Is Everyone Sleeping But Me?

At the risk of tooting my own horn, I've always been a champion sleeper.  I slept through the night at only a couple months old and I've yet to outgrow napping.  When I was younger, I could polish off twelve hours of sleep with less effort that it takes some people to finish seven.  And I've never met a moving vehicle I couldn't snooze in.

But for the last couple of years, as I've started wading into the murky waters of middle age, there have been nights when sleep eludes me.  Thanks to the random updating power of Facebook, I know I'm not alone.  Many of my peers have posted things like "1 a.m. and still wide awake! Don't know why.  So frustrating!"  Or, "Woke up at 3:30 and couldn't go back to sleep.  Will there be enough coffee to get me through the day?!"  (My friends are always worried if their coffee will come through for them in a jamb.  I don't drink coffee, so I know I'm on my own.)

And when I wrote "peers" above, I meant women.  You never see a dude post "I've tried everything and just can't fall asleep.  Guess I'll fold the laundry for my wife since I'm awake anyway."  As a matter of fact, if you see that post, get right with the Lord immediately because the end is surely nigh.

Women have a lot more trouble powering their brains down at night.  Probably because there's so much more voltage running through ours, and there are multiple processes to shut down.  It isn't even necessarily worrying that keeps us up.  Like last night, I was watching TV and got tired and droopy-eyed around 10:00.  I checked on the kids, brushed my teeth, and burrowed into bed.  Then my conscious started acting like a two year old!  You know how a toddler can come back out of the room like a dozen times after you put them to bed, with each excuse being more trivial than the one before?  My mind was doing that last night.

First it went through tomorrow's (today's) schedule.  Okay, so I'll get up and make breakfast for everyone and pack lunches and pick out clothes.  I'll drop the kids off at school then come back to the house and run three miles.  Then I'll have to shower real quick, no time to do my hair - as always, and drive over to the church for that meeting.  Then I'll come home and pick up the stuff for Stretch's end of the year party and head to that.  Oh, gotta remember to talk to her friend's mom about a playdate.  Then I'll have a couple of hours to put away dishes and vacuum, but I need to stop by the store and exchange those shorts first.  Hey, I wonder if there are any cute tops at Loft?

Then my mind pulls the classic toddler trick:  I'm thirsty!  After a cold drink, ideas start popping into my head for that meeting at church.  At first very applicable ones, like team building exercises and announcements we need to make for Sunday morning.  Then I start writing commercials in my head and casting friends' kids in them.  I begin to imagine we have some kind of special effects A/V genius on call at church who can make a very moving video montage that will get everyone giving more to the Backpack Buddies program.  Suddenly my imagination is borrowing from Michael Jackson and friends "We Are the World" video, circa 1985, to end world hunger.  CONSCIOUS, GET BACK IN YOUR ROOM AND GO TO SLEEP!

Things go on like this for a long time.  I start to worry I won't get enough sleep and to calm my worries, I look at the clock every forty-five seconds.  Oh no, it's almost midnight.  Oh no, it's 12:01!  Now I need a new plan for tomorrow.  Okay, I'll get up and make breakfast; the kids can just buy lunch.  I'll drop them off at school then take a quick nap before the meeting.  If I don't exercise, I can skip the shower and just put on a little make-up.

At like 2:00 in the morning, I decided I should take an Advil PM thinking surely it would help me sleep.  WARNING:  Do not take a sleep aid if you have to wake up in five hours!!  I was only semi-conscious when I got up and fed the kids.  Who knows what they wore to school today.  I wore pajamas when I was dropping them off, I do remember that.  I gambled big on Coke Zero to keep me awake during the important parts of the day and used the rest of my time to sleep it off.  Now I'm worried that I took too many cat naps today and I won't be able to fall asleep tonight.

Where oh where is the easy slumber of my youth?!  Has it gone the way of my elbow skin elasticity?

