a Monday

This morning I was so tired I was nearly throwing up. I had been up since 4am when E woke up. I had finally laid back down at 6:20, and E woke up at 6:43. So, being yanked from that 20 minutes of rest – which did not include sleep – sent me into hysterics. I just hadn’t had enough sleep. I was weeping and so forth. I am so close to the edge all the time, it doesn’t take much to push me over it.

I swear to god, one day, as a gift to myself, I’m going to book myself a week at the beach or something, go someplace where I can hear either the ocean or a waterfall in the mountains or something. and I’m going to go sleep. sleep is what I need. uninterrupted sleep. for more than one night in a row. maybe when I finally wean E. maybe I’ll take my laptop and just write. maybe some day.

When I pastored a church, once a month I went into the nearby city, about 30-45 minutes away, and saw a therapist/counselor who actually just had an MSW and then I’d go right around the corner and get a massage. It would take me most of an afternoon to do it and I did it once a month. It kept me sane. I firmly believe that anyone who keeps other people’s secrets for a living (those of us who are pastors are entrusted with TONS of secrets) needs to have a place to “dump” those secrets. It is too much pressure to go around knowing all this stuff about all these people you have to see all the time. In my 300+ member congregation I knew who had a child out of wedlock that their family didn’t know about (60 year old man), who had taken their child for an abortion, who had been married 7 times (2 more than anyone else knew about), who had been raped, who had been sexually molested by their father, who had tried to kill themselves, who lived with a husband who beat her, who was an alcoholic, and it goes on and on. And I was only there for two years! It was a high stress job and high stress jobs need a place for release, a place to be restored.

Mothering two small children is a high stress job (not in the sense that lives are on the line, although, you could probably make a case that in some real sense they are), but it is incredibly stressful to be responsible that two other human beings STAY ALIVE (and healthy and fed and clean and so forth).

My point is — I need to be restored. I no longer have even short/small reserves. I am at the end of my patience and ability to recharge. I need a break. a real break. not some drop off child care for a couple of hours. not even a night out here and there. I’m so far gone I need a significant break. I need to be gone long enough to miss them. and hell, at this point, that might take 3 weeks.

In the time it has taken me to write this post, I have stopped 3 times to either get E off the sofa (he’s standing on it) or out from underneath our bed (he’s stuck under it). I have relocated myself once so I could avoid being mauled by the children as I type. oh and I have stopped E from putting something down the toilet once. sigh.

preventative parenting

This thread scared me because it makes me think I could be there in just a few short years with K. It makes me think that I need to do more things with just her and me. not classes or anything, just normal stuff — errand running, shopping, a park, a lunch date. Which is why having some kind of childcare for E. is even more important. Sometimes I think K is just acting out so badly with me (as opposed to other people) because she craves time with only me. She wants my sole attention, which I can never give her here at the house as long as E is around. I guess I could try to do some stuff with her while he naps, but quite frankly I need that time to sleep myself so I can manage things later in the day. I used to be good about at least playing one game with her and reading some books to her when he was napping. Maybe I should go back to trying to do that more.