Consolidation may make me more productive

This is an entry I found on the old blog that I created and forgot about. I am posting it here and closing the other account. That way I can't keep using the excuse that I can't blog unless I do two. That's stupid. Anyway, this is from July 14th, 2008 at 5:38 am. It's titled "What Else Should I be Doing at 7 a.m.?". Reading it makes me realize that sometimes I crack myself up :-).

I’ve overbooked myself this morning. I am supposed to drive to Waynesville to get new tires on my car and have lunch with me mother (you’re supposed to read that like a pirate). I am also supposed to go for another tennis lesson at 10 a.m. with my good friend and coach, but I am going to have to go to the doctor today because of a sinus and inner ear infection that I’ve been pretending that I didn’t have for long enough now that there’s no denying it. So, I woke up at 4 a.m. thinking of these details of my life instead of getting the sleep that I need to make it through this day.

So I’m going to write about sleep. These days I don’t have any trouble sleeping, but I can remember a time (maybe ten years ago) where I didn’t sleep much at all. I see now that I saw sleep as a sign of weakness. A person who wasted her time sleeping was as weak as a person who never learned the difference between your and you’re or their and there. It’s ridiculous.
Now I’ve wisened. (I can make up words if I want – if a ripe fruit has ripened, then a wise person has wisened — it’s these subtle consistencies that are going to really help English find its place in the world). I sleep well, so when I have a night like this last one, I have to wake up and wonder why on this green earth would I allow such petty thoughts to invade my sleep when I know, even as I lay there, that none of those things matter. I will play tennis, eat lunch, get my tires and make a doctor appointment with much time to spare today. If one of the things happened to prevent the other things from taking place, nobody would care and I’d reschedule what needed to be rescheduled.

Then it dawned on me. I was not awake because of these things. I was awake because my nineteen-year-old son just got home for the night and when he went to his room, he turned on his television and left his door cracked open and the light from the TV shined directly into my room and across my face. I wasn’t a psychotic woman who woke from worry about goofy things. I was taken from my slumber. I only began thinking of those things because I knew I would have trouble falling back asleep after I got up to shut his door (the vertical position is much like coffee), and I began to wonder about what time I would wake up without an alarm if I didn’t go to sleep, so I had to run through my mind what I was going to be doing to make the decision about whether or not I should get up and set an alarm. See? I’m perfectly normal.

Mrs. Gillis

P.S. I got up at 6:50 without an alarm because in my dream I was helping someone pick up a dead turtle from a creek bed and put it in a sack. While holding the sack of dead turtle, something moved. I think it may’ve been a crawfish (eek!)

One more has graduated from high school and is ready to leave home. Dillon is going off into the Marines and will leave on August 11. It's going to be a wild, crazy ride for him and I hope it's everything he expects it to be.

It's a difficult emotion to watch a kid leave home. We'll all be okay, of course, and as the saying goes, "life is like a book, the further you get into it, the more it makes sense." There's a lot that I see now and can't wait (although I hope that I have several years to to wait) to use all I've learned to help my kids give my grandkids an incredible insight on life. I think I know exactly what to do now. :-)

Nonetheless I am proud. Conon is doing exceptional in college working to be a teacher (which I think is the most noble job in the world) and Dillon has chosen his career path and feels happy. I know that he will get a lot of support in his life.

Now there's just one left. Gage. I will enjoy and cherish each day of the next five years because I know how quickly they fly.