My Day In Court

Several months ago, the girls figured out the connection between the Speed Limit signs and our speedometer, realizing those two numbers should match.  They have this annoying helpful way of making sure we don't go even a fraction over the limit.  Last Sunday, my husband was driving us home from church and Reckless caught him going 30 in our 25 neighborhood.  With much exasperation she said, "The speed limit is twenty-five, Dad!"  Like, how many times do I have to tell him that?  Stretch piped up that he was "breaking the law."  If my children's idea of a lawbreaker is their father then the real world is going to take their figurative lunch money every day, because my husband makes Honest Abe look like a hooligan.

But the one time the twins' speed monitoring would have come in handy, they fell down on the job.  Actually, they didn't even show up for work because they were at "kindergarten", or so they say.

It was January and I was coming back from a doctor's appointment.  There had been some numbing and injecting, so I took advantage of my ability to function somewhat normally and stopped at the grocery store on the way home.  Predicting I felt good enough that I'd probably be able to make dinner, I decided to round up ingredients to make something.  I walked into Harris Teeter with no list, no plan, and a growling stomach, so I left with 12 Greek yogurts (2 of each of my favorite flavors because they were on sale!), Smartfood white cheddar popcorn (because it says "Smartfood" and comes in a really elegant black bag that alludes to the promise of being healthy and happy), two new flavors of Wheat Thins I hadn't tried (enough said), and lunch meat.  I completely forgot I had stopped there for dinner ideas.  No one else in my family even likes Greek yogurt.

It was eleven-thirty in the morning at this point and I was driving home south on Capital Boulevard from Wake Forest, in no particular rush.  For those of you unfamiliar with this stretch of highway, it's a free flowing divided four lane at this point and further ahead it slows down and clogs up with traffic, lights, and more lanes when you get into Raleigh.  It was approaching the point where I got off Capital when I saw two sets of blue lights up ahead on the right shoulder of the road.  I assumed it was an accident and got over in the left lane.  I was gonna turn left soon anyway.  I could already taste my blueberry yogurt, visions of it started dancing in my head, and, wait, rearview mirror!  Uh, oh, my heart just stopped.

I kept driving because I don't like to park my minivan in the middle of a highway with oncoming  vehicles.  I figured I would pull into the Sheetz that I was about to pass by anyway.  Meanwhile, the original two police cars were still terrorizing motorists on the side of the road and now a fourth one was flashing its lights at a sedan two cars behind me.  So, here I am in the left turn lane, blinker sounding like a ticking time bomb, holding my breath, waiting for a green arrow to allow me to turn down the side street and pull over at Sheetz.  Well, apparently, I was a flight risk or too dangerous to be trusted, because the cop actually got out of his car and approached me at the light, pressing me for my driver's license.  "I was going to pull over at the gas station," I assured him.  Because, duh, if I was going to flee the scene of my violent crimes, I'd go ahead and turn left on red to get away.

"Just pull into that empty church parking lot when the light changes," he said, "But hand me your license now."  I gave the officer my license, even though I knew it was illegal to drive without a license and we both knew I was about to keep driving.  It had sting operation written all over it.

We pulled into the empty church lot and so did the sedan behind me and his police escort.  Our entrance startled some pants-around-my-middle-thigh-undies-on-full-display-hoodlums who were loitering on the edge of the parking lot, under this wooden canopy, rolling & sharing their own "cigarettes".  They stuffed their hands in their pockets, which were by their knees, and kept darting their eyes and milling around nervously until they realized it was the mom in the minivan the Po-Po was trying to take down.

The officer asked if I knew how fast I was going.  "No."  Luckily he didn't ask if I knew what the speed limit was because I might've guessed that wrong and he probably wouldn't have taken "That's my six year old's job" as an excuse.  He claimed I was going 68 in a 55.  I said, "Really, I don't think so.  It didn't seem that fast."

Next he asked if I was in a hurry.  "Maybe late for a lunch date?"  I think he was trying to help come up with an excuse, because he'd been standing there for long enough that I should've been launching some by now.  "No, just going home."  Can I get on with that now?

