The Cough interferes with The Sleep and even with The Medicine I’m still feeling like I’ve been run over by The Bus.

Whenever I’m tired, the rest of my life feels like it falls apart. I don’t eat well and that make me feel sicker. (Two days of binging makes my tummy hurt!) Then I lose all patience with the kids and my family because I feel gluttonous and sick and then I just want to sit on my couch and moan instead of tackling chores. THEN I feel gluttonous, sick, and VERY BEHIND IN MY LIFE because I’m not doing anything to cross items off my To Do list.

And it all starts with being tired.

I tend to blow off my own sleep issues, as the typical issues – not being able to GET to sleep – are not ones I understand. When people say, “I couldn’t get to sleep until midnight!” I’ll mention how much that SUCKS and I’m so glad I don’t have those problems.

But the truth is? I do. It’s just my problems are on the other spectrum and very few normal people in the world deal with them. Normal people toss and turn at night and then sleep late. Me? I go to sleep within 30 minutes of crawling into bed, but then I wake up 4-5 hours later.

I can’t help but get up early. My mind seems to think 3:30am or so is “reasonable” and if anything wakes me up after 3:30am, I can’t get back to sleep. On the weekends, sometimes I can force myself to sleep until 5am, but that’s LATE for me. Most of the time? My brain is too ready to go to let me linger in bed.

It’s no less annoying than the nighttime insomnia, but since it’s opposite from what most people know, I tend to forget that it can be just as detrimental to my health.

“I get up early every morning!” just sounds like I’m being proactive and ambitious. It’s easy to fool myself into thinking it’s good for me.

But then, after several days of not sleeping well I just WANT to sleep later. But this morning? 3:15am. That’s all I got. I couldn’t go back to sleep. This is not ambition. This is insomnia.

It’s hard to explain to my husband because he just sees me going to bed at 9:30. It’s hard to explain that I coughed all night and then woke up at 3:15am so – you know – I’M VERY TIRED. Just like it’s hard for me to understand if he’s tired if he slept until 7am. THAT’S FOUR MORE HOURS THAN I GOT.

Sleep. It’s such a fickle mistress.

And it’s frustrating because my body is shifting more and more to the YESTERDAY hours than the TODAY hours. When I first started boot camp over a year ago, my mind was awake around 4:45. Then it seemed to push back to 4am. I was okay with 4am. Still early, but it gave me an hour of ME TIME before boot camp which I like.

But the last month? It seems my mind and body are considering 3am to be the more reasonable hour. If I wake up and it’s after 3am? I can’t get back to sleep. Which means I’m officially waking up THE NIGHT BEFORE. 3am is not MORNING by any standards. It’s EVENING.

BAH. I’m just frustrated and tired and sick of coughing and all of this makes me weepy and emotional and fragile and SO DAMN TIRED.

Thank you for letting me whine. I feel much better.

My patience has been pushed to the limits this weekend. I went from a proud high on Saturday morning after a pretty decent long run (TWELVE MILES) to a stressed out low due to a number of things too boring to discuss on my blog. Basically I have a list of things to do today that include:

1) Call pest control
2) Taking a kid to the doctor
3) Making an appointment with the vet
4) Double-checking some stuff associated with my volunteer gigs as it seems I made some mistakes this weekend I don’t want to happen again
5) Try to think of a way to thank my friend for letting us do laundry at her house AGAIN yesterday (this is the THIRD washer/dryer malfunction we’ve had in just a couple months)
6) Figure out how to make up time lost at work this week for all of the above appointments. Especially with a BUILD week for my training which means I’m running over 30 miles total again.
7) Meal Plan since I’ll be gone many nights either working or running.
Research solution #73 for dealing with blisters.
9) Get Prescription for Anxiety Meds and begin abusing it.

All of these things are directly related to the chaos that unfolded in our lives this weekend. Things I couldn’t really do anything about because it was the weekend. So, for the FIRST TIME EVER, I think I’m joyful it’s finally Monday. I can finally try to deal with several of the challenges we’re facing. Nothing fun or exciting that would make good blog entries, just a bunch of stressful boring stuff that makes me stressed and anxious.

