The morning is suffused with light. Of late, I wake up before six, and check the clock to make sure that I'm up way too early. I'm rarely disappointed. I don't know if it's the light, or that my body has decided that it is imperative that I pee at 5:50 every morning. Either way, I'm before the kids and annoyed as hell about it.
I go back to bed and try and sleep on my stomach with my neck to the side. I used to sleep that way all the time, but I kept having weird spasms in my neck that were so painful that I'd hardly be able to breathe. So I only treat myself during naps or during those forty five minutes to an hour before I'm expected to be awake. I don't sleep all that well. I am half-trying to sleep and half castigating myself for not sleeping. Shit! If I don't get to sleep in ten minutes I'll only have 5:45 minutes of sleep last night.
I mainly do math problems when I wake up early in the morning. I spend minutes, even half hours just calculating how much sleep I'm currently not getting. Sometimes I look at the alarm clock to confirm that I'm frittering away even more time than I thought. If I fall asleep, I tend to drool, and I sleep for ten minutes or so, at which point I wake up and check the alarm clock to see how long I've slept. Shit! Only fifteen minutes. This means I'll have only slept 6.45 hours last night.
I obsess over my sleep in the mornings. As if it will make any difference, calculating these hours of "lost" sleep. As if it was something that put down like a pair of keys that Ian wandered off with instead of something volitional. Fifteen minutes later I hear Sadie walk into the room. She's talking about wearing a dress, or how she's slept, and somehow she's sneaked into bed when I've gone to the bathroom, and she's taking up so much room that I nearly fall off the bed in trying to avoid her, which she aids by kicking her legs out. Kids are forever doing things like this, getting back at you in petty ways for not always responding to their whims. And though it's frustrating, feeling as though they don't appreciate you, at times, I get her back as well, telling her that there are no more cookies or peaches if she's bothering me about them. And she'll bother you about them. She'll bother you about them until you feel as though you'll probably end up pulling your hair out or turning into an insane person. But I don't do those things. I just raise my voice to a timber that says, "Why are you always effing with me?" and say, "Sadie! The cookies are all gone. You can't have another cookie. Make another choice."
The other day she spent a good chunk of the morning eating small bits of play dough and lying about it. It's annoying, but I can understand. Eventually I make my way back into bed and pretend to sleep while she alternatively kicks my legs or pats my back roughly saying, "wake up dada." The other day she asked my why I always try to go to sleep when she asks me to do something. It's because I'm always tired and because many of the things that a child asks you to do are kind of boring for an adult. In fact, I don't often particularly want to play at eating a picnic or build with blocks. In fact, what I want to do is to independently read books, or garden, or read interesting things on the internet. In fact, the things that I'm most interested in are adult activities.
But the thing about parenting is that you do wind up playing at a few games of picnic, or shoving cars along the ground for upwards of forty five minutes, which is not the sort of thing that you'd spend your time doing, but you're doing it because you're bored, or because you want the kids to leave you alone, or because you're temporarily enjoying this rather mundane activity because you're doing it with your children who are also capable of fits of loveliness that will nearly break your heart. But a large part of parenting is standing around half-bored, watching them do the sorts of things that they probably want to do. Though, to be honest, they are often bored as well and don't get to do half as many things as they want. Ian would just wander out into the street and point at cars all afternoon if we let him. We don't.
Right now for instance I'm downloading the movie Frozen and several songs by an old English actress, Vivien Leigh, who has musical versions of the Beatrix Potter stories. I'm purchasing these things with "my" iTunes gift card, and it's rather obvious why I put the my in quotes as I wouldn't spend money on either of these things of my own volition, bu I sometimes can be caught singing, rather poorly, portions of Peter Rabbit, and I've been asked by Sadie to stop singing "For the First time in Forever," from Frozen on the grounds that the movie apparently doesn't have any men in it. It does, but apparently not the version in her head.
