I'm tired and crabby. I'm not quite at the end of my tether but I can see it from here.
The day started far far too early when the time still had a 4: at the beginning of it and Katy notified me in her inimitable manner that she was Awake. It took me an age to get her back settled again only for Elizabeth to join the party just before six. Bryan went back to London after some palaver because his cab didn't turn up at 7.15am (possibly because he didn't book one as it's a Tuesday following a Bank Holiday and his regular taxi comes on a Monday). Elizabeth accidentally snapped a kitchen cupboard door off it's hinges with much splintering of wood, Katy had had enough by 10am and it's been one tantrum after another all day long.
Mum, worth twice her weight in chocolate, has helped out all day (I think I would be in a much worse state if she hadn't - and she was the emergency lift to the station this morning too) and has had enough. I planned on the day going quite differently, said I could do things and so I'm having to let down people that I said I'd help this afternoon as I simply can't leave a whiny five year old and a screamy four year old with an exhausted eighty year old and so we have a frustrated, tired and resentful forty year old moaning to you right now.
What's gone wrong? Apart from Daddy's return to London, expensive accidents, not enough sleep (by far) and a houseful of very tired women of various ages? Would it be possible, please, for something to go right today, at some point soon?
Bryan's train broke down somewhere south of Luton and he had to disembark outside a station and thus got to London very late. We've had a call to say that Katy's surgery on Friday has been pushed back to the afternoon list rather than the morning one, thus lessening her remote chance of coming home as a day case. Everyone I know is rather pleased that they appear to have been allocated some tickets for the Olympics but nothing has been debited from our account. I've forgotten to send a present for a friend's daughter's birthday tomorrow despite having had it for a few days waiting to parcel up and send.
I don't know where my head is at the moment. I don't normally make arrangements and then let people down yet I've done it twice in the last few weeks (and to the same person!). I hate it when people are unreliable and at the moment it's me. I'm forgetting things, failing to write things down, not taking things in properly and sleeping poorly. The last one probably explains all the others I guess.
I'm sorry. What a self absorbed and self pitying moan this is.
 |
| Bat. By Lizzie, age 5 |
Let me tell you about the bats the other night.
The other night I was on my way to bed when I noticed that it was still light at 9.45pm. I love the light nights and I love the mild weather so I went outside and Bryan joined me. The clouds were beautiful, sort of lit from beneath and silvery and shiny so we lay on the grass to look at them for a bit as the last bit of light faded. We saw the patterns made by the clouds, the lovely half-light and, just before the first stars came out, there came a pair of bats dancing in the dusk over our heads. Silently, playfully, as if choreographed, they danced and swooped and dived and just seemed to enjoy themselves. Neither of us are bat experts but we'd both heard of Pipistrelles, so we decided that they were probably Pipistrelle bats. They were beautiful.
It was a special twenty minutes. I'm sure it wasn't the only good twenty minutes of the weekend but it's the bit that sticks in my mind right now as the weekend recedes and this week starts walking all over me. I never thought that bats would feature in any nostalgic memory of mine, but it turns out that they do.
Sigh.
Well, this is destined to tail off I think into a grumpy bathtime and then I'll feel guilty when I look at my girls at bedtime and remember how impatient I was this evening. Just day to day living wears me out sometimes.
We've had dramas recently and quite serious things to contend with; and Katy's op is still ahead on Friday assuming that her cold clears up in time. The last few weeks have held a lot for me to cope with and we've plodded through it with some tears and some worrying and an awful lot of over-thinking, but largely managed alright. I haven't gone under and stayed in bed and wept. And then here I am on a relatively normal day where the worst that happens can be easily rectified, where the frustrations are merely tantrums and thrown toys and uneaten meals and people being grumpy, and yet today has been the day where I've come closest to losing the plot completely. I'm just so tired, Lord. I feel as if I've been tired for ages. Can't it just stop for a little while?
I'm sure it's no co-incidence that I feel far from you at the moment and I feel my reserves are low and I could do with something to lift my spirit. I'm sure that I only feel so low and empty because I'm in need of a Good Night's Sleep.
Be with me, Lord, on this beautiful evening in which I can't seem to find any joy. Be close to me as I go to bed and please sleep next to both my lovely girls so that you're on hand if they wake. Be with Bryan as he works late while tired to make up the hours lost by his broken train. Be with my Mum as she falls asleep in front of her favourite TV programme because her daughter and grand-daughters have worn her out.
Lord, bring peace on this house and make tomorrow a better day.
No comments:
Post a Comment