Monday, January 30, 2017

This Is Why I'm Always Tired and I'm Not Mad About it

From the time my alarm goes off on Monday mornings until I leave work on Friday evening, I am tired. Sometimes, it's just a gentle weariness that I know I can push through. Other times, it's a soul-crushing exhaustion that I feel will cause my untimely death. Throughout the work week, I am somewhere on the spectrum of tiredness at all times.

Of  course, there is a simple way to alleviate this feeling. Sleep. I could take a weekend day and do nothing. I could sleep in, stay in my jammies all day, order dinner in at 5pm, and get to bed by 8. And sometimes I even have this intention. I decide on Monday, when my eyelids are so heavy I don't think I'll be able to keep them open through one more meeting, that I will take a weekend off from the grind and get some well-deserved rest. Yep, that's the plan.

Then the week wears on and I get antsy. I want to do something fun. I want to try something new. I start seeing ideas for fun things to do over the weekend and think, well, I could just do this one thing. It won't be so bad. Then I start building on that one thing: Hey, you're going to be in Brooklyn anyway, so why not hit up that craft beer bar you've heard so much about?

And that's how my weekend went. Friday night has become all about my kid and her friends. They go ice skating every Friday night, and the hours are less than perfect. So I'm heading out at 8:30pm to drop them off and then again at 10:30 to pick them up. There's no rest for a mom who has just picked up a bunch of high-on-hot-chocolate-and-cute-boys teenage girls. The girls want to talk (and, truth be told, I'm glad they want to talk to me!). My daughter wants to continue the talk when we get home (again: grateful she wants to tell me what's going on!). So yeah, there goes Friday night and it wasn't even exciting.

Hubby and TJK always go to Monster Jam. I cannot for the life of me understand why, but this is something they have done for years. I love it because it should be a quiet night at home for me. Well, I really could have used the quiet night, but since my dad was joining them at MJ, I decided to ask my mom to go see La La Land with me. Ok, so that's a movie, no biggie. Here's how the day ended up: We got up and headed up to Nanuet, where we were supposed to meet up with a friend of Hubby's. So we spent a few hours in Nanuet, bouncing from place to place, drinking beers and talking and having a great time. Then we got home, and my parents were already at our house. So, out we went. Mom and I went for a nice dinner and cocktails and then the movie. By the time we got home, and then they got home, there was no time for rest and little time for sleep.

On Sunday, we got up early and head into Brooklyn for brunch. I had seen something on Facebook about a magic exhibit in Williamsburg, so we head  in early to grab a nice hipster brunch before out 1:20 tickets for the magic exhibit. Three and a half hours later, we were still on line for the fucking exhibit. It was insane - so poorly run and so cold out (yes, we were outside for 3 hours in February waiting on line to get into this thing). But once we were in, TJK loved it (she is kind of obsessed with magic right now) so it was worthwhile (sort of). She did get to levitate so that was cool:


But then, we had so many plans for what we were going to do with our afternoon in the BK that even though it was now after 5pm, we still wanted to make the most of our location. So we spent some time at Torst, a great craft beer joint, and then found a bus which had been turned into a teeny cafe, and had drinks there while looking at the skyline from the Brooklyn side, and then hit up our favorite restaurant in Manhattan (The Smith). So we ended up getting home at nearly midnight, on a Sunday night.

I'm telling myself now that next weekend will be quieter, and we will take it easy and get some rest...and even as I say it I know it isn't true. I know I have the best of intentions, but when the weekend comes at me, with all of its enticing opportunities for fun and craziness, I know I won't say no.

But this part is true: I wouldn't have my life any other way. I live for the chaos and I want to do as much as I can while I still can.  Exhaustion is just a by-product of a life well-lived.

No comments: