Afghan of Exhaustion

It’s 9:55 a.m., and I’m sitting at the breakfast table alone with a poorly-made cappuccino. I was too tired this morning to go for a walk before The Hubby left for work, too tired even to have breakfast with my family. It’s a mystery, this tiredness, sneaking around like a cat burglar and stealing a moment here, a good intention there. I eat, I sleep, I exercise, I take ridiculously expensive vitamins, and I’m. still. exhausted. all. the. time. I mean, I’m thisclose to narcolepsy. Really.

Days like this, I feel a bit like a science experiment gone wrong. Some absent-minded professor mixed the blue potion with the red potion, and now I’m fizzing over and shooting purple smoke and growing limbs and speaking in tongues when all I really want to do is bubble quietly in my beaker.

I have a writing deadline coming up (oo, so official am I!) that would be making me spasm with giddy excitement were I not draped over the furniture like an afghan of exhaustion.* I have a lovely start and a lovely end and lots of lovely intentions for the middle, but I’m having trouble peeling my face off the pillow long enough to write a complete sentence these days. Maybe I should just scrap the lovely intentions and write, “At this point, Mr. and Mrs. Sneeth took a nap. A very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, long nap.”**

The tiredness is also presenting problems with the girls. Have you ever tried to make a three-year-old female comply with your No Talking Before Ten Policy? See, when I wake up in the morning, I need an adrenaline shot, a second adrenaline shot, and a team of coffee-buzzed weight lifters with crowbars just to help pry my eyes open. You could say I’m not a morning person. Natalie, on the other hand, wakes up exploding from all the exciting things she didn’t get to tell us during the night. Like, “Mommy! Hey, MOMMY! Good MORNING! Get up! HI! I have something to TELL YOU! I have EARS! And EYES! And… something else! Ummmmmm? Oh, a MOUTH! AND IT’S TALKING! See my buttylunten? [lifting up her shirt] It’s still GROWING! Hey, wanna play with me? I want Fruit Lips for breakfast! I mean Fruit LOOPS! Fruit Loops have all the colors! See? SEE? See all the really, really, really colors? That one is ORANGE! The orange Fruit Loop is a really, really COLOR! SEE? And see all the other colors? Oh my goodness. I really, REALLY like Fruit Loops! AAAAAA!!!!” I, meanwhile, am writhing in pain and groping around the bed for a mute button and begging Sophie to bring me an espresso IV stat.

Any suggestions on how to get my energy back? Because right now, I’m as productive as a dead fish. (Well, maybe not quite dead, but definitely in critical condition.) Natalie would appreciate being allowed to talk again, and the baby would like to be taken off housecleaning duty, and more than anything, I would love to feel like a normal person again. You know, awake.

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* I really, sincerely apologize for all these similes and metaphors and metaphoric similes and phrases like “afghan of exhaustion.” I can’t help it. I’ve been limiting descriptive comparisons in the Very Official Thing I’m Writing, and the similes have to come out SOMEWHERE.

** The piece doesn’t actually have anything to do with Mr. or Mrs. Sneeth, but! I can see a future for this idea–maybe a short story called “The Grotesquely Long Nap: A Bedtime Story Guaranteed to Put You to Sleep.” Enticing, no?***

*** No.