Resetting the Clock

Unlike Daylight Savings Time, resetting my inner clock takes a ton of effort.  Some people can simply go to bed earlier or wake up earlier.  For whatever reason, that's never worked for me.  I will go to bed and lay there for hours until my body says, "Okay, NOW it's time to sleep!" which generally tends to be the time I normally would have gone to bed.  This can also sometimes trigger week-long bouts of insomnia.  Waking up earlier in the morning likewise doesn't help.  It just ensures I will be cranky and tired all day, and I'll still go to bed at the same time at night, only to need more sleep the next morning.

So I'm going to try the one thing I know that works.  I'm going to exhaust the heck out of myself.

It didn't work so well last night - I was feeling sleepy enough for bed at 9, but did I go to bed?  Nope.  I still hadn't eaten dinner.  Hadn't had any time to relax.  My body was super stiff.  So I made myself food, and vegged.  I probably would have gone to bed a little earlier than normal, but I was waiting for the hubby to get home so he didn't interrupt my pattern.  And I was up with him until 2, when HE went to bed.  After which I began my going-to-bed ritual, so that I was asleep by, oh, 3.  Since he also opened this morning, I ended up getting five hours of sleep.  Oh, and I also ended up crying all over myself because I was too tired to fend off the emotional onslaught of post-trip processing.  Yuck.

The trick, I think, is so much physical exertion that I WANT to go to bed before midnight.  That this seems an appealing option, rather than a loss of the only time to myself I get all day.  After all, I will get two hours during good daylight to write or read or blog or whatever, I just have to be rested enough not to nap with the berrykin.

Yesterday, I backpacked the baby down to the market.  2.5 miles.  27 pounds of baby.  8-ish pounds of food on the return trip.  It was more than exerting enough.  Today, I'm sore.  I don't have to worry about dinner or sorting the car or ANOTHER day of laundry.  Which means we can go for a walk, wear me out again, and then let Jeremelon handle the food.  Hopefully, because he'll also be home early, I can go to bed when I want to go to bed, instead of when it works best.

Then I just have to do it again tomorrow.  And the next day.  And the next day.  I'm already much more awake and ready to get up this morning!

Home!

We are home from the insanity of vacationing!  That was a LOT of driving.  Whew!  The Jeremelon let me sleep for 12 hours more or less straight yesterday.  I haven't slept that well since the Berrykin was born.  It was unbelievably beautiful sleep.  *__*

And of course, I sat down for a couple minutes to blog after putting in the last load of trip laundry, folding and putting away the last load of clothes, and actually getting around to getting dressed, and the Berrykin wakes up from his nap.  Every.  Time.  It doesn't matter how long I think I have left before he gets up.  The second I sit down and open up the blog, he shouts at me from his room.  Because we are in tune that way, I guess.  When I'm the one on baby duty, I still wake up five minutes before he does.  I love knowing the brain/body of two different, separate people can do that!  And when I think about it, it makes me want to snuggle him up.  :)  But when I don't, when I really want to sit and blog because my brain feels like it's going to explode from the whirling vortex of chaos inside it, I heave a heavy sigh.  Give a little groan.  And go snuggle him anyway.

New Blog!

I have a hundred things to do before we leave for California.  So what did I do?  Did I clean?  No (though Jeremelon did.  Yay, husband!).  Did I do homework?  Ha!  Did I make lists to help me be more organized.  Not a chance.

Nope.  I felt it was a better use of my time to create a new blog.  Or my procrastination brain did.

For whatever reason, I have a new place to play!

The Berry Patch House

Mostly, I'm going to use it to try to convince myself that cooking is fun.  That veggies are yummy.  That a healthy lifestyle is a happy lifestyle (okay, that one doesn't take convincing, but it does bear constant repetition).