He sort of peered around in my van (making sure I wasn't smuggling heroin for the Columbians, of course) and then said, "I'm going to need your registration."  Okay?  Wonder what that looks like.  I've only been pulled over two other times in my life.  Once when I was twenty and going ninety-something in a seventy-five, coming back to Texas from Colorado, and there are no obstacles on those long Interstates in Kansas, so it's easy to get carried away.  The other time I was leaving the hospital with a very sick kid and the police are less forgiving than if you're on the way to the hospital with a very sick kid.  But I thought the registration was probably in the glove box though, so I found two official looking paper thingies in there and offered him both.  He took the one that wasn't my voter registration card and said, "It's this one."  Then he handed it back and said, "It's supposed to be signed.  I could write you another ticket for not signing it.  But just go ahead and sign it now."

That was the point I started getting irritated because A) why does he expect me to know something useless and pointless like that and B) why is that illegal and C) the numbing was wearing off and my neck hurt!  And isn't there a bank being robbed somewhere or, I don't know, some dope being sold - like thirty feet away from us!

He went back to his cruiser long enough to have lunch, while my truckload of yogurt was going bad in the van.  I mean, Greek yogurt is halfway to spoiled anyway.  And my stomach was really growling, but I figured getting out my bag of popcorn and having a snack wasn't going to help me get off.  The officer ended up giving me a ticket for going 9 over and suggested I go to court because with my clean record, I could probably walk out with just court costs and not have my insurance affected.   He made it all sound like no big deal, easy even.  It was all I could do not to point out that him leaving me alone and tearing up that ticket would be even easier.  But I was aware of my right to remain silent and for once in my life I exercised that right.

Over two months later, I had my day in court.  The judge thought the ticket was as ludicrous as I did and all but apologized for me having to drive down there to straighten it out.  Which was not easy, for the record, because downtown has lots of confusing one way streets and I had to find a parking garage and the courthouse and the right courtroom, and the security guards downstairs stole my tiny little blue sewing scissors my mom got me to keep in my purse and cut rogue strings off with.  Or break out of jail with, they're all-purpose, I guess.

The Entertainment

I was pouty when I needed my husband to help with a couple of my son’s geometry questions.  Math is outside of my realm of expertise, but I figured I could hang in the homework circuit through elementary school.  I didn’t expect to call in a pinch mathematician in third grade.

Well, turns out, it could be worse.  I could, hypothetically, be unable to figure out one problem on my kindergartener’s math homework!

Reckless is in a “Math Stars” program, so she has special assignments for math each week and I got stuck on one this time.  Hypothetically!  I looked at it for twenty minutes and still had no clue.  My husband had cackled when I called for help with our son’s homework, so this level of disability would surely entertain him.

I consulted with another academically gifted person in this house first, to save some marital embarrassment/ammunition.  Brainy wasn’t sure how to solve it either, making me feel a little better.  We both assumed we were missing something obvious and fundamental that his dad would point out when he got home.

But, no.  My genius husband didn’t know either!  That made me feel WAY better.  If he couldn’t solve it; it was virtually insolvable.  We turned in the assignment today with number 7 blank.  Maybe it was a test to smoke out the next Albert Einstein.  In which case I can report he/she does not live in my house. 

Technically, I didn’t show Stretch the problem, but while discussing her upcoming field trip on the way home from church Wednesday night, I said the play was going to be downtown and she asked, “Is that in the United States or no?”  We may keep her on basic counting for now, so we have time for some remedial geography lessons.

Anyway, when there are news reports about how bad other nations are beating us in math and science, I just want you to know they mean me.  And my mom.  I blew it.  I put every ounce of intellectual energy into language and arts and now I make nary a dime because of it.  But hopefully all you left-brains will keep supporting us right-brains because we’re fun to have around.

 

The Goal Guy

My name is Heather and I have a life coach.  As a disclaimer, I should say this just started a week ago.  Otherwise you might take a birds’ eye inventory of my life and think yikes, how much of a mess would she be without a life coach?

I know you’re wondering what kind of handicapped I am to need a coach for the basic function of living.  It’s one thing to need a soccer coach or a reading coach, since those are skills we have to learn, but a “life” coach?  And, even more alarming, this man approached me and offered his life coaching services pro bono.  That had a major “charity case” feel to it.  It’s sort of like someone saying, “Do you want me to do something with your hair for you?”  I guess I just have that “fixer-upper” look about me.

