It's One of Those Days

You know that day that begins with you looking in the mirror in the morning and saying to yourself, "I HAVE to wash my hair tonight." And that very same day, walking very slowly back into that same bathroom after putting the child(ren) to bed, looking into that very same mirror and saying to yourself as you shake your head, "I just don't have it in me, it'll have to wait 'til tomorrow." Yeah, that's today for me. I wonder if it would look odd tomorrow to don the Middle Eastern red and white turban that V. brought home with him and cover my hideously filthy hair? If I don't get some real sleep tonight I just might do it.

Which leads me to my next point which is really the driving force behind this post and my ongoing dirty hair saga. I'm not getting the sleep I need! I. was sick beginning last Friday so there were a couple of nights where she woke up with diarrhea and I was more than happy to take care of it. HOWEVER, since then, she has decided that it is grand to start calling and crying in the middle of the night instead of turning over and going to sleep. On top of this, V. has gotten up very early the last 2 days to go to work and I suspected that I. was seeing the light from downstairs and it was leading her to reach the erroneous conclusion that we ALL need to be getting up in the middle of the night. The night before last, she was up crying 5 times and as a result, I was up from 1:30-5 am. She fell back asleep around 3 but I was still so wired and anticipating what was going to happen when V. opened up the garage door that I couldn't fall back asleep. So that night I got 2 hours before the torture began and about 2.5 hours after before she started calling for me again in the morning.

I thought I had the problem solved last night when I troubleshot the whole situation and came up with the following 2 solutions:

1. V. was only allowed to use the lights that had dimmer switches on them and then only at the lowest level without him eating in the dark.
2. I put a folded up towel along the bottom edge of I.'s door so that no light would be visible from under it.

No such luck - I. began crying right before 5 am and when I went in there she announced that she wasn't tired. Well, being that my best sleep, really my only decent sleep, takes place after 4:30am, I wasn't really very thrilled to hear this pronouncement. I gave her some books to look at in bed, told her I loved her, that I for one was VERY tired and I would see her in the morning when it was time to actually get up. Then I walked out. As you might expect she didn't take too kindly to my point of view and began screaming and crying. I thanked my lucky stars that V. had already left for the airport because he NEVER would have made it through a long, prolonged crying session. I'm of course just a heartless bitch so I told myself that she was safe albeit very unhappy and proceeded to put on those BOSE noise cancelling headphones that V. gave me for Christmas that I wondered when in the world I would use them. Well, here's the answer, I used them this morning and they worked well enough for me to relax, doze off and even grab a little sleep for the next 1.5 hours so that I could at least partially function today. Just call me Mean Momma...

When I went in to get her, the first thing I. says to me is,"What was that light I saw over there?" and she points to her door. I ask her to show me where she is talking about and she scrunches down to the very corner edge of the door and points. I look around the edge of the door to see where is that damn towel and it appears that there was a 1/4 inch gap between the towel and the door which must have let in that pinprick of light from the ultra-dimmed lights this morning which caused another torturous morning.

I don't really need to tell you how meticulous I will be about that damn towel tonight, do I? V.'s gone for the next 2 weeks so I'm hoping, with my fingers, toes, legs, and eyes crossed that without anybody creeping around in the dead of night, maybe we can get I. out of this habit, this energy sapping, mind altering habit. For all of our sakes, I really hope so.