I know that we’re heading rapidly toward the shortest day of the year, but today felt like the longest. It was daylight savings, a long dark nightmare from we can’t seem to escape. Much like our current presidency, it didn’t even remotely get the popular vote, but somehow it still won’t go away.
So it’s 7:40 pm and my kids, despite napping from roughly 3-6:15pm, are out of sorts. I feel like we all have jet lag from going to Asia for a long weekend. I woke up at 545 am (with a real feel of 645). That was a hell of a long time ago.
Sometimes, I try to take advantage of extra time and relax. This, I am bad at.
Today, I thought, with my kids playing Legos on the floor and my husband zoning out in the rocking chair in front of the pellet stove, it’s a perfect time for me to finally sit on the couch and read the newspaper — a longtime dream. But as soon as I sat down, Eliza crawled in my lap and bounced around rambunctiously, perilously close to my coffee mug on the windowsill. This was not relaxing
The dog sat down on the paper. Phoebe, across the room, starting crying out of Lego frustration. I couldn’t get up to help her because of Eliza and Phoebe in my lap.
Why is trying to relax so stressful?
I gave up and went back to doing things. I made eggs for breakfast, followed by a from-scratch chicken soup, a veggie lasagna, more eggs and also bacon for second breakfast, and lunch…. all before noon. Then we went to a birthday party for a few hours. I came home and made some cookies, then finished up an ebook I had due today. Cooked the lasagna and made a salad. Had dinner with my family. And here we are.
How is it still Sunday?
I just subscribed to National Geographic and received four issues in one month, which, don’t get me started on poor user experience, but anyway. I start with the issue on “the science of sleep,” and it was illuminating. Basically, the way modern science sees it, we all become literally certifiably insane when we enter REM sleep — refusing to recognize the difference between reality and fantasy.
But also, this issue went deeply into why sleep is so very important to our health, wellbeing, and cognitive capacity. Basically, being chronically sleep-deprived will turn most of us into a psycho. Which is my excuse.
