The Scream Becomes a Yawn

We went away for the weekend, leaving kids with grandma. It was nothing I thought it would be for reasons I can't explain. Instead of being romantic and fun and relaxing, it was tense and boring and exhausting. It didn't help that we were both sleep-deprived and stressed going into it---G was coming down with something, and stayed up 'til 2AM on Friday finishing up work. I haven't slept well in about 2 weeks. It all bubbled up in an ugly and unproductive way. Of all the conversations I'd planned for us to have, the only one we actually had was the one that made it clear without a doubt that we were not having any more children and that I should schedule the IUD I was waffling about next month.

I was relieved when it was time to go home so I could give up the pretense of "having fun". We promised the kids we would buy them a present but could find nothing in the city except overpriced magnets, T-shirts and hats so we stopped by the-big-box-store-that-we-don't-go-to on the drive home and B got them kites.

I was thrilled. They were simple and colorful. It was perfect kite-flying weather---sunny, warm but windy! We got home and immediately took the boys to the park to fly them. All the kids at the park gathered around wanting a turn, all the dads gathered round with advice on how to fly them.

Within 30 minutes they were broken. Later that night, we were assessing the damage, and decided we could reinforce the hole where the stick poked through by sewing a few rows of threat onto it. We tried to rewind the string but there were complicated knots that were impossible to untangle.

That's how I feel these days. In knots that I can't untangle. Everything seems to be piling up into a perfect storm of anxiety, insomnia and dread. Its my mother-in-law still being here (day 16/21 today), and the fact that things always escalate before she leaves, its being on call this week, being hopelessly behind on 8 million things at work, a paper rejected from FOUR journals in a row, a grant around the one project I was excited about rejected, my tech and research coordinator leaving in 3 months, my funding ending in 14 months, second thoughts about our kindergarten choice,  realizing I really truly have no friends to talk to or hang out with right now, the constant rehashing of the same old problems in my relationship 10 years into our marriage, the projects in the house, the travel coming up that I haven't finished planning, the fact that my drawers are a jumble of 80% crap I never wear and 20% stuff too wrinkly to wear all jammed in there and no time to sort it out, the finality of not having any more babies, the thought of the IUD insertion and the pain that may be involved, the many red rows in our budget and no idea how to cut back, and the fact that therapy does not seem to be doing much for my anxiety 6 months into it.

Oh and the not sleeping.

Most of this stuff will work itself out. I just needed to get it off my chest. I'll shut up and carry on*.

*song lyrics NOT from the early 90s!