Very Tired Valentine: Ode to the Constantly Weary

Ode to the Constantly Weary

You know you are tired when…

When you bend down to pick up a pirate flag on the carpet and before you know it you are lying face down on said carpet with your eyes closed. And you think: “I am so lucky to have this carpet. It is the perfect place to lie down. I would be perfectly comfortable sleeping here all night.

Starting right now.”

You know you are tired when, while-maybe-lying on your carpet, you count the things you have to do before you can go to bed. And the first thing, to get up from the carpet, seems to be excruciating torture.

Then you become your own best Olympic couch. So starts the patter in your head:

OK! Great work making through the day. GREAT work! Now all you got to do is get up—we’ll break down that process later—get up and get the yummy roasted chicken from the specialty store out of the foil and cut up some for you and some for K. No sweat! Right? No need for salad dressing tonight. (Michael Pollen would approve; so you’ve got that.) Just break up the lettuce leaves and add some edameme and bingo! Dinner. It’s OK that you didn’t make the chicken. It’s totally fine that you bought another separate chicken to roast yourself last week and that it is sitting in your frig and slowly stinking up the place. It’s OK that you will throw $12.98 down the garbage shoot. Stop giving yourself a hard time.(you know, one of the reasons you are having a hard time getting up is that you are really hungry. And, yes, you were up from 2-4:30am last night gnashing your teeth about how to make money so it’s no surprise that you are tired and yes, you should have done some yoga breathing; but we don’t have to go over that now.) OK, slugger, time to get off the bench. Visualization is all well and good. All well and good, but you can’t win the game, if you don’t play. And winning = sleeping all night. And you can’t go to sleep in your cozy bed if you don’t get up now and feed yourself and your child. Then it’s just bath and then sleepy stories, a few songs and ZING, cozy bed here you come. Just stay away from that chocolate! Get away from the caffeine sugar mix. That was the problem last night. Come on! Up and at ‘em”

And even though the sweet siren song of that carpet continues to call, you get up. You get up and you stumble down the four flights of stairs to change the laundry and fumble with quarters. And as you trudge up the stairs, you think:

What on earth are we going to eat for dinner?

All there is in the Frig is that week old piece of pizza and stinking, rotting whole chicken. That chicken is just laughing at you because you thought last week that you could be Ina Garten and whip up a beautiful roasted chicken dinner, but you can barely face opening the silverware drawer.

Maybe if I lie down on the carpet and think a minute, I will come up with a good dinner plan.