Tired Much??

I am back in Brisbane after Outreach in Townsville.  We did it in four days this week rather than the usual five.  There were a couple of factors in that;

1.  My drive to get home so Levi doesn't have to spend too much time upstairs

2.  One child is visiting relatives out of the country reducing the trip by a home visit

and 3.  One child has died.

So it meant that there was the possibility to doing the trip in a shorter time frame.  We were wrong.  It meant that the days were all twelve hour days and we were all very tired and cranky by the end.  The last day started at 7.30am and ended when I arrived home at 11pm.  The other problem with a four day trip is that the fifth day then also gets booked, but here.

I know, I am tired and whining still.  It is hard at times.  I feel that there are lots of people who need my attention and I am not big enough to cover it all.  I feel as if I can't cover work, family, friends and home maintenance.  In there is Levi, who always seems to get the short straw.  I feel as if I get home and he needs attention but I am whipped.  I think that I am just tired tonight and it is always harder on those days. 

Today, Levi cried four times (that I know about!).  Being upstairs for a week is great but there are strict rules that he must follow and it stresses and tires him as well.  He coped poorly today at school and the short day that I am supposed to have was long and went until 5pm.  My friend picked him up from school and took him home to play until I got there.  He cried when he was picked up because his day had been hard.  His statement?

"My tooth made me lose all my friends today!"

His front teeth are very loose and today when he was eating lunch, they bled.  His friends laughed and it tore him apart.  He cried at the time (I imagine - it's not one of the four known) and when he was telling my friend who picked him up.

Dave's (Father to four) answer to him was beautiful!  He said;

"Laughing doesn't mean that you lose friends, sometimes if you laugh with them, it makes you friends"

Levi wasn't convinced, but managed to dry his tears.  He played at their house until I got there and then again when he got stuck on top of the play structure, and again when he thought they were mad at him for pulling on the weight machine.  By the time we got home, he couldn't really hold it together for anything.  He just needed snuggle on the couch time, a long shower and bed.  He can sleep in tomorrow (I can dream!) and he can catch up over the weekend.  Then we have two weeks and I go on Outreach again; this time to Cairns.  I wish this was easier for him but I do think that in the long run he will grow by having his limits pushed.  If nothing else it will improve his resilience in a safe non-damaging way.  I hope that he sleeps in; Oh Yes; I hope!  There is nothing planned for the weekend and we are a few weeks shy of the start of the Soccer season.  I haven't even been organized to restart swimming training.  It will be a quiet one if at all possible.

Happier Photos

I am so busy at the moment, I feel like I am drowning.  I can't get ahead at all but I can just place one foot in front of the other.  I am tired and I am stressed but I think the next few weeks will be easier.  Tomorrow is Levi's last day at school and then he has two weeks off.  Hopefully at the end of that two weeks he will be more relaxed.  He too is tired and stressed.  He is fighting bed and waking early, which is not helping either of us. 

This weekend is a yard work one.  I am looking forward to doing some work outside.  The people up the driveway are selling (Thank Goodness) and I want the driveway to be looking fabulous.  I am happy to help them sell!

At the moment we are doing the kid swap shuffle for the first week of vacation.  Levi is booked in for Vacation Care for the second week but I am going to try hard to find friend's houses he can go to for the first three days.  Thursday is a great day at Care so he will go and I have Friday off.  That is the two weeks. 

Back and Down

Back now from Outreach.  Actually I was back on Friday night late.  The weekend wasn't much fun though, because when I got to sleep back in my own bed it was beside a very hot little thing.  At 102.5 degrees, he wasn't sleeping very well either, so we had a weekend of both of us trying to catch up on sleep and pull ourselves together.  Mostly it has worked, mostly.  Levi is much better now and went to school today, but we are both counting the days, nay the minutes, until the holidays.  All of the kids are feeling this long term and you can tell that all the people at work are as well.

It seems that it is just hard to do anything at the moment.  I think it is about burnout and fatigue.  The good news is that I have a bunch of time off over Easter.  Most of the office does as well, which will help everyone.  It is a fabulous office.  They are all so supportive, but when we all get worn down, it seems that it accentuates the affect.

I am feeling a bit down as well.  It might have something to do with working a week and a half worth of hours last week and some of it may be that I am still having trouble sleeping.  Sleeping is getting better though as it always does after a while.  Some of the down, is in just not being able to help some of my friends that are going through tough times themselves.  I feel as if I have let them down by being in Australia, when they could use some real help in USA.  I wish that I had a time warper so that I could be in two places at once.  I wish that I could do something to help, but am frustrated by the distance and the nature of the illness.  I can't even really help to support from here. 