So, can we guess what Kim did last night?

If you said, “BINGED!” you’re right! Because that’s what Kim does, she undoes a week’s worth of hard work with 17 bowls of raisin bran! (HA! I typed “raising brain” first which gave me the first laugh of the day. I needed that. THANK YOU STUPID FINGERS!) I’m trying to just get into Monday without thinking about falling off the wagon last night.

I’m hoping that by the end of the day I’ve at least got game plans in place to deal with the malfunctions in our lives, which will alleviate a lot of the anxiety. So, hopefully I’ll go back to the drinking my tea tonight instead of 9 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and tomorrow I’ll wake up to a better day.

Until then…let’s start writing our next Vegetarian Zombie Flick: RAISIN BRAINS!

BLAH. Every time I go to write something this morning it comes out as KIM IS BITCHING ABOUT SOMETHING. I start innocently enough and then BAM! Mid-paragraph a blog entry about tuna salad turns into me complaining about my broken washing machine.

I don’t want to spend quality space on the interwebs complaining about all of the things stressing me out in my life. But it’s a little hard not to whine. (I AM STILL DEALING WITH MY DAD’S PROBATE. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?) But, I’m trying to only put energy out into the universe that I want to get back and I do NOT want to be smacked back in the face with the boomerang action of my own complaints.

BECAUSE THERE ARE MANY.

So, I’m trying to write without complaining about things that are making me so restless I’m not sleeping (I AM NOT SLEEPING!) and so anxious I am eating non-stop. But instead, I’m just talking about how I want to be complaining but I’m trying not to and OH MY GOD – IT’S NOT WORKING.

I’m stressed. I’m not sleeping well. I’m eating a lot. My washing machine is broken. (Did I mention that?) I may have to go to Knoxville for Probate crap again. (Did I mention that too?) School starts next week and our local education system is a mess which is adding stress in various forms in my life. (THANK GOD OUR TEACHERS ARE AMAZING. Makes tolerating the other much easier.) And all I can seem to do is write about all of this in various parentheticals and asides.

SO…Let’s just combine all of that negative stress RIGHT HERE. Let’s all use this space to bitch about everything we’re trying NOT to bitch about. We can keep perspective in the rest of our lives but right here? LET IT ALL OUT. Tell me what is making you KRAZEE that you haven’t really felt right complaining about because of the whole, #FirstWorldProblems thing. We feel guilty complaining about how expensive organic milk is when there are people starving to death.

YOU CAN BITCH ABOUT ORGANIC MILK HERE!

We’ll combine all of our negative energy into this ONE blog entry. And then I’ll build a forcefield around it so that none of that negative energy comes back and kicks us in the face. Sound good? Good. Take my comments section and MAKE IT YOURS. Bitch about your husband, your kids, your doctor…anything you want. Unleash it all and then take the kind, positive energy back to your REAL lives where it really matters and I’ll contain all of your stress right here. Okay?

Let it loose: WHAT IS STRESSING YOU OUT?

With this schedule that combines work and boot camp and…well…life – I find myself very tired by Thursday. Zapped. It took everything out of me to stay awake until Donnie and E got home from Beauty and the Beast work last night. (Donnie is helping work on sets several nights a week.) As soon as they got home? I was in bed 9:15 – sleeping soundly.

THEN…we had our first tornado warning of these season. The sirens went off around midnight or so. I got up, went to turn on the TV – no cable. We get these sirens whenever there’s a threat for a tornado anywhere in our county. When I first liven in Alabama, I hid with every warning. But since then, I’ve learned how large a county is. There could be the threat of a tornado in part of a county, but the rest of us don’t need to worry. But…the siren goes off for the whole county. AND IT IS DAMN LOUD.

