Caught Napping

I feel to say Phew. For the first time since April, there is nothing big on my calendar for a long, long time. I'm back to normal life, whatever that is.

Every single thing I've been doing since then has been really awesome. But it must mean something that after I got the only child off to school this morning and ticked a few things off my to-do list and figured out dinner, I put on my calendar and list to take a nap. No guilt. I was already slowing down after 4 hours of the day gone by.  I gave myself an hour to sleep. I woke up after 3 hours. Didn't even hear my timer. It was such a deep sleep that I felt like I was coming out of anesthesia when I decided I must get myself going. As in my limbs felt heavy. As in I couldn't grasp anything in my hands and felt like I was wrapped in a sleeping bag.  Anyway, I think that means my body is letting down after being on alert for so long. The same thing happened on Saturday. I thought I'd take a teeny little nap and woke up in a fog a LONG time later. I must need the rest.

But it is time to get going again.  It's a beautiful day today. I want to go for a walk and listen to my book. I want to work on some projects and bask in my lovely clean house (I mucked it out big time so I could help to host a shower for my pal who is expecting twins). I already ate a good breakfast and practiced piano and made up the treat list for seminary and wrote my kids a nice long email, and so in lots of ways, it's already been a productive day. And if my nap helps me to do all the stuff I still have yet to get through (such as a rec-league lacrosse game for the only child that starts at 9:00 PM!!??), then I guess that was productive, too.

I still have a lot to digest and think about from my 5 months of big things, and some of the jobs are not yet fully done, and I have some bridges to try and rebuild and some traditions to try and preserve and 4 children out of the nest to support while I still finish raising the last. Yes, the nap was a good thing. That's a lot for any brain to try and juggle. Life never actually gets easier, it just shifts and changes and morphs from one kind of challenge to another, sometimes so sneakily that you don't even notice.