Nay to Sleep

I came down stairs this morning to find three children doing homework…. ….. which would be a grand thing if it wasn’t half five on the first day of the school holidays. I mean fuckin seriously. They even had soccer last night AND stayed up half an hour past their bedtime to celebrate the end of school and three good-ish report cards.

Ryu’s was just about perfection, Marina’s was creditable and Shou had three triangles beside ‘looks after school property’ , ‘listen’s to people properly when they talk’ , and one other behavioral thing. Reports here for primary school are generally loads of columns for each subject etc and either a double circle for ‘has achieved this well’, a single circle for ‘achieved’ and a triangle for ‘fucked up’ or similar.

But anyway, it was too bloody early to be up, especially after the night of pretty much nay sleep I had.

Hub gets all nazi on me sometimes and declares a day ‘national not going to drink day’. This is usually a Monday as those are the days the school would like us to restrict screen time for the kids – we go full hog and say it is no TV, no electronic devices, and no alcohol day. This week however, Monday was a public holiday and I was away with Shou and Marina at soccer – which was a two day stay the night affair in Minami-Aso, a town that got hit relatively badly by the Kumamoto earthquake. Apparently there was an aftershock while we were there but must have been as we were all hollering from the sidelines at our respective kids.

It was a three-hour drive home after a hot hot couple of days and hub was also feeling exhausted after single parenting the golden child – sarcasm required in the ‘exhausted’ not the ‘golden child’. Ryu, on his own, is a pleasure to behold. Not wanting to remind hub that it was Monday, and considering we walked in to the TV blaring and Ryu playing Minecraft, it was obviously going to be acceptable to have a couple of cold beverages in celebration of  surviving the long weekend.

So, last night was beverage free instead – which means a bit more trouble floating off to sleepy land, which I find baffling as I don’t need wine or beverages of any description to successfully have a nana nap in the middle of the day! Hub tends to go to bed first which is annoying as he snores, which doesn’t seem to bother me after wine. I also don’t tend to wake to every sound that comes from the kids’ rooms but damn, last night!! Faaark.

It’s about 30 degrees (celsius) and, with the fan on full-tit practically in my face, I am very very close to successfully accomplishing the whole falling off to sleep thing when I hear a very loud ‘the squid and the toothbrush’ coming from Shou’s room. My mummy antenna now alert I patiently wait to see if there will be a sequel to the squid and toothbrush. There isn’t so I start the sleep process again but somehow manage to get caught up in my own head full of ‘the ten thousand and 21 things that need to be remembered over the summer holidays’. I must get bored at about 700, which may or may have not been what two days Shou and Marina need to water the plants at school.

I’m nearly asleep again when Ryu yells out ‘Mama’. While I am quite happy to let Shou fend off any squids and giant toothbrushes I really do have to rush to make sure the golden child is OK. He is wondering why every time he goes to sleep he dreams about something on his bed. I pat his back and give him a kiss and tell him there are no monsters in his bed, or giant squids, or toothbrushes, or plants to water for school.

I mean it’s 2am by this stage and I’m starting to not make sense.

On the way back to bed I realise that perhaps maybe something IS on his bed. When I went to close their window earlier the whole thing was open with no screen, meaning any number of oversized insects could have crawled in and IN FACT be in his bed. So I go back, scoop the boy up and we go back to our bed, where I have to not so gently try and de-starfish hub who, in my 15 second absence, is now taking up the entire bed.

I now have to sleep in a really awkward position. BUT, I’m also very tired and really everyone needs to just shut up now so I can go the fuck to sleep.

Which is all fine and dandy until about 3am when I can feel an internal organ trying to hemorrhage out my vagina. I do have a pad in the size of a yoga mat BUT, you know how you can just tell when it’s like ‘hey mother fucker, I’m huge and messy and I’m going to explode out the saloon doors and completely miss the pad and just make a huge fuckity mess the SECOND gravity lets me.

So I have to slinky dink out of bed and crawl to the toilet on my hands and knees. I make it, and carefully go to sit on the loo (any big movements and I’ll be changing my pajamas) when I realise my aforementioned awkward sleeping position and crawl to the loo have twisted the yoga mat and now half of it is stuck to the saloon doors and not to my undies.

I mean really.

I fuckin love ripping a bandage off my vagina at 3am – in silence, for fear of waking anyone up.

So let’s just say that when I hear Shou try to ninja down the stairs at 5am I was beyond over it. He ignored my, what were probably very incomprehensible by this stage, pleas of ‘PLEASE, just go back to bed’… …

And, now its 10am and I really need to clean the house, hang out the washing and try and sort through the piles of paperwork that accompanies summer holidays here in Japan. The homework worksheets, the homework workbook, the pages of diary entries that need to be written, the essays, the posters, the money boxes that need to be made, the swimming school, the plant watering, the peace day, the teacher’s meeting, the patrols, the, the, faaaaaark.

Here’s hoping I get a better sleep tonight at least.

 

SDGH&QL