This is all in preparation for a family trip up to Maine. It's the kind of thing where people keep asking if I'm excited, and I'm not really all that excited, but I'm beginning to feel as though I should be. I have a hard time keeping in touch with people. I tend to be stranded where I am, incapable of the useful sorts of wishing and gratitude that should probably accompany something like a trip to Maine. This is not to say that I won't have a good time when I get there. I probably will, though it's more complicated than that. Vacations now take on a life of there own, entirely separate from what I might want to do with my time. I'm a poor collectivist, capable of espousing it in name only. The truth of the matter is that I'm selfish and like to do the things that I want to do, and when I don't get to do them I throw fits, or complain, mostly to my wife about how we're not doing precisely the thing that I want to be doing, which may have some good reason or it may just be something I thought of an hour ago that is suddenly now essential to my being. I am impatient.
I had a school project due this evening on which I expended the least amount of effort possible within reason for a graduate student. Things like school projects, mornings, cereal, exercise, talking about exercise, the weather, the color of our bowls make me bored. I could say I felt bad about expending the minimal effort, but my roots are only slightly Puritanical. So though I feel a bit bad, my overriding feeling is that I did the right thing by not doing my best. I feel somehow as though I've conserved some mental and physical energy. Which is stupid, because I haven't saved that energy for anything useful. If anything is capital "U" useful, which is debatable.
The project was for a class about teaching Reading and Writing. I was reflecting on the project before class, thinking about how teaching might be fun because it's just a bunch of people hanging on every word you say. Except they really aren't. Especially in high school. They are looking for a thousand other things to listen to besides you, which I do too. I have times in the day when I'm staring directly at someone talking to me, particularly in a group context, and I'm not hearing a word they are saying, but I'm capable of nodding my head and sometimes I'll tune back in, but whatever I'm thinking of, usually people and relationships, is of far more interest to me than paying attention.
The point is: we're driving ten hours tomorrow, And a friend of mine was asking if the drive would be picturesque, but here is one of the crappy things about adult life--I'm always the one who drives, which means I barely glimpse sunsets and rainbows and beautiful rock formations because I'm busy driving the car. And don't get me wrong, I don't want anyone else driving the car because I trust myself more than anyone, but I'd also like to be in the passenger seat reflecting on the flight pattern of birds. I think I tend to be funny because it puts people at ease, but I'd be an effing liar if I said I was excited about the prospect of driving ten hours with two very small children in the back seat. I'm not dreading it either, because many worse things have and will happen to me in my life. I'm just not particularly looking forward to it. Sue me.
I go back to bed and try and sleep on my stomach with my neck to the side. I used to sleep that way all the time, but I kept having weird spasms in my neck that were so painful that I'd hardly be able to breathe. So I only treat myself during naps or during those forty five minutes to an hour before I'm expected to be awake. I don't sleep all that well. I am half-trying to sleep and half castigating myself for not sleeping. Shit! If I don't get to sleep in ten minutes I'll only have 5:45 minutes of sleep last night.
I mainly do math problems when I wake up early in the morning. I spend minutes, even half hours just calculating how much sleep I'm currently not getting. Sometimes I look at the alarm clock to confirm that I'm frittering away even more time than I thought. If I fall asleep, I tend to drool, and I sleep for ten minutes or so, at which point I wake up and check the alarm clock to see how long I've slept. Shit! Only fifteen minutes. This means I'll have only slept 6.45 hours last night.
I obsess over my sleep in the mornings. As if it will make any difference, calculating these hours of "lost" sleep. As if it was something that put down like a pair of keys that Ian wandered off with instead of something volitional. Fifteen minutes later I hear Sadie walk into the room. She's talking about wearing a dress, or how she's slept, and somehow she's sneaked into bed when I've gone to the bathroom, and she's taking up so much room that I nearly fall off the bed in trying to avoid her, which she aids by kicking her legs out. Kids are forever doing things like this, getting back at you in petty ways for not always responding to their whims. And though it's frustrating, feeling as though they don't appreciate you, at times, I get her back as well, telling her that there are no more cookies or peaches if she's bothering me about them. And she'll bother you about them. She'll bother you about them until you feel as though you'll probably end up pulling your hair out or turning into an insane person. But I don't do those things. I just raise my voice to a timber that says, "Why are you always effing with me?" and say, "Sadie! The cookies are all gone. You can't have another cookie. Make another choice."
