Nov
12
When I was a child, I tested into the gifted programs at my schools despite the fact that I never did my homework and thus consistently earned a bevy of terrible grades and at least one teacher’s public prediction that she was surely doomed to see me the following year as my chances of graduating from elementary school were so low. Apparently at some early point there was potential for my brain to be filled with useful information, but as I would continue to establish throughout my scholastic years, I am the sort who prefers to use a protractor for scratching my name into a wooden desk instead of measuring decibels or geography or, like, whatever it is protractors are actually intended for.
I squandered my young thinking-meat on Black Beauty books and making my Barbies rub confusedly against each other, then eventually on mopey English goth bands and a plethora of Saturday school detentions during which I once gave myself an abominable prison-esque tattoo on my hand using a needle and india ink which years later I eventually paid hundreds of dollars to have removed with painful lasers.
During college I majored in getting drunk, ill-advised personal relationships, and nicotine-coated Golden Tee arcade games. Among many other classes, I flunked Introductory Japanese, Graphic Design, Algebra, Life Drawing, and Accounting 101 with a resounding flush of my mother’s tuition payments.
Which is all to say, I have some personal accountability when it comes to my current intellect. The fact that I am shamefully stupid about any number of subjects—to the point where I cannot stand to watch Jeopardy! for fear of picturing myself somehow transported to the show and simply standing there with a line of drool escaping from my lower lip—has an awful lot to do with the choices I’ve made throughout my life. Maybe if I’d paid attention every now and then I’d be able to name the capital of North Dakota, identify Shakespeare quotes, or calculate a tip without producing a thin, acrid plume of smoke from both ears, but alas.
I will say, though, that I have long suspected that parenthood has slashed my already-meager I.Q. to a level on par with the box turtle. When the majority of your day involves strategizing how to most efficiently remove feces from the underside of someone’s testicles . . . well, there’s just not a lot of room left for loftier pursuits. I guess some parents chase toddlers all day and still read Infinite Jest all night, but those people are robots who probably never tattooed their own hand.
Plus, the lack of sleep! How can anyone retain anything but the most basic of motor skills when we’re operating on an ever-worsening sleep deficit? Sure, I can’t complete a Sudoku puzzle to save my life, but whose fault is that? Surely if I had a good night’s sleep—just one— I’d have a fighting chance at the intellectual pleasures I was once predicted to claim as my own, right?
Sadly, it is with a heavy heart that I tell you two things: 1) that during the last 48 hours I have slept over eight consecutive glorious hours at a stretch each night, and 2) while I was driving to work this morning, feeling mentally rejuvenated and ready to take on the world, it STILL took me 15 minutes to figure out the fucking license plate on this SMART CAR:
There is no hope, is there? And you know what’s even worse, is the knowledge that soon enough my kids will be bringing home homework—that I won’t be able to understand.
Nov
10
The problem with Dylan’s ongoing sleep issues—I mean, aside from the obvious problem of the whole thing being a giant festering pain in my ASS—is that he won’t stick to one irritating behavior long enough for me to deal with it. The only constant is the ass-painery, the details are an ever-moving target. He hates naps! He loves naps! He takes forever to get to sleep at night! He conks out immediately! He wakes up at 1 AM! No, 2 AM! No, 4! 5! He’s sick, so all bets are off! He’s fine, but now you have been programmed to eject yourself from the bed at top speed because maybe he cough-barfed and the only thing that’s worse than a crib cough-barf is a crib cough-barf that’s not immediately attended to, see also: CHILD SMEARING BARF IN HAIR.
Etc.
Every once in a while he sleeps perfectly, never making a peep all night long, and I stupidly assume we’ve finally turned a corner. Well! I think to myself, mentally dusting off my hands and congratulating myself for nearly two solid years of never once hitting my own child with a mallet in the dead of night. Thank goodness THAT’S over!
Naturally, the very next night he sets his internal alarm clock for 2:36 AM at which point he unleashes an unholy bloodcurdling scream that prompts me to sprint on adrenaline-fueled legs into his room, whereupon he stands up in his crib and chirps conversationally, “Horse?”
Last night after he woke up crying at 3 AM, said “Uh oh!” and pointed to his blanket which he had thrown on the floor, demanded milk, shouted “No!” when I actually got the milk, then threw a tantrum when I took him back to his room because MIIIILK, MIIIIIIIILK; I came to the decision that I Have Had Enough of This Sleep Bullshit and It’s Time to Take Action Once and For All. Which would be great—yay for actually doing something instead of just whining about it, right?—except this is a very familiar place, this land of Having Had Enough of This Sleep Bullshit. I’ve been here many, many times before, and I can’t seem to find my way to the much-preferred land of What’s This Unfamiliar Sensation Hey I Think This is What Being Well-Rested Feels Like.
I’ll tell you what I did last night, though: I put him back down, went back to my own bed, and stuffed the equivalent of a super-plus tampon in each ear. I’ve tried twenty different varieties of earplugs and all have provided only a small buffer against the deadly combination of Dylan’s penetrating howls, our wood floors, and the proximity of his bedroom to ours, but I think I’ve finally found a pair that lets me block him out. Each plug is a massive foam chunk which must be squished into a narrow shape before slowly morphing back to its gigandor size once it’s crammed in your listen-hole. They’re horribly uncomfortable and protrude from either side of my head like Shrek ears, but by god I slept the sleep of the just last night after I put them in.
That is, until 6 AM when my husband woke me by roughly poking my shoulder and telling me he couldn’t find his gym sneakers. Which was totally understandable, being as how they were hidden away in plain view on top of all the other shoes and it’s my job to help him find his ass with both hands and an ass map and an ASS GPS and all.
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