I tried the internet, hoping that somehow the TV was not related to the internet. (Yes. Things like that make sense when you’re woken up from a heavy sleep with an obnoxiously loud siren.) No internet. BAH. I didn’t really want to wake up the entire family to run to the garage unless we had to. So, I grabbed my phone. Checked the local news Twitter feeds and Facebook pages. Nowhere near us. THANK GOD.

Of course – still in our county. Which, to those of you not hounded by the ubiquity of these warnings, would still be too close for comfort. But we hear these things several times a Spring storm season. I’ve only hid my family 3 times or so since Nikki was born. You learn to filter. Not that it’s not hugely disconcerting to hear those sirens…it is…but you just learn no to panic every time.

But…last night? When I really needed to catch up on sleep? MAN…did it piss me off. I wanted to be call the National Weather Service and DEMAND they not turn on those damn sirens unless the tornado was at LEAST coming to my side of Huntsville. I was LIVID. And more importantly? I was AWAKE. Not ASLEEP like I wanted. And the anger was keeping me wired.

Did the siren wake up anyone else in the family? No. Of course not. No one else wanted to make sure the tornado wasn’t coming to our house. They were all sleeping PEACEFULLY. And I kinda wanted to wake them all up just to yell at them about it.

Alas, I didn’t. I just got back into bed and grumbled frustratingly until I dozed back off around 1am. Just to wake up at 4am for boot camp.

In other words? I need a nap. And maybe a weather radio.

It’s Monday. Mondays are crazy around here. E has double the after-school activities, Nikki has dance, and the typical Monday chaos of getting back into the swing of the week after a weekend, is in full force. There’s a reason Mondays are hated, I know, but I sometimes thing they are a tad more evil in our lives than normal humans should have to deal with. Aren’t you supposed to ease back into your week?

This was the weekend o’ productivity around here. The big thing was getting Nikki signed up for softball tball again this Spring. The weather was perfect for this activity as it felt like Spring. The kids and I spent gobs of time at the park and walking around without jackets on. (I abhor jackets.) It’s probably a good thing the weather got better as I’m dealing with my own food issues. They’re hard enough to deal with without freezing weather to face me outside every day. The sunshine and the warmth makes everything much easier.

And then my camera died last night. So, you know, SHIT. I’m going to check on the whole warranty process today, to see what it entails. It just stopped recognizing any memory card. And they all work in the other cameras, so it’s not the card. I don’t know. BAH. Tried my best not dealing with that added stress by going to the refrigerator. I did have a beer, but that’s usually not a snowball-causing step like making a bowl of cereal would be. So, it ended with the beer. And I’m trying to focus on the awesomeness of that step and not on the ever-present MY CAMERA! anxiety that’s riddling my mind. BINGING WILL NOT FIX THE CAMERA.

So, the week is starting off awesome, in other words. YAY! for broken cameras. I still haven’t even gotten my Eye-Fi card working yet, so let’s hope customer support for either company doesn’t get the fallout from my facing my eating addiction. I should be carrying around a sign at all times that says, WARNING: GIVING UP BINGING AS A MEANS TO DEAL WITH ANXIETY. NERVES ARE BOUND AT TOXIC LEVELS. BE NICE.

Wish me them luck! They’re going to need it.

Can we just pretend I didn’t write that last entry just yet? And let me start later? Because today? FROM HELL. Seriously. One of those days where I was on the verge of tears all day. I’ve been a bit emotional lately – - – more sensitive than usual, but today? Extremely sensitive. So the reshaping my outlook on life and food thing? Didn’t quite pan out. Let’s chalk this up to a monster-huge FAIL.

Started the day out okay – cleaning out the old garage and organizing what will go to family, Goodwill, and the side of the road on trash pickup day. As we were finishing up I saw a black widow. This is (unfortunately) not too uncommon around this area – but it got me thinking. I have that bite on the back of my leg I really need to have looked at.