The other day she spent a good chunk of the morning eating small bits of play dough and lying about it. It's annoying, but I can understand. Eventually I make my way back into bed and pretend to sleep while she alternatively kicks my legs or pats my back roughly saying, "wake up dada." The other day she asked my why I always try to go to sleep when she asks me to do something. It's because I'm always tired and because many of the things that a child asks you to do are kind of boring for an adult. In fact, I don't often particularly want to play at eating a picnic or build with blocks. In fact, what I want to do is to independently read books, or garden, or read interesting things on the internet. In fact, the things that I'm most interested in are adult activities.
But the thing about parenting is that you do wind up playing at a few games of picnic, or shoving cars along the ground for upwards of forty five minutes, which is not the sort of thing that you'd spend your time doing, but you're doing it because you're bored, or because you want the kids to leave you alone, or because you're temporarily enjoying this rather mundane activity because you're doing it with your children who are also capable of fits of loveliness that will nearly break your heart. But a large part of parenting is standing around half-bored, watching them do the sorts of things that they probably want to do. Though, to be honest, they are often bored as well and don't get to do half as many things as they want. Ian would just wander out into the street and point at cars all afternoon if we let him. We don't.
Right now for instance I'm downloading the movie Frozen and several songs by an old English actress, Vivien Leigh, who has musical versions of the Beatrix Potter stories. I'm purchasing these things with "my" iTunes gift card, and it's rather obvious why I put the my in quotes as I wouldn't spend money on either of these things of my own volition, bu I sometimes can be caught singing, rather poorly, portions of Peter Rabbit, and I've been asked by Sadie to stop singing "For the First time in Forever," from Frozen on the grounds that the movie apparently doesn't have any men in it. It does, but apparently not the version in her head.
This is all in preparation for a family trip up to Maine. It's the kind of thing where people keep asking if I'm excited, and I'm not really all that excited, but I'm beginning to feel as though I should be. I have a hard time keeping in touch with people. I tend to be stranded where I am, incapable of the useful sorts of wishing and gratitude that should probably accompany something like a trip to Maine. This is not to say that I won't have a good time when I get there. I probably will, though it's more complicated than that. Vacations now take on a life of there own, entirely separate from what I might want to do with my time. I'm a poor collectivist, capable of espousing it in name only. The truth of the matter is that I'm selfish and like to do the things that I want to do, and when I don't get to do them I throw fits, or complain, mostly to my wife about how we're not doing precisely the thing that I want to be doing, which may have some good reason or it may just be something I thought of an hour ago that is suddenly now essential to my being. I am impatient.
I had a school project due this evening on which I expended the least amount of effort possible within reason for a graduate student. Things like school projects, mornings, cereal, exercise, talking about exercise, the weather, the color of our bowls make me bored. I could say I felt bad about expending the minimal effort, but my roots are only slightly Puritanical. So though I feel a bit bad, my overriding feeling is that I did the right thing by not doing my best. I feel somehow as though I've conserved some mental and physical energy. Which is stupid, because I haven't saved that energy for anything useful. If anything is capital "U" useful, which is debatable.
The project was for a class about teaching Reading and Writing. I was reflecting on the project before class, thinking about how teaching might be fun because it's just a bunch of people hanging on every word you say. Except they really aren't. Especially in high school. They are looking for a thousand other things to listen to besides you, which I do too. I have times in the day when I'm staring directly at someone talking to me, particularly in a group context, and I'm not hearing a word they are saying, but I'm capable of nodding my head and sometimes I'll tune back in, but whatever I'm thinking of, usually people and relationships, is of far more interest to me than paying attention.
The point is: we're driving ten hours tomorrow, And a friend of mine was asking if the drive would be picturesque, but here is one of the crappy things about adult life--I'm always the one who drives, which means I barely glimpse sunsets and rainbows and beautiful rock formations because I'm busy driving the car. And don't get me wrong, I don't want anyone else driving the car because I trust myself more than anyone, but I'd also like to be in the passenger seat reflecting on the flight pattern of birds. I think I tend to be funny because it puts people at ease, but I'd be an effing liar if I said I was excited about the prospect of driving ten hours with two very small children in the back seat. I'm not dreading it either, because many worse things have and will happen to me in my life. I'm just not particularly looking forward to it. Sue me.
and now you know why I began to bald right after you were born...the joys and heartaches of being an adult and a
ReplyDeletehusband and a father..
escape to the cinque terra..in mind only!