Late night

So it's 2:21am here in Eastern Tennessee and I'm wondering why I have no new email. Doesn't anyone else stay up half the night? Doesn't anyone else get energetic around midnight? Anyone? Hellooooooo.....


I've always been a night owl. My kids are too. Society doesn't seem to understand us. It's like you're a bad parent if your kids aren't in bed by a certain time and you must be a little bit "off" if you stay up until the wee hours of the morning.

Some of us are just programmed that way I guess. It isn't insomnia because I sleep hard once I lay down...
...unless some random thoughts start tripping around my brain. But that's unpredictable. It happens while falling asleep at times, early in the morning at other times (and believe me, I will NOT be awake early unless absolutely necessary or while camping).

Does anyone else have thoughts that force them to the computer at random times? Typing out your thoughts so they'll leave you the hell alone? I feel like that Amy Steinberg song; "I'm so sick of taking shit from my inner child, I wish she'd take a fucking nap or just stay quiet for a little while"
Yeah. Just for a while.
Let me organize my thoughts before a new one comes along, teasing and pestering the far corners of my brain. Pushing me to write, to create, to ponder.

We worked on Halloween costumes today. Jalen makes a perfectly adorable "Link" (from the video game series Zelda) and Ciara's "Corpse Bride"(Tim Burton movie) is slowly coming together. Jared's custom vampire fangs fit perfectly and I'm packing a box to mail to Trevor who has not decided when he's coming home yet. It's strange without him. I guess it's practice for when he moves out, but I'm not ready. Not yet. Maybe never.

I just wonder where all the other night owls are right now. 2:30am is a lonely time. Even with night owl kids around....they eventually give up and go to sleep like sane people. It's a quiet world outside. I'm missing Trevor and wondering how a person like me ever gets out of debt. Random thoughts. Typing to try and sort it all out. Feeling like crying because my oldest baby shouldn't be old enough to move away, or talk about marriage or anything of the sort because I don't feel old enough to be his mother. Everyone tries to warn you how fast childhood goes. You don't believe them until your child is an adult and then you scratch your head and wonder what happened.

Things like spilled food or broken mugs or cuss words or matted hair or dirty clothes or not brushing your teeth are insignificant really. It's the jokes and stories and playing in mud and making honey milk and eating nachos at 2am and Dracula movies and Link costumes and Obos and kittens climbing your leg and being ok with it all. No, not just being ok with it but reveling in it, enJOYing it, embracing this messy, inconvenient and miraculous thing called parenthood.

When your kid leans down to hug you someday, what do you want them to remember? A parent that dropped everything to go get a hissing cockroach and ended up with a rabbit instead? A parent that jumped into the tub with their clothes on? Or a parent that followed the rules and made them brush their teeth and worried about eating some Red40? Life is short. Childhood is even shorter. In some cases far shorter than anyone could have imagined.

Willie Wonka said "We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of the dream". The dream is to be a memory maker. That's what we parents are; memory makers. They should be damn good ones in the time we have. I think filling up your life with good memories is better than worrying about making your life a longer one. Fill up the years you have with the best stuff possible. Drink coffee like it's the most healing elixir on earth, and it will be. Make it good. That's what it's all about.

I miss my son. I smile at the smaller one looking like Link in the hammock chair right now. I sigh at my sweet Ciara snuggled in bed,having given up on her Mum coming to bed anytime soon. We have costumes to complete tomorrow, we have a box to mail and bills to pay. Before then I need to sleep. Soon. Truly I will. I'm just glad I don't have to hide a book with a dim light and spend the first half of a school day struggling to stay awake. School was hell for me that way. Nobody drags me out of bed or dumps water on me to wake me anymore. When morning must intrude on my sleep, a coffee will do the trick. A warm, comforting cuppa. My choice. My way. Nobody else to dictate my sleep schedule.

I'm a night owl. Happily so. Anyone up for some chit chat? I'm here.:)