Scared Happy

Yay! I completed all of the tasks on my list yesterday, especially my 1,667 words on my novel. (I got the number wrong in yesterday’s post.) It was a struggle to get those words down because I kept trying to make them perfect. Not good. But I did get them done. And all in between taking care of QV (got him to eat and drink and take a shower while I changed all of the sheets), did laundry, cleaned up the kitchen, and put away the Easter decorations.

I stayed up until 22.00 last night. Since I got laid off, I’ve been going to bed at the same time I used to when I worked, around 19.30 most nights (sometimes I did stay up until 20.30but not often) and then sleeping until 07.30 so that’s like eleven hours a night. That’s a bit too much. At first I needed it, but then I found I was waking after about six hours of sleep and staying awake an hour or two and then sleeping again. So, too much. I haven’t stay awake until 22.00 in years. I used to be a night person before I had my daughter and went to work every morning.

It took me about an hour to wind down last night. I was quite agitated. I thought I was having a panic attack. I looked at the feelings instead of trying to suppress them (my new behavior) and I discovered that it wasn’t fear I was feeling but excitement. I haven’t felt excitement in so long that you can understand my confusion. It took me awhile to figure it out because I couldn’t understand why I was afraid or why I could be afraid but since fear has been my constant companion for a good ten years now, maybe even longer since it came on so gradually, I couldn’t conceive of it being something else. This looking at myself is an interesting experience and contrary to what I used to believe, I haven’t died from the examination.

One of my dreams last night was particularly disturbing and very different from any I’ve ever had before. I was watching a group of kids for some reason. Three of them went off to play near a brick townhouse with a front stoop. Two of them carried the third back. He wasn’t moving and they brought him to me so I could fix him. His head was completely smashed flat and they thought I could blow on him and inflate his head like a balloon. Somehow I knew that the two boys had flattened his head with a big rock but they insisted they didn’t know how it happened. I can’t get the image of the pancake head out of my head.

I am going to meet a friend for breakfast this morning. Another thing I haven’t done in ages. I’m excited about that. We’re meeting at the dinner up the street where I have not been yet.

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Tears and Fears

* comments closed on this post *

I cried last night.

The MM wouldn’t fall asleep at one when he should have taken his nap My fault. I should have fed him before putting him down so he was too hungry to calm and I didn’t figure it out until a couple of hours later when he told me he was hungry. I let him up at two thirty. He ate a whole can of Spagetti-O’s which he loves for lunch, plus a whole banana. Then we went to Target because I was out of bubble bath and he wanted a bath yesterday. Our Target is only three miles away. On that short car ride, The MM got sleepy. I put him in the cart and we went in the store. He stayed awake long enough to pick out Mr. Bubble, and blue and pink bath foam and the bath water coloring tablets and an Angry Birds gift bag coloring kit. Then he started nodding off I the cart while I tried to look for closet organizing baskets. I figured I could do that when I was alone next week much better, so we went home like he wanted.

As soon as I put him in the car, he fell asleep. He stayed asleep while I took him out of the car. I figured I would let him sleep an hour then wake him up. By the time the hour went by it was five in the evening. He wouldn’t wake up. I even moved him from the couch to his bed and he wouldn’t wake up. I knew I was going to be in trouble now. He did get out of bed to find me around seven. He climbed on me and went back to sleep. QV picked him up and carried him back to bed. We hoped he would sleep all night long now. I didn’t think it would happen, so I went to bed at seven thirty (I did get up early - at six - which I am no longer used to after only two weeks.) The MM woke up at nine thirty and stayed awake, playing, until two thirty in the morning. It’s eight now and he’s still asleep. We’re going to visit my parents, O & O, today. Hopefully, I’ll do better with The MM schedule.

I cried last night not because my sleep was disturbed although that never makes me happy. Because I couldn’t fall right to sleep and stay asleep, I started thinking. I thought about work. It seemed like it was so long ago that I worked and I sort of miss not having a place to go to each day - you know, like an easy plan for my days. And I miss the familiarity of the people and that they’ve mostly made no effort to contact me. First I tried to block the bad feelings and then I remembered that I’m not doing that anymore. I am now looking at my bad thoughts and feelings and examining them instead of running from them. So I cried.

And right then I got the opening for my book, tSLBoM, and how it should be written. The plan and layout came to me in the middle of my tears and fears. Not a bad trade off.

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* forgot to turn off comments - I wonder if that was Freudian *