Magical Sleep

I really didn't understand how amazing sleep was until I got to the point where I never got enough. It's like walking around in a fog with your eyes burning all the time and you still have to make major life decisions. Is it too early to make a New Year's Resolution to get to bed earlier? Yes, I do realize that I am writing this after midnight, but what's a girl to do? Poor Cinderella couldn't go to the ball until all of her regular chores were done. I should finish mine before I play or rest, right?

Um. No. Not right. But why did I have to get to 43 before I realized that? :) There are things more important in life than folding the laundry and sweeping the floor and writing lesson plans and checking your son's math paper. So, when your daughter giggles and you have to choose between chasing her or disciplining her because she simply does not wish to head to bed (She isn't old enough to understand the concept of magical sleep!), which do you choose? Tonight I chose to chase her and her brother up the stairs and tickle them into bed. It was fun and she went to sleep smiling. Why don't I choose that path more often?

I finally decided that I am just too tired to be fun anymore. The weariness of the last year has taken such a toll that I avoid going to bed because it means I have to get up to do it all over again tomorrow. If I stay up, I can deny tomorrow. I can deny that I'm lonely, that my son is sick, that I am just emotionally exhausted. That it is just too hard. But if I head to bed, then it all comes again so much faster. There is no quiet, peaceful moment in the day. Between school, meal preparation, child training, meal preparation, medical phone calls, insurance phone calls, doctor phone calls, oh, and meal preparation, there is never a quiet, peaceful moment. Then the little guys go to bed, the big guys do their own peaceful, quiet thing, and I'm finally able to complete a thought...only I'm too tired to complete a thought...so I deny that I need rest and I deny tomorrow. But what I miss is that it already IS tomorrow! :) So I go to bed late and I'm so not fun anymore.

I know I'm not alone out there...but aren't we so much happier when we are rested? Isn't it easier to deal with the meal preparation and the insurance phone calls, and the medical phone calls, and the loneliness when you have had that magical rest?

It's just a thought... Hopefully you are all reading this in the morning after a lovely 8 hours of sleep and not at 1 AM with bloodshot eyes like mine. :)