Barnabas Monkeypants

In crassest terms, Raphe and I have been tired for a solid eight months now. Yes, parenthood is amazing and wondrous and eleventy-bizillion other superlatives. We agree that there are few things that can top the honor of being mom and dad to Henry (and frankly, I can’t think of any). But let’s drop the sunshine and rainbows for just a moment to recognize the simple fact that DAMN, WE ARE TIRED. Like, falling asleep on the toilet in the office bathroom tired. ZZZzzzz.

Here are some things I have noticed result from this level of tiredness:

1 – I get sick very easily. Once upon a time, my immune system was like a gleaming suit of armor, protecting me from just about every nasty out there. No more. Now I seem to have a permanent sniffle and I keep getting weird stomach bugs.

2 – I am significantly more clumsy than in my properly-rested state. I have tripped over my own feet more times and walked into more walls than I care to disclose. My sense of balance is completely off these days. Moreover, darkness seems to compound the feelings of disorientation. Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night, I can’t be sure if I’m prone or upright.

3 – I can’t talk right. Remember Mike Myers’s line from that movie, A View From the Top? The one where he says, “You put the wrong emPHAsis on the wrong sylLABle”? Yeah, that’s me. Sometimes it sounds a little like I’m not a native speaker of English.

4 – I keep calling one of the partners at my firm “Raphe” when he exasperates me. And Raphe keeps calling Georgia by our deceased cat’s name, Betty, whenever she does something annoying.

5 – I am easily irritated and all semblance of patience has gone completely out the window. You might recall Raphe writing about me declaring that I hate the garage. I find myself saying completely irrational things like that all too frequently. And god help you if you ask me a question that I’m sure I’ve answered 36 times already, because I will bite your head off.

6 – I am unable to concentrate on tasks that require thinking for more than 30 minutes at a time. Obviously this makes things like work a little difficult. I get up and walk to the kitchen a lot. The other day one of my coworkers noted that I sure do drink an awful lot of water. Thankfully he doesn’t seem to be keeping track of how often I pee.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.