Zombiefied

I feel like a silly college student again, trying to pull an all-nighter. Only this time I'm not silly. I'm not a college student and I have a much, much older body.

But still, I (basically) was up all. night. last night. all.night.

I told the Adults that I would watch Josey and Riot so they could go to a concert. They wanted the kids to spend the night with me but I had a meeting pronto this morning that I had to get ready for. Plus, packing and getting ready for a weekend trip. So I said spending the night wasn't going to work but the kids could stay and the Adults could pick them up on their way home.

I did not know that was going to be 4 a.m.

But I should've figured.

Riot fell asleep at 10:30 like a normal human being. I started gearing Josey up for bedtime but that word means n-o-t-h-i-n-g to her and she looked at me, half-confused.

Finally, at 1:30 a.m., I caved and plugged Spongebob in. She sat in a chair in front of the TV, I laid on the couch and tried to sleep. But I couldn't -not without either my pain meds or tylenol pm and I couldn't take either since I'd have to be driving to meet the Adults for the kid-trade-off.

There's nothing worse then being in pain (OH! my legs, my knees, my calves, my hip, my back!!!), and being oh, so tired and not being able to sleep or really even rest. Because every 90 minutes (at least) she'd come get me to put in a different movie.

At one point, I (a totally chill/not violent person!) wanted to hurl the DVD player out the window when it wouldn't play like TWELVE DVDs in a row. Seriously, work with me! Not even cussing helped.

By about 1:40, I became a not-nice person. She was laying on the couch, whining, fake-coughing, telling me she missed her mom and dad and honestly, I could've cared less. I tried to refrain from telling her that. Instead, I implemented a count-down system where, by the count of three, she better dry it up or she'd "have something to cry about." I'd get to 2 and she'd say, "Okay, I'm drying my tears." (trust me, she was really fine. this is one of her manipulation tools when things aren't going her way.) Next, we did some deep breathing and that worked.

Hour upon hour of Spongebob.

At 2:30, I made her come back on the couch and lay down.

At 3, she said, "Holly, what are you doing?"

I bit back. "I'm trying to sleep, Josey. That's what normal people do at 3 in the morning."

Her dad called at 3:15, said they were about 20 minutes away from our meeting point. I packed the kids up and we were at the gas station 10 minutes early.

She was still hours away from sleep.

I got home at 4 a.m., slept till 7:10 and have been at it ever since.

I'm surprised I'm still functioning. And there hasn't been a tearful meltdown yet.

That's probably coming at some point. Soon.