I’ve been attacked my mosquitos non-stop since we moved into our new house. Our backyard is wooded and there is a creek. Mosquitoes have always loved me. It’s just a misery I accepted as a child. But this one bite wasn’t quite acting like my normal mosquito bites. I currently have about 20 on my body (NO EXAGGERATION) so I know how to compare them and this one bite on the back of my thigh? NOT A MOSQUITO BITE. At the urging of Twitter I went to the doc-in-a-box (I dont have a GP) and after 2.5 hours of waiting and entertaining my 2-year-old I learned: SPIDER BITES. They gave me antiobiotics, told me how to bandage the bite since it’s currently oozing, and told me to keep an eye out for worsening symptoms that could indicate infection and/or rotting flesh. Yay!

Then the afternoon just got crazier. There was confusion/stress surrounding the schedule of LilZ and his friends for the weekend – requiring some back-and-forth drives as I got everyone where they needed to be. There was panicked delivery of a borrowed lawn mower as suddenly I was scheduled to drive 3 teens 60-miles away this evening. There were prescriptions to be filled and laundry to be done as a certain husband of mine has his first triathalon in the morning and politely asked me to wash his gear today. There was the 60-mile drive (one way) with small kids in the car which is ALWAYS HIDEOUS. Add that on top of the mere 45-minute naps they got and it took everything out of me not to kick them out of the car when we finally made it home and run away screaming. The only thing keeping me from doing this was knowing my antibiotics were inside the house and I feared that if I forgot them my leg would fall off.

One of those days. On top of an already emotional me and the Big Huge Lifestyle change? Out the window by 9am.

Failure? Yes. Will I try again? Certainly.

After I finish this beer. Cry. Eat this ice cream. Cry some more. Demolish that bag of chips. Cry a little. Make the cake from the mix in the pantry and eat all that. THEN cry a little bit more. Maybe after all that I’ll feel ready to change my life.

*sigh*

• This new house has an upstairs and a downstairs. It actually has a staircase on either side of the house, instead of one in the middle, so it’s easy not to hear what’s going on when the kids are sleeping. The good news? I can now wash dishes and do laundry without fear of waking them up. The bad news? I now have to carry around a monitor with me everywhere in the mornings/evenings. This has taken some getting used to because I didn’t even use the monitor anymore in the old house. I could hear AndyZ wake up in my bedroom loud enough to wake me out of a dead sleep. Now? He could be screaming for hours and I wouldn’t hear him. I think this has had me on edge, even with the monitor, because I’m waking up earlier than I would normally. I think my mind doesn’t trust the monitor yet. Which is pissing me off because I’d really like to sleep past 5am once in awhile. Do you ever get used to using a monitor? Do you ever trust it to wake you up?
• Sunflower won’t come downstairs. Bringing her over here was quite traumatic, and it took her 2 full days to come out from under NikkiZ’s bed. She will now occasionally come out from under the bed, but I have yet to see her downstairs. For about 24 hours the dogs were skittish, trying to leave with us whenever we walked out the door, but now they realize this is home and have kinda gotten back to normal. Bambi is worried about Sunflower, but other than that he’s pretty normal. I’m hoping she’ll get over it in a few more days, but if she doesn’t – do I call her vet? Accept she’s just an upstairs cat from now on?
• We have no fence at this house. Our backyard is wooded and a little bumpy so we’re not sure how fenceable it even is – but there’s not one now in any case. So, we’re dog walkers now. This is taking a huge adjustment on my part because it’s one more thing I have to schedule. There’s mealtimes, naptimes, picking NikkiZ up from preschool at lunch, errands and now? Walking the dogs. At first we assumed we could just take them to the front/back yards a few times a day and walk other times – but Sweetie is refusing to go to the bathroom in our yard. Last night I walked half a mile before she finally pooped (it had been almost 48 hours) – but she usually has to get at least a few blocks away before she’ll even pee. This is fine, I don’t mind walking, but it’s not always conducive if I’m alone with the kids because I can not manage a stroller/wagon and TWO DOGS at the same time. Not on this really hilly neighborhood. I need them to be able to do their business in the yard when I’m alone with the kids and I can take them for walks morning/evenings when MrZ is home. Will Sweetie ever start using the bathroom in our yard or am I going to have to learn how to manage two kids in a stroller up/down giant hills AND walk a dog at the same time? I’m not sure that’s possible. I’m too big of a klutz.
• Related to dog-walking: I now have to pick up poop. This isn’t a big deal, but I get all freaked out that someone will see my dogs peeing and thing they’re pooping and that I’m just leaving it. Also – I worry people may get made for me letting the dogs poop in their yards, even if I do pick it up. I try to steer them clear of the super-nice lawns, because I just assume no one wants my dogs peeing and pooping on really cared for yards, but it’s hard to force them when they’re ready to go NOW. Are people generally fine as long as you clean up after your dogs? Or do some of them really freak out regardless?

Please walk me? I haven’t peed in 14 hours. Also – I find it very discomforting that you are now picking up my poop. What’s up with that?

We already have a junk spot. I usually am bothered by counter clutter, but since this part is separated from the rest of the counter – I may be able to live with it.

So…there’s a lot of stressers in my life right now. Stressers? Stressors? Stressars? Firefox has no suggestions and I’m too lazy to see whether or not I just made up a word. STRESSERS. It’s a word for now, okay?

There’s my Mom who is still in the hospital in Knoxville post-surgery. They removed the malignant tumor but had to take more than just a bit of her colon as it had grown outside the colon and into her bladder and reproductive organs. No biggie…just a longer recovery. But we still haven’t gotten the pathology back from the biopsies and tumor so we’re still waiting on any future treatment information. Waiting for pathology reports is the most annoying thing about medical situations because they always hold that vital information that will change the outlook of your immediate future. YET THEY TAKE FOREVER. Don’t let the medical dramas fool you, there is no magic room down the hall that allows you to immediately look at test results. Just like there’s probably no real CSI unit that can get DNA results back in four minutes.

There’s LilGirl, our alpha bitch in the family who has always had some cataracts in her eyes but now has one eyeball that is swollen because they think the cataract has caused glaucoma. She has to be taken to Birmingham today to see a specialist. MrZ has one day off between switching jobs (Look! Another stresser!) and he’ll be using it taking her on a road trip. She’s an old dog so I’m not sure what the options will be for her but she’s been going blind for awhile and is very pitiful now that she’s in pain. Last night she was scratching at the wall in the hallway trying to get into our bedroom. SO SAD.

Then there’s my damn allergies. While Knoxville definitely makes them worse, they are not easy to deal with here at home. Alavert does me okay for most of the day but, like last night, it seems to wear off a bit while I sleep. Damn you and your 18-hour effectiveness! I was up since about midnight sneezing. I’d show you the pile of tissues I accumulated by the couch but that might be gross. My eyes do better with eyedrops but I still have huge bags under them partnered with dark circles. My nose skin is raw and my throat is constantly tickled. Allergies and allergy medicines keep me in a fog anyway, add lack of sleep to all of that and I’m bound to be a huge MESS today.

In case you were wondering…those three paragraphs were me trying to gain a bit of sympathy from the interwebs because I am in SUCH A FUNK. I’m just down and grumpy and sad and tired and angry and frustrated and every other negative emotion you can think of. I’m trying my best to force some sun into my outlook as that has been part of my attempt handling my own anxiety: THINK POSITIVE. I feel like I’m doing better with that mentality, it kept me sane at the dealership yesterday when I was stuck with AndyZ for 2.5 hours. I actually handled that situation well considering a few months ago I would have lost it the second I realized they had NO changing table in the bathroom. (This place is BRAND NEW and NO ONE thought of that?) So…I did okay yesterday during a high-stress period of time. But in general? I’m just having trouble ditching the funk. I have met so many people who fight way grander stressers than mine with positive outlooks, and I would love to be like them someday. But obviously – by the gray cloud in my heart today? I’m not there yet.

