The days of weekend sleep are dead…..

… “Not Another Christmas” by Morning Glory

The song above is by one of our “extended family member’s” band Morning Glory.  Click on the little arrow above to hear them.  Ezra (the mastermind behind the music, who is also in the same band as my hubby, Leftover Crack) is a darling fella and I love him like a brother.  They’re going to be on tour soon… so click on the link above and check out the tour dates… and then go see them.  They’re super fantastic.  Seriously.  Here’s our family and Ezra during “art time” at our house:

Yay for art time!  Yay for Morning Glory!  Yay for Ezra staying at our house and playing with Sully while I try and get stuff done!!

As far as trying to get stuff done and not being able to because of my mommyness…. weekend morning sleep-in has always been a sacred thing for me.  When Sully was little, he would just bring a bunch of toys into my bed and we’d play “The Sleeping Shark”.  This game consisted of me laying there in a constant “dozing off state”, but awake enough to open and close my mouth continuously.  Sully would make all his action figures run around the bed, get close to my mouth like I was going to eat them, and then he’d make them all run away from the Sleeping Shark in terror.  I could sleep, but still play with him at the same time.  I thought I was pretty brilliant for coming up with this game.

But now Sully is 10.  “The Sleeping Shark” is now deemed stupid.  He has ALWAYS gotten up waaaaaaaay before anyone else in the house, and has always made himself a well-rounded breakfast and gotten dressed before I even get up (even on school days)… but lately, he’s been really needy for attention.  He has to have someone paying attention to him every second of the day, which has been exhausting (and caused problems at school because he’ll do anything to get that attention- whether it’s good or bad).  This attention seeking has disrupted my weekend mornings.  This is what started at 8:30am this morning:

He walks into our bedroom (something he knows he’s not supposed to do unless asked to come in- privacy is something we’ve been working on for a long time) and starts in:

Sully: What are you doing?

Me (asleep): What does it look like I’m doing?  I’m sleeping.  And I’m gonna keep doing it.

Sully: Oh, ok.

8:40 am…

Sully (back in the bedroom): Did you sleep well last night?

Me: I don’t know because I’m still trying to do it.  Ask me again when I’m actually up and walking around.  And when did you think you could start barging into our room?  Come on, fella- the rules haven’t changed in 10 years.

Sully: Oh, ok.

8:45am…

Sully (standing right at the edge of my doorway so he hasn’t actually walked into the room): Did you have good dreams last night?  I had good dreams.  I dreamed that there was this cat and I had this gigantic car that had these lasers….

Me (starting to lose patience): Stop.  Now.  You know what you’re doing, and you know that I’m not into it.  Tell me when I’m up and walking around!

Sully: Oh, ok.

8:50am….

Sully (again, standing in the doorway): Do you think that if you had wheels on the bottoms of your feet that you wouldn’t need a car?

Me (totally annoyed at this point): DUDE?  REALLY?  SLEEPING!!!!!!!! And stop standing in the doorway!!!

Sully: Oh, ok.

8:55am….

Sully (yelling from his room): Mom… did Marilyn Monroe really have eleven toes?

Me: JESUS HOLY CHRIST!!! I’M UP!!!  I’M UP!!!!

Sully: Oh, ok.

I usually go to sleep at around 2 or 3 in the morning.  And during the week, I’m up at 7:30 in the morning to get Sully to school.  When I was younger, a couple hours of sleep a night was all I needed.  But I’m getting older, so weekend morning sleep-time is something my body now requires to be able to keep the late-night sleep schedule during the week.  And I adore my son- but that guy needs to get a fucking life.  He has more toys than any child I know, art supplies out the ass, all kinds of DVD’s he could watch, his own personal library of about 150 books, and 5 cats to keep him entertained.  All I ask is to be able to sleep in a little 2 mornings a week.  This was never a problem until recently.  But now I think I’m fucked.  Damnit.