But, after talking with him, I’ve decided to look at it more along the lines of showing potential.  Like the first time someone saw Michael Phelps swimming laps in the pool and said, “Hey, with the right coach, he could be great.” 

The other reason this came about is that a friend of mine at church is currently getting credentialed to be a life coach and he needed guinea pigs experience.  He chose me and a basketball player from North Carolina playing professionally in Israel.  We’re both supposed to be shooting 90% from the free throw line by March.

This life coach knew me well enough to know I’ve failed some “life tests” in my past and that I can be very disciplined at achieving goals when I stay focused on the right things.  And, just like anyone who’s ever met me, he can see that I’m somewhat of a flibbertigibbet and lose focus easily.  So, he’s offering to help me be all I can be.  (I may have actually joined the United States Army; I’ll let you know.)

My coach was finishing lunch when I walked in for our first official “practice” yesterday.  As I took my seat, I asked him five or six questions in under twenty seconds, and he said lesson number one might need to be learning to ask one question at a time because not everyone thinks and responds at MACH III like me.  They don’t?  Well, that explains some things then.

In case you don’t have all the answers either, I’ll share my findings.  “How is a life coach different than a counselor?”  Not that I couldn’t use a counselor, just wondering.  Counselors deal a lot with the past, working through things that have happened.  Life coaches focus on the future, on things that could happen.  Flying cars, of course, but also on what I could achieve on a personal level if I apply myself.  There’s an outside shot that those will be one and the same, but don’t hold your breath.

I also wondered how a life coach helps a person succeed.  Would this be a trust fund situation?  Did he maybe have an executive at Random House in his back pocket?  Would he be shouting at me in the gym when I felt like I couldn't do one more pull-up?  Does the pro bono package include him preparing healthy snacks for me?

The answer to all of those is, sadly, NO.  He is an encourager and motivator.  I set goals and he guides me down the path to achieving them.  Turns out they have to be realistic goals, like setting aside two hours a week to developing characters for a new novel or maintaining my weight, not things like moving into the Governor’s mansion by the end of the year or separating calories from Reese’s peanut butter cups.

And probably the biggest appeal of having a life coach is that he helps me achieve goals in every area.  Which means I can now fire my career advisor, weight loss counselor, family therapist, and sensei – Mr. Miyagi.  (His Karate Kid money only went so far.)

This year I got an agent, a mentor, and a life coach.  Depending on how you look at it, I’m either one babysitter short of a strait jacket or one bodyguard short of an entourage.

In other news, I’m now accepting applications for the bodyguard position.

A Presidential Debate

I’ve never used my blog as a political forum.  You’ve probably been able to ascertain that freedom of speech is almost as important to me as frozen yogurt, but the only “party politics” I ever engage in on here have been along the lines of “I’m having a football party and you’re only invited if you’ll cheer for the Giants.”

But it’s hard to avoid political conversations with a Presidential election rapidly approaching.  I won’t go into all of my personal politics and defenses of them here.  I just want to make a couple of quick remarks regarding this election and then I’ll take three to five pre-approved questions from the audience that my team of writers has prepared answers for.

Number one, I am so sick of Mitt Romney being criticized for his wealth.  Why does the media keep insisting he isn’t qualified to be President because he’s too successful and out of touch with “normal” citizens?  They are essentially implying we should elect some minimum-wage earning, modestly educated, underinsured laborer to our highest office just because that person could understand us better.  Really?  Then they should nominate the assistant manager of my local Harris Teeter to be President of the United States of America.

It’s ridiculous.  Why wouldn’t we want someone who knows how to grow a business and amass a fortune?  He’s good with money and our economy is broken, seems like a good fit to me.  And you don’t have to experience unemployment to help find a solution for it.  Jonas Salk cured polio even though he’d never had it himself. 

And even if Romney didn’t care about low-income families out of a spirit of humanity or moral obligation as a leader, he would still want to improve their circumstances because it’s guys like him (multi-millionaires) who are giving up nearly 50% of their income to support the government assistance programs that sustain (and at times coddle) these citizens. 

