Burnt out

I haven't slept all night for six years, give or take, but now that I finally am, sometimes, getting a solid five or even six hours at a time - and the right hours at that, not the very unhelpful 7pm to midnight stretch that I remember complaining about Dash doing many many moons ago - I'm exhausted. I think my body has taken its pent-up resentment about not getting to sleep for so long and is throwing it back at me, finally, now that it can.

I would think it was my imagination, but a friend told me it happened to her too - when she weaned her two-year-old and her four-year-old finally started sleeping better, she found she was going to bed early every night to catch up on all those years of missed sleep.

I think it's probably the end-of-summer doldrums too, though. Even though we're out of the 95-degree days, for this week at least, it's still hot and humid and sweaty and sunny, and I'm tired of it. We're all far too jaded to bother greasing up the children with sunscreen these days, and are relying on the natural protection they've built up on their lovely tanned limbs to see them through. The mosquitos are having a field day, or several, and my ankles and poor Dash's legs are currently sprinkled lavishly with their itchy little love-bites. Little feckers.

And the fact that Dash is already back at school almost - not quite, mind - adds insult to injury. I still can't get anything done, because I have Mabel all the time, but I'm also starting to get the feeling that I don't want to do anything, and that when she finally does get out of my hair (4th September not that I'm counting) I'll just slump into a mouldering heap rather than do anything constructive with my surfeit of time and space, because constructive things are hard and require energy.

I think I'll have to ease myself in gently by taking a little trip to Target. Or maybe Kohl's.