I’m so tired, friends. So very, very tired. How about you? Are you feeling tired? I’m also happy, excited, sad, in love, proud, afraid, busy, bored, sympathetic, energetic, and exhausted. All of those feelings are felt by me every single day. No wonder I’m tired!
So I decided, let’s play a game.
You know those games you see people post? Copy and paste and share your score and tag 57 friends? Yeah, like that without all that extra nonsense. Just for fun! Because when you’re exhausted, the simplest, silliest things that require zero energy are the best. I’m going to list just a few of the reasons why I’m currently tired.
Give yourself a point for every item you’ve experienced in the last 24 hours.
- A child has thrown up.
- A child has woken you up at least once during the night.
- You’ve had to do an emergency load of laundry (Emergency = a blanket is covered in puke or a kid is out of clean shorts for camp tomorrow. You know what, go ahead and give yourself as many points equal to the number of emergency loads you’ve done today…)
- Bought dinner out because you were too tired to cook.
- Left the dishes in the sink when you went to bed because you just couldn’t deal with them.
- Left a load of laundry in the washer when you went to bed because the dryer didn’t dry the current load at all or you forgot to start it.
- A child has had some sort of bathroom accident today.
- An animal has had some sort of bathroom accident today.
- You were late for work because you had to clean up some sort of mess before you started your workday.
- You forgot a deadline and are trying to complete it at the last minute.
- You yelled at a kid.
- You yelled at an animal.
- You cried (Why is that SO EXHAUSTING?!).
- You forgot to send a water bottle with your kid to camp.
- You remember you STILL haven’t scheduled your kid’s well check-up that was due several months ago
Sooo… how many points did you get? Today I’m at 15 (Well, technically 17 – two loads of laundry from the throwing-up incidents and one load of “crap my kid doesn’t have any clean shorts for tomorrow!”). If you expanded your experiences to include the past week, would your number be higher?
To be honest, this isn’t a contest. It’s not a who had the worst day of all kind-of-thing. It’s a visual of our day, as moms, of all the things we juggle on a daily basis that is exhausting. I’m tired, you’re tired. We all have days when we are just worn out. And that’s ok!
Clearly, there is a lot going on. Some days aren’t this crazy. And someday (much too soon), our kids won’t need us as much and we’ll get more sleep each night and the washer won’t run as often. And we won’t feel quite so tired. Until then, I’m just gonna keep on feeling tired and happy and sad and exhausted and excited and proud and…