Has Anyone Seen My Arms??

Now I was expecting a lot of things to change as I approach middle age, but what is the DEAL with my arms when I sleep?  I think I am starting to understand why old people don’t sleep very much – it’s not that they don’t need it, it’s that they can’t stand to be in their beds one minute longer than they have to.  Seriously, I wake up mid-scream three or four times a night, every night, because I am convinced that someone has snuck into my room and made off with my arms.  I can’t feel them anywhere beside me.

Eventually, after a few seconds of regulated breathing to calm myself down, an aching throb begins that lets me know the arms are still attached, they have just decided to take leave of my body for a while.  I attempt to raise one of the lifeless lumps up into the air and now it’s time to wonder why the fingers attached to the ends hang like a dead jellyfish.  They too eventually begin to tingle and ache, but not before I’ve had time to ponder how long an arm can be like that before a doctor has to amputate it.  And don’t think I haven’t followed all the advice – I go to sleep on my side every night, on a 3-inch layer of memory foam, with my neck at the perfect angle to my spine, and with my top arm wrapped around a pillow that resides in my bed specifically for that purpose.

And it’s not enough that I suffer this nightly trauma in silence.  Oh, no.  Because another thing people don’t tell you is that you start making the strangest noises in your sleep.  I am woken up throughout the night by sounds ranging from pig snorts to bird whistles to cats screaming.  I used to think these sounds came from my neighbors’ animals, but then I remembered that I don’t actually have any neighbors.  So I assumed they must be coming from my husband, but he works away half the time, so unless he’s channeling the sounds telepathically from an offshore platform, then I’m forced to rule him out as well.  And I know it’s not coming from the kids, because I’ve woken to find them standing beside me, phone in hand, not sure whether to call an ambulance or an exorcist.

But just when I thought I had suffered the worst of the mid-life sleeping indignities, a new phenomenon was revealed to me that was beyond anything I could have imagined in my worst nightmares.  Two nights ago, I awoke to find three pea-sized dried blood stains on my pillow.  And no evidence WHATSOEVER anywhere on my head to indicate where they might have come from.

Looks like it’s time to invest in vast quantities of No-Doze…

Would somebody juggle my balls please?

That’s nearly what came out of my mouth during a heart-to-heart talk with my husband the other day.  I’d been in a bit of a “dark place” mentally for a couple of days and had spent a great deal of time going over the reasons in my head and was ready to share them with my husband.  What came out, as I tried to explain why I get so frustrated sometimes, was that “I am like a circus clown who runs around and juggles balls for everyone in the family so that you can all get on with delivering good performances to your audience.  But why doesn’t anyone ever juggle my balls???”

To avoid laughing, my husband started chewing on the inside of his cheek as the validity hissed out of my argument like air from a balloon.  This is becoming a common recurrence – I can never seem to find the words to explain what makes me feel so crazy sometimes.  I thought I had figured it out recently -I’d been out on New Year’s Eve to see Avatar with my husband and kids and the movie’s message was all about spirituality and the oneness of all living creatures.  I thought, “That’s it!  THAT’S what I’m missing in my life.”  So I sat my family down and tried to explain to them that Mommy is a bit psycho sometimes, but only because I want to be a twelve foot Na’vi creature and worship at the tree of Eywa.  It probably stands to reason that I welcomed in 2010 feeding bread crusts to my neighbor’s sheep and telling it “I see you, brother.  I see you.”

But I digress – back to my balls.  I was really annoyed that this came out so badly, because the more I think about it, the more valid it becomes.  And I think that it’s true for MOST middle-aged mothers.  Next time you’re in a sporting goods store, buy yourself a large bag of colorful plastic balls.  Take a permanent marker and write on these balls – things like ‘laundry’ ‘ironing’ ‘cooking’ ‘cleaning’ ‘homework’ ‘car maintenance’ ‘pack lunches’ ‘walk dog’ ‘emotional counselling’ – all the chores that you, as a mother, have to do on a daily basis.  Put all those balls in one pile and I bet you’d have enough to fill up a large garbage can.  NOW call your husband in and explain to him about the juggling – it has much more impact with visual representation.  And when he comes back at you with, “Well I have to hold down a full time job to support this family,” write ‘JOB’ on a ball and hand it to him.  And point out how easy it is to juggle one ball with two free hands.

So now we get the problem – but what is the solution?  In theory, it sounds straightforward – “I am juggling too many balls, I need someone to juggle a few of them for me.”  But consider this – do you WANT anyone else juggling your balls?  Does anyone juggle your balls as well as you do?  Do the people around you care enough about you to juggle your balls?  All good questions, and all create more problems.

See, I THINK I want my husband to juggle my balls, but on the rare occasion that I entrust one to him, he usually brings it back to me with two more balls to add to my collection.  For example – if I let him take the kids to swimming lessons, he will get them to their lesson and back, but he will have forgotten to pay for this week’s lesson and a pair of goggles will be missing – two more balls for me to deal with before next week, thank you.  Or another example – I send him to the store for organic free range eggs, corn tortillas, and a box of tampons.  He comes home with generic eggs, flour tortillas, and panty liners – oh, and he has run the car out of gas in the meantime.  More balls.

So what’s the answer?  I haven’t figured that out yet – I’ve just ordered a bag of balls on ebay and I’ll let you know when I DO figure it out.  Maybe the first thing we need to do is to start color-coding our balls.  Maybe red for the things that have to be done and have to be done by us.  Blue for things that we would like to achieve but could get dropped in a pinch.  Green for things that we can delegate out, straightforward things that leave little room for error like reading bedtime stories.  Yellow for things that we can get our children to help us with – it’s sometimes easier to do a chore than to endure the agony of watching our child try to do it, but remember that the earlier they learn to juggle, the more proficient they’ll be at it later.  And maybe we have a color dedicated to things we’d like to do just for us, like exercise, or find 20 minutes to read a book or have coffee with a friend – and let’s make sure that at least one of these balls is present in our list every day.

I often think that a visual representation of something is a great way to really gain an understanding of it.  Maybe colorizing our daily chores will help us to see what’s really important and help us to weed out what isn’t.  And if not, then maybe just seeing our day laid out before us like so many giant gumballs will at least make us feel happy for the rest of the day.