Plus, my childbirth class made me realize that not only did I have postpartum depression (that I may, in fact, still be suffering from), but I also experienced post-traumatic stress disorder from giving birth.  It was bad.  Like, can't see past my front door, and won't even look because I can barely survive in here, bad.  I'm still sorting through all the feelings.  All the anger, betrayal, disappointment, sadness, and honest grief.  But that is a post for another time.  I bring it up here to say that all the above has made me feel utterly disconnected from everything.  I have no roots to fall back on, no skills to feel good about.  Worse than that, I've been weighed down by the guilt of feeling like I'm a horrible mother because I never connected with my baby like I "should" have.  I know now that it wasn't my fault, and that I shouldn't hold myself accountable for those feelings.  But I DO need to find a way to overcome them.  My hope is that the new blog will be a jumping off point for reconnecting with life, my husband, my self, my day-to-day existence, and, most importantly right now, my son.  Because we connect, and we love each other like mad, but I still suffer from the guilt and the fear that I'm not being a good enough mommy.  I need something to prove to myself that our days aren't wasted.  Even if that just means cooking for us once a day!  I need my time to mean something, before I go absolutely batty with the feelings of inadequacy (if I haven't already...).

So!  Give the new blog a once-over.  Bookmark it if you want to follow my attempts to cook and make other stuff from scratch.

And have a berry lovely day! :D

Oh, the Insanity!

I feel like my brain has been disconnected, and it's sending phantom signals to my body.  Just enough to remind me there are things to be doing, but not with anything resembling the solidity to actually do them.  It's highly frustrating.  In the hopes of overcoming this 80-car pile-up on the railroad tracks of my mind, I've decided to go back to my old Journey of 1000 Groans to keep everything straight.  No more to-do lists here!

I have so much school that has to get done.
We're supposed to be moving this summer...preferably in June before the heat overwhelms me.
Project after project lines up in my writing queue, desperate to be written.
My body demands hard work to improve, but keeps breaking down in the process.
And there's this adorable wee berrykin who monopolizes my time to feed, clothe, tickle, and otherwise care for like a good and happy momberry.

Hoo-ee!  There are just not enough hours in a day!

It's my new goal to make this blog a happy, positive reinforcement of my achievements, in situ.  On the fly.  As they happen.  Hopefully, I'll be collected enough to provide links to my other blogs wherein you can read about things in more detail, should there be details to be had.

Right now, I have to say this.

My berrykin is unbelievably adorable.  And brilliant.  And sneaky.  Anything he knows he's not supposed to have, he will crawl behind the couch with.  Whenever he is told "no," he breaks out in a huge grin with a case of giggles, because he knows very well that I can't resist him.  Sometimes that applies to bedtime, too.  He's also rapidly approaching two, complete with demanding tantrums.  For instance, today after we took an hour-long stroller ride, he screamed his head off the instant we got home. Why?  Because he wanted to walk back down the stairs by himself.  Once I let him do that, he wanted to keep going.  I have no idea where.  Apparently, to adventure.  When I put him in the car instead, another tantrum ensued.  This one lasted for a good ten minutes, until we were on a long enough stretch of road that the vibrations soothed him.  Still, he would occasionally add a whimper, just so I knew he was still upset.  Did I mention he's also a little pill?  He has a habit of throwing unwanted food on the floor when he's done eating.  Yesterday, I heard his fruit hitting the floor from the other room while I got dressed, and called to him not to throw it on the floor.  So he threw it all over the table, instead.  Because he's a good boy like that.

And I love him so very, very much!

I dearly want to give him another berrykin to play with in the patch, but I can't.  First, I have to lose 80 pounds.  I have to get those parts of my body, like my thyroid, fixed and working properly.  And I have to find an extra source of income that doesn't presently exist.  All of that is so very irritatingly practical compared to the upwelling of love and wanting for a berrykin I don't have yet.

Sigh.

So I shall lavish my undivided attention (ha!  Have you seen my list of homework??) on my single wee berrykin.  And I shall walk.  And I shall dance.  And I shall dream.  And hopefully this time next year, I will have a secret I can't tell anyone about yet. :)