September 18th, 2018

It almost never happens but this past Sunday was a blob day.

Tim has been working mad-crazy hours and while I don't get a paycheck for my job, I've been working at home and volunteering all sorts of extra as well.  And while we really enjoy what we do, we also love our time after work and on the weekends to do fun things, get out and about or spend time with friends.  And then, for reasons known only to the sandman, neither of us has been sleeping much lately. So by the time this past Sunday rolled around, even though we had every intention of both getting some things done and then getting out to have some funfunfun, neither of those things happened.

First of all, we were awake before the sun was up, having gone to sleep LONG LONG after it had gone down the night and even then we slept sporadically, so basically it was another non-sleeping night. Then, as we stumbled around bumping into walls, neither of us could make a decision to save our lives. The question, "What do you want for breakfast?" had the same degree of difficulty as solving the Millennium Prize Problems!

We sat on the sofa starring at the wall, not moving.  One of us (and I honestly don't recall which) said, "What do you want to do today?".  The other of us, about 5 minutes later said, "I don't have any idea, you?"  And another 5 minutes or so passed, I think I fell asleep for a few minutes there, but eventually the answer was, "Nope, you?"  We get kind of goofy when we are that kind of tired.

In fact, when I am that kind of over tired, first I'm silly and then I alternate that with crying for absolutely no reason that even I understand.  Tim just does a lot of slow blinks. 

We couldn't make a decisions, couldn't stir ourselves enough to get up and move around and so there we remained. On the sofa, starring at nothing, drifting in and out.

Eventually one of us (and again I honestly don't recall which of us) said, "Let's just veg" and the other one said or did something that indicated agreement.  And I recalled that scene in  "Pretty Woman" where Julia Roberts suggests to Richard Gere that they just Veg. He didn't know what that meant and she went on to explain that it meant that they should "Lay like vegetables".  The mental image makes my eyebrows go stratospheric

Which vegetables do we resemble? And if you say eggplant you are in big trouble!

Neither Tim nor I were raised to "waste" a day just laying on the sofa, eventually summoning up the energy to click on the TV.  It's just not what we do.  It's not productive. It doesn't accomplish anything. We are goal driven people, both of us. But I am learning, ever so slowly, to listen to my body. And every once in a long while, apparently what it needs is to do absolutely nothing.   AND what's more?  Occasionally, in a rare blue moon, it's okay.

The hard part, for me anyway, is to not feel bad about spending a day watching old movies and napping on and off throughout the day. I didn't wash a single dish, I didn't make a single meal (there were leftovers enough to just reheat - nobody starved), I didn't even sweep the floor or make the bed.  The most energetic thing I managed to do all day was to Skype with youngest son and his wife and she was exhausted too, poor little thing.

I knew I would feel very guilty about it the next day.  On Sunday I was too tired to feel guilty.  Nope could not even summon up enough energy for guilt. How pathetic is that? But yup, Monday rolled around and there it was.  That little voice in my head telling me what a slacker I was the day before.  But let's face it, there are always things that need to be done.  The gotta-do list is eternal. No matter how hard we work, not matter how much we do, we will never finish it all. There will constantly be more that needs doing.  Were anyone's last words, "I wish I had gotten more done on the gotta do list"?   

And maybe, just maybe, one of the things on the gotta-do list should be, take care of yourself.  Or Rest.  Or just Relax! The math is so simple even I can do it.  When a person is totally exhausted and they have the opportunity to relax, they should do so.  They same way we need to properly fuel the body, we also need to properly rest it.

The fact that we did absolutely nothing all day except nap and watch TV and still, for a change, slept through the night Sunday night tells the story.  We truly were exhausted and absolutely needed a blob day.   And when I think about it, we earned it.  Okay, paid in full.