And, yes, Romney will give rich people a tax break, because he sees the injustice of punishing people for their success.  But even with tax cuts, wealthy Americans will contribute way more to the federal budget than the rest of us.  As it should be.  If Kobe Bryant paid 15% of his annual income in taxes and I paid 15% of my annual income in taxes, he’d be giving about 4.2 million and I’d toss in another twelve dollars.  That seems fair.

Number two, I don’t want to hear Barack Obama and his peeps telling us he needs more time to make that change he promised four years ago.  Four years is a LONG time.  Maybe not long enough to fix everything, but certainly long enough to fix some things.  Four years should be enough time to instill confidence in your nation that you are definitely the right man for the job. 

This isn’t about what Obama did or didn’t do.  It isn’t even necessarily a remark on this election and Presidency.  I just think that politicians can’t ask for more time to do what they said they’d do.  The length of a Presidential term was chosen because that’s long enough to make a positive impact on our country, long enough to achieve your goals if you’re capable of achieving them.  And if you do a great job, there is the option (not right) of doing it again.  A second term is meant for repeating successes, not still trying to accomplish the first ones.

And even if a President is phenomenal and we wanted to elect him a third time, we can’t.  Because the framers of our constitution realized that our country can and will benefit from changes in leadership, from fresh ideas and perspectives.

I don’t agree with everything that Mitt Romney has said and done in his life.  And I don’t agree with everything Barack Obama has said and done in his life either.  Honestly, I don’t agree with about half of what I’ve said and done in my own life.  But I’ve seen how effective Barack Obama is as our President and I’m not very impressed. 

If this was football, and oh how I wish it were, and our team had a man at quarterback for four years and we hadn’t won very many games, wouldn’t we put in a replacement quarterback?  Maybe we didn’t even have a losing record, but we failed to make the playoffs for four consecutive years and our fans were disheartened.  We’d try out someone new at quarterback, right?  We’d probably sign some new wide receivers and safeties in the off-season too.  It would come down to who on our roster impresses us and where was there room for improvement.

But one thing’s for sure, I wouldn’t discount a potential quarterback because he had only played in Super Bowl games and never thrown a regular season pass.  Or because he didn’t know what it was like to be an offensive lineman.  It’s not his job to be an offensive lineman.  Obviously any quarterback would want his offensive line to be successful, because his success is dependent on their success, just as a President’s success is dependent on the success of American citizens. 

A quarterback understands and appreciates the role that the offensive line plays in winning a game even if he’s never been on that line himself, just like Mitt Romney can understand the need for a strong middle class and the plight of low-income families despite having never been in those positions. 

I’m sure there are legitimate arguments for why neither of these men should be President, but Mitt Romney being wealthy and successful isn’t one of them.

Pro-Life and Anti-Histamine

We have had the most amazing weather here in Raleigh these last few days.  Sunshine that makes you smile, but not sweat.  Air that moves enough to tickle any exposed skin, but not so much that you have to cover every last inch of it up.  Each day lately there is a perfect cerulean sky with a few splashes of marshmallow fluff white for effect.  We’ve had no rain, no humidity, and zero volcanic activity which is an important part of any good weather pattern.

There’s only one problem with this welcome weather change – I’m allergic to it!  My body is designed for the extremes of 100 or 10 degree temperatures and the lack of sustainable horticulture that accompany them.  Because all of this 75 degree comfort and goodness is toppling my sinuses.

This happens every September.  I long for a break in the heat, a chance to wear jeans, an excuse for a sweater, all of the hallmarks of fall, which is just slang for football season.  But they’re always delivered with a side of sneezing and topped with watery eyes.  I’m usually crying because of allergies, though, admittedly, I’ve been known to do it over an early season loss by the Hokies or the Giants.

I tend to let the sneezing situation get pretty out of control before I take medicinal action.  Often to the point of, “Heather, oh no, what’s wrong?  Are you okay?  Did something happen?  Is it one of the kids?  Did Timmy fall down the well?”  I would interrupt the concerned party to reassure them that I’m fine, but I can’t because I’m choking on histamine and my own reactionary secretions.  (You weren’t eating dinner while reading this, I hope.)

So today I broke down and took my first Claritin of the season.  The box promised 24-hour relief of allergy symptoms with just one tiny pill.  Was it presumptuous to think that would be the 24 hours immediately after taking it?  Because I’ve sneezed another 217 times since I swallowed that pill, that lie.

