Personal Day

I'm glad to see the sun is finally out. I know, some of you may fall down (actually tripping) over your jaws to hear me say that, especially so dangerously close to the morning hours but yes, I'm happy to see something other than the usual slog that has been falling from our skies for what seems like months.

And I haven't even had a drop of caffeine.

I know.

It could be that I'm so sleep deprived that I am not embracing my usual "I'm fine with the rain, what's the matter with the rest of you people?" Pacific Northwesterness or it could be that I'm simply not on my game because my husband left me alone with 3 kids who keep calling me "mom" while he attends a most important conference for the career that puts a roof over our head and food in our bellies and vodka in my...

That could be it.

Which also explains the sleep deprivation.

The thing is, I sleep perfectly fine when he's gone for 24 hour shifts at the firestation. But for some reason, having him a few hundred miles away is a completely different story. I find myself restless after I finally get the kids to bed, squirmy even. Last night around 11:30 I was actually scrubbing the baseboards in the kitchen, which distracted me as I was filling up the cats food bowl yet again due to her meowing.

Having a cat is a lot NOT like having a newborn. Newborns cry for 1 of 3 reasons - they are hungry, they are colicky or they need their diaper changed. Tackle one of those and you're gold. Cats? Not so much. I had no idea why she kept meowing and kneading the arm of the couch like a zombie after fresh blood (yes, I was watching The Walking Dead, don't judge) so I fed her. And she quieted down, so that must have been the trick. Seems she isn't the only one a little off their rocker with daddy gone.

Wyatt was also all out of sorts. And I shouldn't limit the weirdness to him either because my oldest is being a total you-know-what but I had chalked that up to the fact that he's turning 15 in a few days, which has nothing to do with being off your game because one of your parents is out of town. Although his extreme bossiness is another story and could very well be attributed to him thinking he's the "man of the house" or it could just be that he's almost 15. Whatev.

Anyway, Wyatt was in a really bad funk last night. He even went to sleep in my bed as I was downstairs trying to decode the cats meowing. The other reason that he wasn't in his own bed could be because his room has been in a state of disarray since Friday and his bed is piled high with school yearbooks and Guiness Books of World Records for the past 6 years along with about five thousand legos, but his trouble didn't end there.

Sometime around 3am, the nighttime shuffle began. That's what I like to call the fun activity that is otherwise known as "little girls who don't want to stay in their own beds." I had finally abandoned any hope of making it through an OnDemand episode of the PBS show chronicling Bill Clinton's early years (riveting, yes I know but my mom recommended it and we all know how I feel about the things my mom recommends - because she is cool and all) and was happily dreaming about cats (I wonder why?) when I felt a strange tapping sensation on my shoulder.

What did my wondering eyes appear? Katie, standing there rubbing the sleep from her face proclaiming what I bad mommy I was because I didn't fetch her from her bed and bring her into mine when I retired for the eve. I wanted to tell her to get her fanny back underneath her rainbow colored bedding and go back to sleep. But instead Wyatt grumbled that he'd just sleep on my floor so his sister could have his spot (really, MY HUSBAND'S SPOT) in the bed next to me and we could all carry on with the sleeping.

But that didn't happen.

Except for Katie, because she could sleep through a tornado.

What it boils down to is this: Wyatt skipped school today.

I shouldn't say "skipped" because that implies that he was off doing something fun, exciting and definitely non-school related. Instead, my sleepy-eyed child stood before me at o'dawns crack stating his case for his tiredness and talked me into letting him stay home for the day. Upon which I quickly deduced that a) this kid never grumbles in the morning, in fact, he's one of those rare birds who leaps up from slumber and immediately showers and readies himself for the day no matter how godawful early it is and b) everyone deserves a day off once in awhile.

Some mom guilt for last night's clown car of sleeping arrangements may have also had something to do with it.

Anyway, after I called his school and told him that he'd be staying home today because he just didn't feel well, which is mostly true. More true than false. I carried on with my morning and you know what? That kid slept until noon. Which tells me 1 of 2 things, that either having my husband out of town is REALLY messing with the powers that be or that the kid REALLY needed his rest.

I'm going to go with the second idea.

Because that makes it less of a lie.

And yes.

The kid gets a personal day.