Sunday, March 8, 2009

Simultaneous crash

I went to bed at 8:45 last night, right after I sang Mister his Lullaby. I wasn't planning on it, but suddenly and simultaneously, my body and mind crashed. I wasn't even able to eat half of the shake J brought home or even go down the stairs to say good-night to him. This doesn't happen all too often--usually one or the other crashes and I walk around zombie-like, unable to remember why I came downstairs, why I got the butter out, who I just called on the phone, or what the end of the story is that I am telling. Or, I lay in bed, unable to move, but with my mind thinking of something I wanted to write or say or do, if only my body weren't comatose. 

I think the occasional simultaneous crash might have to do with being Mom Tired. My friend Sarah describes Mom Tired in her newspaper column as follows: "Being mom tired isn’t so much a circumstance as a state of being.  Take any mom, calculate the number of years since her first pregnancy, and you have the number of years she’s been mom tired.  Calculate the number of times she’s had to watch Barney or Mary-Kate and Ashley and you have the degree to which she’s mom tired."

So I have been Mom Tired for over 6 years, since I DO count those 10 months of pregnancy (and yes, I wrote 10 months because 40 weeks is NOT 9 months). And my theory is that when the degree to which I am Mom Tired reaches a certain point, all function fails. 

Thankfully, I woke up this morning slightly re-charged. But already since we got home from church 2 hours ago, I have intervened in a fight over the sole mini-candy bar in a care package from a friend, a fight over the sole piece of gum from the school carnival yesterday, a fight over who was first to play a computer game, and I am now signing off after agreeing to play Candyland and read The Library Mouse (again--already read it twice yesterday) and do something else "that's fun because it's the weekend," as Mister reminded me. So, my degrees of Mom Tired are already climbing. Be prepared for another crash soon.

3 comments:

Dena said...

I can totally relate to being mom tired. I've been mom tired for 11 years, times 4 kids. Whew! It's exhausting!

You are pregnant tired on top of being "mom tired" - that pushes me over the edge every time!

Lei said...

I can relate of course! But thank goodness I haven't had to withstand much of Barney OR Mary-Kate.

Tressa said...

Thanks for putting into words how a lot of us moms feel. I have to remind myself why I'm so tired all the time just so that I don't get so annoyed with being tired and blame myself for not getting everything done. :) I do draw the line on Barney - not in my house and we don't have cable so I won't have to worry about Mary-Kate.