Holiday fun

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Sleep is underrated

The most coveted space in my house would most positively be my pillow-top king size bed. People have been known to drive for hours just to come sleep in it. Considering that John and I are both night-shift workers, it is very important to have optimal sleeping arrangements.....because no matter how tired you may be, it is very difficult to sleep during the day. Take today, for instance. I worked a 12 hour night last night, and I drove home literally with one eye open. I was exhausted when I climbed into my cool, empty bed in my dark, cave-like room at 8:01 am. Then, like a patient coming out of a coma, my eyes pop open. I look at the clock....it's 8:32am. The onslaught of questions begin swimming in my head. "AM or PM? Am I supposed to be asleep right now? Where am I? Are my children safe? Do I even have children?" Then the fog clears like an amnesiac getting her memory back. I realize that I have only been asleep for 31 minutes. And worse, I only have 3 hours left to sleep before I have to wake up and be somewhere. This part sucks because now I must struggle to clear the thoughts so that my mind will allow me to rest again. And my body is so freaking tired!
Because John and I work nights, and because I am a sucker, my kids have pretty much always slept with me. The two nights a week that John and I actually sleep in the same space, we usually move them into their own rooms, but the three nights that I am the only parent home, I say, "Bring 'em on!" It is and always has been so much easier to accomplish the bedtime routine when they all are in one place! Unless a person has routinely slept with their children, they will not understand this concept. People at work criticize me, and I totally get that. I would criticize me if it wasn't so much easier. I am not a crunchy granola family bed type of person. I'm just lazy, that's all. Plus, they are so very sweet when they are sound asleep and they are innocent once again. My husband does not always agree with me, but often times, when we are in bed, I wake up to find him sharing my youngest child's coveted sock monkey with her, and I know that there is no place either of us would rather be than surrounded by those little nerds.

I often wonder if I will ever wake up feeling well-rested. That seems as foreign a concept as waking up in utopia. I think because I miss 2 nights of legitimate sleep every week, and the other 5 nights I am fighting off little elbows and knees, I may never find that feeling. This must be why God invented naps......and coffee.

Non-fiction

Those who know me have undoubtedly heard me uttering cynical phrases that annoy my husband such as "My life is a farce!", and things of that nature. Recently my family attended the Renaissance Festival, and several of my sisters and I were locked up in a mock jail, we laughed over a sign that read, "This is a game. Please play along." I declared that I was going to steal the sign and hang it on the front door of my home. I am not ashamed to let everyone know that my best coping mechanism is to fall into a world of make-believe and deny that any of my issues are real.

I pride myself in being a great story-teller, and the stories I tell are my true life experiences. I always tell too much; I am not ashamed to air my dirty laundry in public. The reason behind this is because I feel I am actually telling someone else's story. I am talking about a different life, not my own. I can be speak frankly about the death of my father and things that hit very close to home, because I pretend they are not real to me. I can talk about my feelings and emotions openly, as they are not really my feelings and emotions. They belong to Jessica.....and I am somebody else. It works. It's a little weird, but it works.

This is how I dealt with my son running home from kindergarten with the principal chasing him down the street. This is how I dealt with my Dad dying, and the aftermath of that situation. This is how I dealt with receiving a letter from Sam Bernstein in regards to a lawsuit brought on my dog. On some level, it works for me. I sit back and pretend that I am watching a movie of someone else's life, not my own. It's my alternate reality.

So, as everyone should understand, I was very disturbed when my 6-year-old son arrived home from school one day and proudly announced, "Mom, you are non-fiction." Obviously, this is something he was taught at school. Who would arm a child with this type of destructive language?! It cut me to the bone. In an instant, my alternate reality came crashing down over me. He ruined my little happy place. I wanted to scream, "NOOOOO!!!! I AM fiction! It is not real!" My eyes bulged out of my head, and I began to hyperventilate. I pictured myself melting like the wicked witch on the Wizard of Oz. "What a world, what a world!" How can I go on? And then, proud of his new vocabulary, he waltzed by me looking for an afterschool snack with absolutely no realization that he destroyed my psyche. I paused for a moment, enveiled myself in my cloak of disassociation, and continued on in my own little world.....because that just happened to Jessica, not me.

Making memories

So here goes, my life is chaotic as usual, but this month there is somewhat of a lull because the after-school activities have ended for a time. We are home together several nights a week, and we don't know what to do with each other! Tonight, John and I focused on buying a privacy fence to partition off an area of our yard for our dogs. Kingston has found himself in trouble with the law, and since my husband has an aversion to going to trial, he plead guilty to a lesser "dangerous dog" charge. Therefore, our poor boy must be seperated from society....forever!!!!

Ah well, at least all the dog poop will be in one area, right? And maybe we can grow grass again! It could always be worse! ****John is convinced that there is some black cloud following us around. He said, "Why does it always happen the hard way for us?" I told him that if it was easy, it would never be so memorable.