Perhaps my naivety is assuming it meant 24-hour relief for me.  I mean, it didn’t explicitly say it would relieve MY symptoms.  It just said 24-hour relief of allergy symptoms.  Maybe someone else’s?  Maybe yours?  If you’re out there frolicking in this autumn preview, all wide-eyed and completely unaffected by allergens, then you’re welcome.  Clearly I’m fighting them for you.  Oh, and you owe me eighteen dollars for the Claritin.

Harmful Myths

I realize I’m not a wizened senior citizen or repository of all medical knowledge, but I’ve been here for 35 years now – enough time to make it around the block.  And therefore I knew that if a foot were broken, you couldn’t walk on it.  It would probably also be black and blue and hurt intolerably.

I’m not so shocked that I was wrong, thirty-five years is also enough time to figure out my own fallibility.  I’m shocked that I erroneously believed the “can’t move it if it’s broken” lie so thoroughly and for so long.  Do you know how many times my three kids have gotten hurt and I assured them their arm, hand, knee, foot, etc. weren’t broken because they could still move them and they looked fine?  Well, at least one too many.  Stretch has been walking around for eight days on a foot that is broken in two places.

She fell down about half of our stairs last week.  Not for the first time, but she did cry longer than she usually did.   But, for the record, my criminal one, she was already crying before she fell down the stairs because she suffered a serious blow to the head during a pillow fight she got into with her brother and his friend.  (No charges were filed in that case because the plaintiff hit herself in the head with her own pillow.  So glad I didn’t name that one Grace!)

No matter how many kids are doing something questionable that could end in tears, it’s always Stretch who gets hurt.  There could be three or thirty of them running at the pool, or jumping on the beds, or throwing things, but having Stretch take part guarantees the safety of the others because she consistently sustains the token injury.

After hobbling around for a day or two, she returned to her normal awkward, long-legged, uncoordinated gait.  I considered a trip to the pediatrician, but we go for so many obvious illnesses that I didn’t want to throw another twenty-five dollars at them just so they could say she had a sprain or a strain or a flair for drama.  And, as I already stated, she could move it, walk on it, and even skip when giving chase to butterflies or cupcakes.

But today we went in for the twins’ six year check-up, so I had their doctor look at Stretch’s foot because it was a little swollen and still bothered her sometimes.  She gave me a transparent look of reassurance as she suggested we get an x-ray.  A harmless little x-ray.  As a precaution, right?

When the orthopedic doctor announced it showed two small fractures, I needed a new kind of doctor that could prescribe me the antidote to being sick with parental guilt.  I failed one of my kids.  Again.  “God, please let that be the last time.  So, you know, make me perfect, please.”

I had three alarmed and very hungry children waiting for a good chunk of the afternoon on a pink cast to be built from her toes to just below her knee.  We tried to distract Stretch from the pain by discussing what we would eat for lunch.  Or dinner, if our ordeal dragged on much longer.  But all the talk of milkshakes and French fries made our growling stomachs louder than her crying.  It wasn’t helping.  Instead, we talked about where we might purchase her rainbow colored flying unicorn kittens instead, since Mommy blew it and desperately needed to make it up to her. 

The doctor said it really didn’t matter that I waited a week; the breaks weren’t that severe.  I reminded him that it wasn’t his job to assuage my guilt; he’s an orthopedist, not a priest.  “No really,” he said, “it was easy to miss and it probably didn’t make it worse at all to wait.”

“Oh yeah,” I countered, “even when her sister accidentally sat on it in the toy room this weekend or when her brother stepped on it trying to get around her in the hallway yesterday.”  Because she walks slow, because she’s crippled, because her mother doesn’t take good care of her!

“Those things aren’t great for a broken foot trying to heal,” he admitted, “so we’ll avoid them for a few weeks with this cast.”  He didn’t mention how to avoid making this same mistake again, so I guess anytime one of them says something hurts, we’ll go get x-rays just in case.  Because who knows how many broken bones they’ve already had that have gone untreated just because they could still move something.  Apparently, I’m only qualified to diagnose paralysis, not broken bones.