Slumber Party Shakes

I am so tired tonight.

I have what I call the "Slumber Party Shakes."

When I was growing up, the primary goal of all "slumber parties" was to NOT fall asleep- mostly for fear of all the tricks your friends would play on you if you were the first to fall asleep.

So I became an expert at moving around if I felt tired. I would get a glass of water or ask a friend about some gossip- anything to keep my mind active. Until finally, we would watch with delight as the morning began to streak the sky. We had done it! We had NOT slept!

All the next day I felt like my insides were coming apart. Between outrageous amounts of caffeine and sugar, and literally no sleep, it felt like the very cells in my body were clacking together just to keep me standing upright.

The only cure for slumber party shakes is: sleep.

Recently I have not slept well- or sometimes not at all. Between hubby being out of town, the kids' first full week of school, wrapping up school registration responsibilities, feeling a little ill, stress, etc. (you know, the regular stuff) I've managed to log in just about 4 hours of sleep per night.

Tonight as I was doing the obligatory laundry, cleaning, chores and wishing desperately for some Tylenol PM and a pillow, I heard my kids still chattering happily in the other room. I can hardly stand, I'm so tired. How in the world are they speaking, much less laughing???

(I am forever grateful that God was wise enough to make most of our living processes (like breathing) involuntary. If I had to remember to do all that stuff, too, I would probably be 6 feet under already.)

It's so not fair that the kids should get that much energy! The adults should come with unlimited energy. It's just wrong that they got that super power!

Sure, I have eyes in the back of my head, super hearing and "the sixth mommy sense." But none of that is worth a hill of beans if I can't stay awake to use it.

If I were to make any improvements on the current Mommy Model, I would:

1. Have the mommy's main source of energy be water and air, since we try so hard to function for so long without food or sleep anyway
2. Have our bodies chemically able to process chocolate without keeping any calories or fat
3. Have our bodies become more beautiful with age and child rearing. Meaning a 20 year old college student would look "OK." But a 45-year old mom of 3 would like a goddess
4. Have all our bodies mass produce serotonin and keep it in storage to keep away mood swings and irritability
5. Give us 6 more hours in our day (2 to play with the kids; 2 to spend time with hubby; and 2 to spend on ourselves).
6. A photographic memory so we wouldn't have so many undeveloped rolls of film lying around. And, so I wouldn't have so many photos stored eternally on my digital camera's memory stick or in my computer's hard drive, never to be printed and framed. Instead, we would be able to recall with perfect clarity each breath, each sigh, every "I love you."

I'm sure there are many,many more "super powers" that would not only be helpful, but also even make our families lives easier, too.

For now, I'll just take the anecdote for the kryptonite of "Slumber Party Shakes": sleep.

Tomorrow I'll ponder more super powers. Tonight I'm going to sleep hard enough that I won't even have "super" dreams...