Confessions of an overtired mother

Yep, still tired.  I can't wait until the weekend and we can catch up a little.  It will be a fairly busy weekend but I think there should be some vague chance that both Levi and I can catch up a little on sleep.  Here are the things that I need to confess for the day:

1.  I still haven't unpacked fully from the Townsville trip

2.  Or even the US trip

3.  I still haven't taken the 'First Day of School Photo' and at this rate it will likely get taken around about June!

4.  Should be unpacking or cleaning rather than writing on this blog.

Tomorrow I have to go to a funeral and it always makes me a little morose.  I will go into work for the morning and the funeral and then take off and do the shopping that I need to do before coming home and getting organized for the big sleepover.  Ty is sleeping over for the first time and to say that the excitement level is high is a gross understatement!

Today I got my eyebrows waxed.  I know it is a very strange thing for me to subject myself to but it was an emergency.  The beauty school upstairs at work needed some crash test dummies and we were available.  

Tired

I am so tired I can't even think.  I can't even begin to think.  It seems like everything is just ramping up.  I can't wait until it ramps back down again and I get to actually have a single thought without having to have ninety thoughts at once just to keep up with what I have to do.  I wish that I could clone myself just for the next few days. 

I am hoping that this weekend there will be a little more space in both my head and in my diary.  The last Shark Bait Kid dive is this weekend and Levi and I go down tomorrow afternoon to get organized.

Friday

 What?  I'm not doing Anything!!

Yesterday, I had to go to the coast to talk to the people at the Marriott and work out this dive for the Shark Bait kids.  It was my second trip to the coast in 2 days because Wednesday, SeaWorld had suddenly decided that they couldn't do Friday.  They couldn't do the time and day that we had all rearranged our schedules for.  They could only do Thursday. 

I had Mim this trip instead of being by myself, so with the long conversations about the inconsistencies of the powers of the mutants in X-Men or other deep and meaningful things.  It meant that I wasn't alone with my thoughts, which is always dangerous.

I picked Levi up after school and we had 2 meltdowns before we made it the 5 minutes home.  The first was because I hadn't worked out that the 'password' was 'Rocket Boy'.  The other was because he was telling me how he had fallen off his scooter in the morning going to school.  He hadn't cried at the time....at all! By the afternoon's retelling however he didn't make it through the story.

Man!  That kid is getting tired.  All the kids are getting tired.  We all need a break. 

It has been raining again.  Not the hammering rain that was previously being experienced, just a on and off sprinkling.  Levi and I were washing turkey poo off the concrete and I went back inside so he could wash his 'work site'.  By the time that I got back, he was filling a bucket that he shouldn't have been.  I didn't really care but the guilty look said that he didn't think it was a strictly legal activity.

Just that small amount of rain had the causeway go under water again.  It doesn't make me overly confident about this wet season.  The ground is just not absorbing water any more.  Pretty much it goes straight into the creek.  Not much of a buffer any more. 

Long Day

I love my work.  I love seeing kids and interacting with families, but that is not all of what I am now.  Now that I am more of a big cheese, it has become harder.  I am not a big cheese, or even a Tasty Cheddar, probably more of a Gouda or Colby.  I love the kids more than anything and I love to help the families, it's dealing with the staff issues that gets hard for me.  Today made me uneasy again.  I hate feeling like that.  It made me change the way I drove home and look over my shoulder again.  OK to be fair, I drive a different way home everyday without a trigger, but I don't really look over my shoulder any more.  It is weird for me to be thrown by things like this.  It is always a time that I feel like there is the distinct possibility that someone is going to take a swing at me.  If someone actually does take that swing, I am fine, because I just react, but it is more the threat that sits there unacted on.  Then my imagination takes over and I can think of plenty of things that are worse than that simple punch.

Levi is always a balm for me on days like this.  He has a very simple look on life and it begins and ends with me.  That is great but there are days when I just want to be able to 'not cope'.  I want to have days where I don't have to pull it all together as soon as I reach After School Care.  I wish that I could just come home and curl up into a foetal position and someone brings me a cup of coffee and is just there.  I love Levi but it is unrelenting.  I get a lot of peace from him, but at times, just wish that I could have just 1 minute when I didn't have to be firing on all cylinders.  I have days that I wish I worked somewhere like McDonalds where the worse that can happen is that some one's hamburger is wrong. 

Yes, I'm grumpy and tired.  Tomorrow I will be better.  Either that or I will pick myself up again and keep going regardless