Momnesia

Day Eight of Sleep Apocolypse

In my pre-wedding/baby life, I missed a lot of sleep. I worked about 50 jobs and internships and went to school full-time and often wondered why I had left the oh-so-lucrative world of journalism to go back to school and get my degree in ... journalism. Because poverty is my best friend. I'm all about shanking someone for taking a wall off my cardboard box.

I also managed to have a social life, which involved a lot of alcohol and boys, and that was great fun and all but also a little dramatic. So sleep was not a priority because it was only a day away, you know? I could give up a bartending shift or skip a class and catch up if needed.

I would give up a number of choice personal body parts to have that option now. I have slept in my own bed for only one out of the past eight nights, and that was only for a couple of hours.

Okay, so much of that was spent in the comfort of a hotel room with two beds into which we squeezed five people, three of whom snore like something has squashed their nasal passages into mashed potatoes, and one of whom sleeps like she's running away from a zombie invasion. It does not help that she is only three feet tall. It just means that her feet end where my girlie parts begin. And sometimes she managed to be upside down in the bed. And then her feet end where my nose begins. I think Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes had something to say about that, but I don't suppose the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments against my own toddler. But hopefully someone out there in the blogosphere can give me a witness. Because OUCH. And tired. And need chocolate. And a Diet Coke IV drip.

ANYWAY. So besides the hotel in Orlando thing, which wasn't too horrible because I finally just put the munchkin in a sleeping bag on the floor - prompting her to wake up in the middle of the night and exclaim, "I onna floor! Wha happen?!" - there has been the ear infection. The one that we thought we got rid of, but only sent into hiding. It has returned. And this time, it's personal.

So there was almost three days of 102-103-degree temperatures and worry and nights without sleep. Then there have been the last two days where I slept first on the bed, then on the couch, then on a sleeping bag on the floor by her crib. Nights without sleep, and without reason. And not the kind that produces monsters. Unless you see me when I "wake up" from eight days without sleep, in which case I think my husband would agree vehemently that the no-sleep without reason does INDEED produce monsters... but he would not do it within earshot of me because I would eat his face right off his head. In a very monstrous way.

And now the munchkin is down for her nap, and I would join her, but I prepared for what has become the daily nap-fighting ritual - it includes crying and screeching "MOMMY?!" as though I have gone somewhere I could not be at her beck-and-call (and while I would never leave her, I so sometimes think about running out the door screaming) - by drinking a small lake of Diet Coke.

So I raise my glass of soda to you. Because although I cannot see you, I think your faces probably look delicious.