front of us.  We just kept looking at this yellow house with a little picket fence and a park by a lake.  Until my limbs froze and I couldn't walk a single step.  Looking back on it now, it was probably the aliens who had paralyzed me. 

There was the dream that I had lost both my hands.  I woke up in a sweat, and realized that I was sleeping in the fetal position with my hands tucked between my knees and I was cutting off the circulation to them. 

I have dreams all the time that my teeth are falling out.  Like the front one that everyone can see, and I have no idea how I'm going to cover it up.  How am I going to fix it?  How much is it going to cost?  Even in my dreams I am so totally practical.  And afraid of the dentist.  Even in my dreams, the dentist haunts me. 

I had a terrifying dream that I was kidnapped by the Israeli government and trained as a soldier and had to escape by hiding in a tree for 10 days in the snow. 

Yes, someone who sleeps as much as I should have as many dreams as I do...but what are they all about?  They're ridiculously outrageous.  They're incredibly vivid.  Full of colour and emotion and crazy.  People from my past that I haven't even thought of in years suddenly pop up in a dream.  There are dreams filled with crazy romance and love.  The likes of which I've not experienced before.  But I can never see his face.  I wonder who he is and whether I'll ever meet him.