I need a nap and also another nap

TOPICAL: this is part of The Cycle of the Seasons series

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I’m tired. I’M SO TIRED. Not exhausted, not so tired that my executive functioning is totally gone, but tired. It is not easy helping tp keep this ship afloat some days, and today was one of those days.

A lot of scooting people around to do different things needed to happen today, and one has to be careful about doing that, because every person has their own ways of dealing with stress and sometimes they deal with it by saying ‘yes’ to everything, just in case, please don’t be mad at me. And I don’t want to create a situation where that coping mechanism kicks in.

I think we did okay; there are still extra dirty dishes that need doing, and the laundry isn’t getting done today, and we haven’t unpacked all the packages that have come in the mail. But we made it, we all had food to eat, we stayed warm, and even the toddler — who had a massive meltdown this afternoon — got his naptime that he desperately needed.

I had plans for some reading and maybe watching a movie, but with my in-between-things idle time I played Stardew Valley or updated the project task list statuses. And I took several very small ten or fifteen minute naps while I was waiting for dinner, because sitting on my comfy warm bed with ASMR in my earbuds practically sang to me the song of napping.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring? I just need to remind myself to go to bed early tonight because that would be a really nice thing to do for me. And I deserve thoughtfulness like that.

May there be a bank error in your favor, or at least a pocket of time that opens up unexpectedly like a gift and you can just relax a bit. And maybe get a nap.

— Nix

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Our days traditionally begin at sunset. The darkness is all around us but we are safe here together inside these walls that we have fortified with love and with sacrifice.

featured image is a photo by Tim De Pauw on Unsplash

it’s a marathon, not a sprint

TOPICAL: this is part of The Cycle of the Seasons series

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Usually Sundays are my day off from everything, but right now there are important things to take care of each day, so I didn’t have a proper day off. There will be time for those later. So instead, I floated between things and lent a hand here and there.

I discovered an incredibly good audio adaptation of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising. I haven’t read the entire series, so there have been things in the episodes that were brand new to me, but many of them felt familiar. If you have the time or inclination, I wholeheartedly recommend it. The BBC’s link for it is here and I am listening to it with my usual podcast app, so I believe it’s probably easy to find. The first episode came out on December 19th, and each day since there’s a new episode. I believe it is a twelve-episode series.

Hmm. Interesting.

It was a little tricky today in our cocoon in the snow. We are enough days into this process that the initial burst of beginning energy has begun to wane, and we are feeling tired, sore, and a little cranky. This is normal, especially in a house full of chronically ill people with our daily mystery number of spoons clutched in our fists. It’s taken us years of trying and failing to understand how to inhabit bodies that do not follow any of the rules very well, and which are often extremely fucking confusing and let us down when we need them to pull through instead.

Hopefully, tomorrow we will all feel a bit better. Hopefully we can forgive our brains and our bodies for reacting to stress like they do. Hopefully we can take some deep breaths and shake the darkness off.

The sun has stood still since the solstice on the 21st. Tomorrow, we will finally gain one more minute of daylight, and the light will wax, moments at a time, until the summer solstice in June; when the sun will stand still and daylight will slowly wane throughout the green and the heat and the harvests, until we arrive back at this point again, spiraling upward, ready to do the Work once more.

May you find a quiet delight in the natural cycles of the earth.

— Nix

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Our days traditionally begin at sunset. The darkness is all around us but we are safe here together inside these walls that we have fortified with love and with sacrifice.

featured image is a photo by Christiaan Huynen on Unsplash

to sleep, perchance to try really hard to sleep

TOPICAL: this is part of The Cycle of the Seasons series

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I am writing this as our toddler tries very hard to fall asleep. Some nights he’s out like a light, and other nights, like this one, he almost falls asleep, eyes drooping further and further, and then he snaps out of it. I know he isn’t doing it on purpose. He’s using all his self-soothing bedtime things; the egg-shaped nightlight, the favorite blankies, the pillow nest, the way he smooths his fingers on the best corner of the best blankie, the way the fingers on the other hand rub against each other gently.

We have taken to sitting by his bed until he’s able to fall asleep, because that seems to be the best thing for everyone. On nights like these, my body doesn’t manage two hours of sitting very well. I had to get up for the bathroom and he was SO upset, and then before I got back out of the bathroom, he was back in bed and trying again to sleep. I’m going to leave him alone for now and just watch the baby cam to see how he’s doing. His door is directly next to mine, so when he is upset, I will hear it even if I don’t see it.

Today was a little trickier all around. It was my dinner turn and I let myself get really agitated about a spice I couldn’t locate because I was convinced that the picadillo would not taste good at all without it. After I realized how this feeling was affecting everything else, I concentrated on letting go of the anxiety, letting the day be what it was, letting myself be concerned while also trusting myself to cook a good dinner even if my favorite spice (it’s cumin) would be missing.

Hope and the willingness to let the day roll over you is a discipline, which means that sometimes it is VERY HARD and you have to practice interrupting your own anxiety spirals in order to notice why your day is sideways.

He’s not sleeping yet. I have the baby cam up on my phone, zoomed in to his little face and slow-blinking eyes. He will sleep eventually. Tomorrow is a new day.

May hope find you in unexpected places.

— Nix

P.S. We found the cumin, after I’d relaxed into the acceptance that we didn’t have it. Sometimes these things are so on the nose.

P.P.S. I THINK HE’S SLEEPING.

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Our days traditionally begin at sunset. The darkness is all around us but we are safe here together inside these walls that we have fortified with love and with sacrifice.

featured image is a photo by S L on Unsplash