Exhaustion

Have you ever been so tired, so wiped out, you felt like you couldn't even think anymore?

I am so there. I could cry from the frustration of it. Eyes burning, throat aching because you are holding it all in kind of cry. With every passing day, I feel like I am getting more and more tired and run down. I don't want to clean, I don't want to do laundry, I don't want to exercise, I don't want to teach, I don't want to cook....

The house hasn't been spotless in weeks. Which, of course, for a person that gets annoyed by mess, isn't a good thing. Mom came over last week and I was so proud of her... Her eyes didn't bug out of her head... She just said, "yep, it does look like a bomb went off in here," and didn't say a word when I replied, "I really don't care right now."


Laundry is a must. We can't go around naked for lack of clean clothes.

Exercise might not be essential.... I'm not sure. Somehow, without touching my elliptical I am maintaining 120.... but I can feel the difference!!! It doesn't take long to lose the "fit" shape when you don't stick with the routine.

Homeschooling the kids makes teaching pretty essential.... In the exhaustion, the patience has flown out the window. Even the little snipping at each other that most siblings will do drives me batty. There are moments I wonder if duct tape is illegal. It isn't nice anyway. Don't worry. I won't actually use duct tape on them. Every once in awhile I do just wonder... I'm pretty sure that duct tape advertises that it can hold anything together.... Even running mouths?????? Just a thought. Really.

Cooking is also extremely important... Maybe I could live on carrot sticks, bagged salad and apples, but I don't think the meat-and-potatoes hubby or the kids would really appreciate such things. J wants to eat by noon every day so when he leaves on his bicycle (what a good man, he is exercising WAY more than I am at this point!!) everything is well digested and doesn't threaten to come back up due to vigorous activity. But in order to have lunchsupperdinner on the table by noon, I have to get up long before that. "Sleep in and order a pizza," you say. Do you know what a pizza costs these days?? I could feed our family for two days for the same price as a pizza. Plus, since I am being so bare-my-soul, show-my-vulnerable-under-belly honest here, even if I did have the option to just sleep and sleep and not worry about waking up and taking care of anything or anyone, I CAN'T. Hours before I am ready to wake up and face the world, my brain turns back on with a sudden flip of a switch... Or mayabe in never shuts off... Thousands of thoughts race through my head... What I need to do, what I haven't done, what I should do, will this work out? Will that person be ok? Should I put my two cents in over here? Was that "two cents" too much? Am I doing this right? Did I screw that up completely? Now there has been a fatality where J works and so I have that much MORE swimming in my head.... How much will come down on him because he is party of the "safety commity"? How are they even handling walking back into the building?? When will the funeral and calling hours be? Will we be in town for them? And most of all, one I never gave TOO much thought to before, is he safe there??.... DEAR GOD, keep J safe at work today. PLEASE.

I am just SO TIRED. Every day I get myself out of bed and run through a little list in my head of all the things I would like to accomplish today.... And by the time I get down the hall and into the dining room, my ambition and motivation for any of it is gone. I'd love to throw everyone a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and go lock myself back in my room. But then I think I would be a shoe-in for bad-mom-and-wife-of-the-year award. Rest. I need rest, I think. Sleep I get every night. Probably not as much as I should, but I do sleep. I don't think I've been able to REST, though, in a while. And the conclusion I am coming to? Without that rest, I will eventually crash and crash hard, and that crash seems closer and closer with each passing day.