honestly

i should have gone to bed a long time ago. i had promised myself forty days of early sleep-in, to compensate for these nights so short, and cut up, chop chop chop into so many little pieces, and because no good comes out of being down here late at night, it's all computer screens and nail-biting, and anxiety, and guilt, and confusion, and fear-mongering, and feeling distinctly like a failure, and the opposite of inspiration (whatever that is, expiration i guess), all tired-but-wired, and the man coming home, and staying up later still, supposedly to chat, but really to make uninteresting noises at each other until we are both so exhausted we cannot unpeel ourselves from the couch, and so have no choice but to stay even longer, and watch some sitcom online, which then stalls every couple of seconds, but we don't give up, we are heroes that way, because it will restart any moment now, heroes AND creatures of faith, and it would be so nice just to see the next minute, of this show that neither of us cares the least about, because the only story lines i can handle at night are neither funny, nor sad, nor scary, nor real, nor in any way emotionally engaging or intellectually challenging, and the show does restart eventually, because of or despite our many well-honed and only mildly insane rituals (open full screen, close full screen, pause, restart, do not move, whatever you do, do not move, hit the laptop) (oh our faith rewarded at last!), just as I am about to 'give up', although not quite sure what giving up means in this context, the entire evening being nothing more than a long series of bite size giving up motions, and we watch whatever it is for a whole other minute, before it stalls all over again, and by now i am so tired i don't even think i will make it to bed, especially since there is the six-year old, to be lifted out (after dark he gets heavier by the hour, I swear), and carried to the toilet, where he may pee in the bowl if I am lucky, or on his feet, or on mine, or on his new pajama pants, requiring a trip to the closet, and then carried back to bed, to be placed not too close to the edge, to avoid his falling out in a couple of hours just as the toddler rolls away after his 3 am boob session, but not too close to the middle either, or i will not be able to squeeze in between him and his brother, and will have to lie all night on my side, balancing precariously on one elbow, and wake up with a neck so stiff I will not be able to nod or shake my head all day, and of course the cat has taken advantage of the toilet routine to sneak into the bedroom and squeeze herself flat under the bed (quite a feat i tell you: that bed barely lifts itself off the floor), from where she can never ever be extracted again, which you'd think solves the problem, one way or another, except she is not allowed in the bedroom at night, another little something to feel guilty about, poor little baby, forced to wander alone through the house like the long-lost ghost of kitties past, but seriously, there is only so many feet/hands/fingers/noses i can handle in my face/belly/underpants on any given night, plus she purs like a locomotive every time the toddler wakes up (eight to ten times a night), which then starts him on his deep-sleep monologue about the one time the cat scratched him on the cheek (i don't even know whether that ever happened, it may be urban legend), and from then move on to some other monologue (involving trucks, very very large ones, and swings, and a long list of all the people he knows and loves and who may or may not be sleeping in this house right now, and should he get up and check) (well, one of them ain't sleeping for sure at this point). anyway, just thinking of all this makes me so tired i just stay put, and watch another stalling episode (how to stretch 20 minutes of insanely inane tv into a couple of hours), and oh my, while i was writing this, somehow a whole 40 minutes passed, and i can hear the man on the stairs, and honestly, i should just go to bed now...