And with his new-found need for constant attention, during the day every 3 minutes (no exaggeration- you could set a watch to it) I hear “hey mom?….” followed by some question that he had just asked me 12 time already.  It’s driving me a little bonkers.  I’ve always been very independent.  I like the people around me to be very independent.  So this new neediness is making me lose patience. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but it needs to stop.  I understand he’s just a child- but at age 3 he was more independent than he is now.  It’s fucking killing me!!!

But now that I’m up, I’m going to start in on my weekend project of making my “Severed Finger Cupcakes” to sell on the webstore.  Plaster molds of fingers (Sully, me, and our dear friend Sturgeon all participated donating fingers for the molds), and fake cupcakes that look totally real but will last forever.  Here’s a picture of some of the first ones I tried making (the new ones will be MUCH better):

Those are made with plastic fingers.  The new plaster fingers will be gray and dead looking.  With ribbons and sprinkles and all kinds of other fun.  They will be magic.  And hopefully done and on the store by Monday.  I’ll post pics when they’re finished.

That’s all for today.

Over and out.

Are traumatic sleep patterns hereditary?

I’ve had bad nightmares ever since I was a little kid. Not just “boogey-men in the closet” or “being lost in the mall” nightmares… but nightmares of disemboweled of loved ones, and of projectile vomiting tar and blood on people that makes their flesh melt off… and my teeth rotting. Every week in some dream, my teeth rot out of my head. Bad, icky nightmares that make me want to take my brain out of my head and scrub it down with clorox. Ever since I was tiny. I don’t remember a time where I didn’t have them at least 3 or 4 nights a week. I think it’s how I deal with stress. I’m used to them, and they don’t bother me as much as they used to… and they don’t look like they’re ever going away- so whatever. And then there’s the sleepwalking thing that I’ve mentioned in earlier postings…. I’m just not a good sleeper.

But now my poor little fella has been harshly thrust into the world of “bad sleep”. He’s always had problems with nightmares…. but starting a couple weeks ago, it turned into something very different. I’ll hear him moaning and shouting in his room, so I’ll go in there to wake him up. And he’ll sit up, eyes open, appearing to be awake- but lashing out and babbling incoherently. I’ll coax him into getting up and walking around (because I know he’s still in a dream state) and try to get him to snap out of it… but the whole time he’ll be cowering and shaking, totally disoriented. The last time it happened it took me about 10 minutes to pull him out of it, and I was able to do this by having him run his hands under cold water and wiping his face down with a cold washcloth. It’s totally heartbreaking to witness. And I know that he’s not getting a good night’s rest because of this, and the last thing he needs is something else to add to his already tumultuous school days.

So I’m making an appointment with a kiddo-shrink to see if he’s got some things he needs to work out, as well as with his regular doctor to see what he has to say.

Is this kind of stuff hereditary? I never really know. I was adopted, so I don’t know what my biological parents’ sleep patterns are, or how their bodies cope with stress. Along with inheriting my love for drawing, did he also get my hauntings as well? By “hauntings”, I don’t mean it to come off as some “Bright Eyes” Elliot Smith “oh-I’m-soooooo-troubled” bullshit whiny way…. but in that “life annoys the fuck out of me and I don’t know how to express it” kind of way. Can lack of emotional functioning be handed down from generation to generation… even if I’ve made great efforts to try to teach him to talk out his problems and emotions in a healthy way instead of bottling it up? I’m sorry, little Sully, for getting the bad parts of my brain. At least he got my ears.

And an update…. Brad has gotten off his German Industrial music kick, but has now embraced ZZ Top and has taken to standing as close as he can to me with his guitar and playing this vile music while I’m trying to work. He thinks this is so much funner than playing the ’80′s German Industrial music nonstop… but it isn’t. And he thinks it’s funnier because the more pissed I get about something- the better he thinks it is. This is my marriage. Someone needs to come and put me out of my misery.

But I kicked the shit out of him in Scrabble tonight… so I got a little vindication (and I didn’t even have to cheat).