So…I’m going to include a cute little video MrZ took of AndyZ the other night doing his version of a Jumping Jack. Every time I watch this I smile. I hope you do to.

Sometimes I’m just blown away when I realize many people ARE NOT LIKE ME AT ALL. I’ll see someone do something, or hear someone say something, that I can never in a gagillion years see myself doing or saying. This is actually quite rare because I’m the queen of empathy. Even people who live lives and have beliefs opposite of mine, I can usually relate to them on some level. Maybe even understand exactly why they’re different. I just simply recognize it’s not me. I may not agree, but I can usually at least understand where someone is coming from. It actually drives my husband crazy that I’m like this because this often places me in the FLOORMAT mode where I’m likely to get trampled on. Comes with the territory, I guess.

But sometimes…I just can’t understand it. At all.

We were at the Botanical Gardens yesterday – LilZ, myself, NikkiZ and AndyZ. There was a treehouse that AndyZ was working his way up by crawling up the stairs. (He’s still not comfortable with walking up or down stairs.) LilZ was at the top encouraging him, I was at the bottom. It was basically a one-story staircase that was quite wide, but encased in ropes. Not solid walls. Yes, there were gaps between the ropes, but nothing that would be easy for a kid to fall out of without being squeezed a bit. And LilZ and I were both within reach as AndyZ was making his way up so even if he got close, we’d be there in a millisecond.

Cue Mom walking up the other side of the stars with her kid who wasn’t much older but was walking instead of crawling. She pauses, doesnt even look at either of us, just points at the ropes next to AndyZ and says, “You REALLY should be here helping him because there are holes RIGHT THERE and he could fall.” And then keeps moving. Never once even looking at us or even adding a smile to soften the blow of her assaulting parenting advice. As a matter of fact, she used the most aggressive and rude tone humanly possible.

WEIRDEST THING EVER.

I’ve had people encourage me to do things their way before, but everyone usually acknowledges that is a tricky territory and therefore tries to sugarcoat it. Or at least be polite about it, and smile a bit to ease what could be considered nosey and rude. There have definitely been those, “Oh honey! Be careful! Your kid is being risky!” type moments before but it’s always attached to a smile and a polite assumption that maybe you didn’t notice your kid’s risky behavior. I’ve never had someone just essentially come by, point out that I’m doing something wrong when I’m standing right there watching my kid, and then walk off without making eye contact. It was so strange. LilZ was just as offended/confused. We’re RIGHT THERE. I’m usually overly paranoid on playstructures, so I was very shocked that someone obviously thought I was being risky. LilZ is always having to encourage me to give the small kids more freedom to fall (“They’ll never learn!) when they’re at the playground. But that moment? Short of carrying him up the stairs? I was being as careful as even I thought necessary. They whole thing was just…strange.

So – I’d love to hear your stories. Has this every happened to you? I’ll admit I was so shocked it dulled my anger a bit…but I was still ANGRY. Don’t get me wrong. I got over it a second later when I got away from the lady, but for those few moments? I was equal parts SHOCKED and IRRITATED. I mean, this has happened to all of us on the internet, but in the real world? This was a first for me.

More risky behavior on the swings. Care to comment?

The reason I can’t do anything too thought provoking about what this run means to my grief over missing Dad is because the child we’re leaving for a week? Decided he wanted to cram in as much time with me as possible by waking up at 2am. FOR THE DAY. It is now 4:17am and I’ve officially given up trying to get him back to sleep. I tried several things including finally getting him to sleep in my arms on the couch for the second time (the first time ended when I tried to put him in his crib) and opting to just put the couches together to make him a temporary crib. He slept there for about 20 minutes. And then he woke up. Again. So I’m not fighting it anymore and am embracing the situation by going ahead and brewing that pot of coffee I normally don’t start on until after 5am. I think waking up at 2am for the day justifies two pots of coffee, don’t you think?

Maybe I’ll do something thought-provoking tomorrow. In the meantime – enjoy this picture of my child before he became the devil.