Diary of a Middle-aged Woman

01/23/07 - It's Only Tuesday!!!

I feel like I could just squirrel myself away here at home - all day! I really don't feel like leaving my home at all. Unfortunately I have to - work is waiting for me. I have a meeting this morning and one this afternoon. Yeah! I'm being sarcastic in case you can't tell. I don't have the enthusiasm for my work this early in the day. It's one of those things that grows the longer I am awake.

I never did take that nap yesterday afternoon. I kept poking around WDC. I wrote another piece - besides starting this blog. I guess it was a productive day afterall. The piece I wrote was my commentary on the whole "eating fish on Friday" thing during Lent. I never mention religion in my writing, but that one just poured out of me. It's something that bothers me every year and I guess this year I felt I had to say something about it. I know Lent is still a month away, but I'm sure I'll have several revisions to it between now and then. It should be completely finished by then.

I was so tired last night that I started falling asleep in a chair in our living room. This is always disasterous because I mess-up my neck, which hurts for days afterwards. So now, whenever my husband or daughter catch me falling asleep they wake me up with "you're going to hurt your neck". God! I sound like such an 'old person!'

I noticed that since I hit the magic number of forty, my sleep patterns have changed! At first I thought it was only me, but after talking to other women my age I realize it isn't. What's up with that? How come I used to be able to sleep the night through, but now I wake up every hour and then finally decide to just stay awake? This is usually around 3 AM. By 8 PM, I'm dead!

At one point last night, I woke up in a sweat. I refuse to believe that I get the dreaded "night sweats" that are associated with the unset of menopause. It's just that stupid blanket that my husband insists that we need on our bed. I notice that he ends up kicking the covers off too. He stubbornly refuses to believe it is the blanket making us sweat. "There's nothing wrong with it" he tells me.

I don't know if you do this, but we 'name' things. For example, the blanket that I'm talking about we call "The Bob Ryder Blanket". We call it that because it was a gift from my sister-in-law and her husband, whose name is . . . you guessed it - Bob Ryder. Bob made the comment that this blanket "keeps you warm in the winter and cool in the summer". Which I thought was sort of stupid - how can a blanket keep you cool in the summer? Anyway, that's how the blanket got its name. It's not even the same blanket anymore, but out of habit we still call it that. When I tell my husband "the Bob Ryder Blanket makes me sweat" he doesn't listen to me. "Why do you hate the Bob Ryder Blanket so much?" he'll ask me. I don't hate it, I just don't like it all that much. It's one of those manmade material blankets - not cotton or something that breathes. Maybe if I was in Antarctica I would appreciate this blanket more.

After reading that last paragraph, I realize how insane my husband and I sound!

Today my daughter, who is eleven, gets her report card. We are anxiously awaiting her results. You see, she was having problems with her schoolwork so, we disconnected the TV in her bedroom, took her computer privileges away, and all video games too. These were all distractions. The tests scores that she's brought home since then have been encouraging - all A's. These are what she normally gets, but she was hanging around with a group of girls who don't care about their grades. It's so true that friends can either bring you down to their level, or bring you up. We are hoping she realizes this.

Tonight she has a Girl Scout meeting. It's Girl Scout Cookie time too. I sold 41 boxes for her. She sold about twelve. This is way short of her goal of one hundred boxes. I think I should be the one who gets the badge for selling the cookies and not her.

Well, I guess I have to end it here and start getting ready for work. Do I wear the brown suit or the navy one? Will my hair behave and do what I want it to do, or will it exert its own will and do whatever it wants? See what exciting things await me?

Off I go into the unknown!