My Sixth Toe

Yesterday my son fell asleep in the middle of the day. This doesn't happen often, and I'd usually try with all my power to prevent it, because if he nods off for just 5 minutes, say in the car, he will be awake till after 9 pm. Constantly getting out of bed and walking down the hall to me, and I keep having to put him back in bed.
I let him sleep because he went full tilt psycho right before crashing. When I picked him up from school he was being defiant and not picking up his lunch that spilled all over the floor. He kept crying, "I can't do it. I need your help. Mommy do it!"
His preschool is montessori, so the entire philosophy hinges on teaching the kids to do things themselves. His teacher was warning me about kids who are lazy and expect everyone else to do stuff for them. After he finally cleaned his shit up, we could leave, but he whined the entire time, sounding like Veruca Salt, for me to "go buy him a present."
I tried scolding him, "You sound so spoiled right now." But he could give a shit, and kept insisting. I knew he was probably in an exhaustive state because when we got home he threw a wicked tantrum, and I brought him to his room. I was rocking him, and he just fell asleep, like a baby, in my arms.

I was thinking about these cycles of my kids' behavior. For the most part they don't act like unruly demanding spoiled brats but yesterday and this morning they've been unbearable. George has been up all night, and waking up super early, so it compounded into his complete lack of self-control. I'm probably PMSing, so I have the added feelings that I have no control over this.

Data shows hospitals experience higher volume around the full moon, that people are just more likely to act reckless, and I wonder if kids become more wild around Mommy's moon cycle. Like, does my PMS make the kids go berserk.  I think it does, and should start charting this data. I think it makes George sleep way less, and Kiki whine about EVERYTHING. Yesterday while I was chatting with another mom outside of Kiki's dance class, I said, "Usually George sleeps ok, but not lately. This is all cyclical though. I'm just due for a good stretch of sleep soon." She felt the same happens with her kids.

The last couple days George has been waking up all night long, and then at 5 am spry. It's more torturous to me because Ive been staying up till midnight the last couple days, caught up on a reality TV bender. I turned on Bravo Tuesday for the first time in 6 months, and realized I've missed an entire season of Real housewives of New York, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Ladies of London. I've watched four episodes of Ladies of London a night, and after going to bed at midnight, I am woken up three times by George and have to get up for good at 5 am. Needless to say, tonight after I finish the season, I will not watch realty TV for another six months.

I like the Ladies of London because they all smoke and really enjoy having conversations to heal. Jules wasn't a regular in the first season that I watched, and now she is, and comes off as the most unstoppable gossip ever. If anything, the show does a great job of making the case, that gossip is poison making all talkers and listeners sick.
Caroline Stanbury is my favorite. She is stressed about uprooting her entire family and moving to the Dubai, and this makes her get in fights with all her friends, which is so me. I honestly can't talk to anyone of my siblings when I feel overwhelmed because they will say something that irritates me, and I'll turn it into something that allows me to blow out all my stress, like a fire breathing dragon.

Most of the ladies have kids and all of them have nannies. When I watch the show, and with my heightened sensitivity and obvious lack of control over my children, I think about how my kids might have been better off if I didn't quit my job, but stayed working and let a professional raise them. A nanny probably would have taught them how to make their bed by now, or that they need to pick up their toys,  and how to sweep up their plate of spilled food. But they had me, who really felt so overwhelmed most of the time, I took the approach that it is just easier to do things myself, and now I feel I've stunted them into being spoiled and a million miles from self sufficient.

Last night, when Kingsley started crying because I wouldn't give her the last pineapple juice since she didn't eat any of her dinner yet, I said, "I'm about one day away from packing up my suit case and hopping on a plane to Hawaii. I think I'll go sleep in a tent on the beach until you two figure out how to have some bloody respect for me!" (In addition to normalizing smoking, the Ladies of London, have reintroduced "bloody" and "sodding" into my vocab.)
I told them, "Super nanny is coming, and I'm going."
They needed to know more about this super nanny, and the story started spiraling out of control where super nanny can sometimes be a wicked witch, and while moms away on vacation, the wicked witch will eat people's toes who don't listen to her.
Kiki was chewing on her blanket, and I reassured her for the tenth time, "Were just making this up. There is no such person as the Super Nanny. I am not going to go live on the beach without my gummy bears."

On Monday night, I had the silliest dream that I had six toes on my feet. The sixth toe that sprouted under the pinky toe on each foot, looked gross, like an oversized wart, but I showed my sister the toes and neither of us were alarmed. After researching what this means, I think it represents that I have been doing well with my purpose, and this toe is a gift, given for extra support.

I wonder if it has to do with the needed patience and rebuilding of confidence in my parenting, now that I reflect on the week. Or it could be regarding my job, because this week I was given a new class to teach the second half of the term. Or it could relate to my writing, since I've been revising my screenplay.
One of my greatest friends who lives abroad and I email each other our writing projects to discuss them, and when I wrote her a couple weeks ago, I felt rather sad after diving back into my screenplay,  having not looked at it for months. I was cringing and embarrassed with how shitty it was at times.
I thought, it's 80% garbage, but after spending more time on it, and developing a better artistic vision for where I want it to go, I am not railing on myself anymore for thinking I had been sitting on an Oscar winning screenplay that was actually not even ready to be considered for an Unauthorized Lifetime movie.

I'm reading an autobiography called, You Knew That Already, by a celebrity psychic. It's definitely trashy, conversational lit, but very engaging, and I like it. My husband was laughing at me for choosing it at the library, but I've only read the first couple chapters (the reality TV bender derailed my nighttime reading as well) and have some great take aways regarding meditation and visualization. Dougall Fraser talks about his anger throughout highschool, and how he started these exercises where he'd visualize himself surrounded by a brick wall (his brick wall represented his anger) and he'd throw the bricks away from him, one-by-one, till the wall was gone. Before my mind got polluted by the nonsense of the TV show, it felt clear enough for me to go through this, and it felt great, in fact that was the night I had the dream about the extra toes. But after watching TV for four hours, when I close my eyes I'm being inundated with images from the TV shows, so its impossible for me to focus on throwing my bricks.

Ive got a some irons in the fire, and in the next couple days, two of them will be finished, so I really have to turn the TV off in order to get my shit taken care of with the clearest mind, and intentions. The extra toe is a comfort, but with my kids' PMS-by-proxy, I need possibly a second or third extra toe on each foot, as well as a good eight hour stretch of sleep.