In one of my FAVORITE movies of all time, Susan Sarandon tells Tim Robbins in Bull Durham that “physical exhaustion can be spiritually fabulous.” As a movie line, that’s hilarious. In real life, that sucks.
Because it’s not true. Physical exhaustion is just exhausting!
Things at work have gotten . . . exciting? Is that the word to describe them? Challenging? Full of opportunities? I could probably stay until midnight every night, and arrive every morning at 6 am and STILL not get caught up on everything there is to do. Most of it revolves around COVID-19 vaccine clinics – which is great . . . I’m grateful that we’re able to have them. But that’s on top of all the other regularly scheduled work that still hasn’t gone anywhere.
And then there’s the home front. If work is going to be more challenging, I really need home to ease up and be a little more peaceful. And it’s not.
M woke up this morning between 4 and 5 am and was calling out my name. I know a good person would have gotten out of bed and gone to see what he needed, but I’ve seen this show before. I had a suspicion that he didn’t really need anything. So I called out and asked him what he wanted.
He wanted to make sure I was still there.
I can hear you saying “aw, isn’t that so sweet?” No, at 4 am, when the alarm is set to go off at 6 am, that ISN’T so sweet. Where exactly did he think I was going to be that time of day? And why was he worried about it?
Of course, when we were up at 6 am, he came into my bedroom, full of apologies for waking me up and said he didn’t know why he had been calling for me. I asked if he had had a bad dream, but he said no.
This was after a weekend of one step forward and two steps back.
We were trying to do some house cleaning (we won’t discuss how LONG overdue this dusting and vacuuming was) and M wanted to help. I gave him a bucket of cleaner and a rag and asked for his help cleaning off the fronts of the kitchen cabinets. The dogs go through the kitchen after being outside and little specks of mud seem to go everywhere. He wiped off the front of a cabinet and then disappeared into the pantry. I didn’t know what he was doing, but he was gone for the longest time and when he finally came out, his cleaning rag was gone.
Evidently, he thought it was one and done. He had put his cleaning rag up.
I told him no, I needed his help cleaning ALL the cabinets. But he did the EXACT SAME THING after every single one. He would clean the front of the cabinet, disappear into the pantry for the LONGEST time and then come out without the cleaning rag. And I would have to start the whole process all over again.
The entire time, he’s insisting he wants to help me.
The problem is, his help is just exhausting.