nap

It’s been difficult for me to keep my eyes open this week. I’m fighting another cold, a cold I will continue to get—over and over again—because I’m always tired. I never get enough sleep.

But what is the solution? Go to sleep at 9 pm? Then I have no time to unwind after the girls are in bed. Some day, I’m told, my daughters will want to sleep until noon, and I’ll have so much time that I will be well-rested, glowing. I’ll be so well-rested, in fact, that I won’t be able to focus on my writing. I will be paralyzed by the hours stretching before me, and I will be rendered absolutely useless.

Bring it on.

Seriously, if Zoë would sleep even until 6:30, I could get up two or three mornings a week to write and I’d still be getting more sleep than I am now. But regardless of what time we put the adorable little shit to bed, she wakes up singing at 5 am. (Sometimes it’s the ABCs, sometimes it’s “mama, mama, I luff uuuu.” I know, how can I complain about that?)

If the girls didn’t share a room, I’d let Zoë sing and sing and maybe she’d fall back to sleep. (I doubt it, but I’d try.) But that's impossible. If Stella gets up that early—which she sometimes does despite our fastest retrieval efforts—the level of whining in our house reaches an unbearable pitch.

So there’s that—the unbelievably early riser.

Then there is an addiction to television series on DVD, which makes going to sleep at nine out of the question.

Then there are the errands I need to run for my grandpa, who is holding steady, but not getting better, not returning to normal (and by this I mean his abnormally spry 100-year-old self). He keeps saying to my mom: “Well, what if I don’t feel better? It would be too bad if I felt like this all the time.” His body is not doing what his mind wants, and this—the failings of his skin and bones—is hard for him to handle. So I make his Christmas cards, go over a couple of days a week to do his dishes, which, he told me this morning, didn’t inspire him.

Then there is the book proposal I’ve been working on, which I love. I really do. I love working on it. I love thinking about it. But still, I wish I didn’t think about it during the only twenty minutes all week I have to lie down, to close my eyes. I wish I didn’t think about it on the mornings D is on Singing Zoë Duty. But I can’t turn it off. So I can’t fall back asleep. I can't nap. Which is why I’m tired. Why my head feels heavy.

And I have work to do. I have things to check off Christmas lists. I have cards to get in the mail. I have presents to wrap. I have books—more and more books piling up on my shelves, on the edge of my desk—to review. Hell, I have cookies to bake.

But all I really want is a nap. Well, maybe a nap on a beach, a nap at the edge of ocean, with the sun beating down on me. Yes, that's what I want.