People have asked me, seriously, how I manage.  How do I keep a smile on my face (usually, when I’m not being a whiny Eemoyore brat) and the guys happy and my attitude mostly positive and so on.

It’s because God knows what I need to have in my life.  He has given me small gifts where they are most appreciated and utterly needed.  How do I know?

A day like today is how I know.

I have been tired, as y’all know.  Tired and feeling worn out.  I’ve been “on the job” pretty much every single day without fail, sometimes for up to 20 hours a day, since mid-December.  And I was under a great deal of stress before then, too, with one thing and another.  Many of my days are marathons of endurance, balancing teaching basic things — like facial expressions and courtesy — and monitoring medications and keeping appointments and assuaging panic attacks, and so on.  Some days are just “I need five minutes. Just five.  Okay?” kinds of days.  Days where things are pretty okay…mostly normal…but there’s an edge to them.

And then, there are the gifts of days like today.

Waking up at five (totally a good time for me) and reading with Builder until the other alarms go off.  Making sure Cyclone is up and ready for school.  Making Spousal Unit’s lunch.  Getting the dishes washed and the laundry shifted. All these nice, normal times.

And then, there was peace.  Today, no teachers are coming. No therapists are scheduled.  The only to do on my list is to fill Spousal Unit’s water bottle with filtered tap water so he has it cold when he comes home. (*Note to self:   Do this as soon as this is posted.*)

Today, I put aside most of my obligations as Builder has been happily designing away on SketchUp. We have looked at office supplies, laughed at old jokes and discussed our upcoming vacation.  Peacefully, with laughter.  And he has given me space and I have given  him space and it’s been…

Lovely.  A gift.  God sends me days like this when I need them.  Today, I must have needed it.

How do I manage, someone recently asked me.  I have my escapes into fiction, certainly, and I have the grace of God Almighty, who watches over me as he watches over the sparrow.  I’m not doing a whole lot right now on a grand scheme of things, but sometimes, it must be important to the Creator of Heaven and Earth to let one tired mom have a break. He loves me enough to send me this kind of day.

Sometimes, we cry out for help and expect something big and obvious to be sent to us.  A huge influx of cash, maybe, or a dramatic shift of circumstances.  The change of heart of someone close to us.  There are a lot of things we THINK we should be given.

But our God often sends us what we NEED.  And sometimes the gift is so subtle, it goes by unrecognized.  I pray that isn’t happening to me.  I thank God for days like today.

Remember:

Tags: God, Life, love, peace

In the strange world of my mind, I have a traffic jam. Jamb?  Something.

Through twitter, I was directed to a summation and then to a website (I follow rabbit trails, remember, and so the journey was rather more involved than this) to WebMD wherein I found an article relating to melatonin.

Melatonin is normally found in abundance in children and young people.  The levels of this chemical in our bodies taper off as we age, which is why it is often recommend to adults as a sleep-aid.  I get that. It has never yet proved efficacious to me, though I did give it the good ol’ college try, so I have mostly ignored it for a while.

Until I read that in many children with autism, there is a definite dearth of melatonin in their systems.

So, a study was performed in which young children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and a sleeping problem were administered melatonin in doses ranging from 3mg to 6mg, increasing as needed. Most children’s sleep was affected positively at (I think) 3.5 to 4.5 mg of melatonin, though some few had a dosage of up to 6mg to make a difference.

Heartened by this, and knowing it takes a while to build up melatonin levels in the body, I bought a bottle of easily-crushable tablets for Builder.  I stirred it in his applesauce and told him it was a sleeping medicine.  He was suspicious, but I showed him before putting it in the applesauce that the melatonin was tasteless and odorless and so he reluctantly tried the stuff.

And he managed to eat all the applesauce.

Now, I am not expecting wonders. I am, truthfully, hoping that he will be able to establish a consistent falling-asleep time (bedtime is already established, if you’ll recall, but he doesn’t SLEEP and I cannot leave him alone to wander the house while *I* sleep) that is before midnight. That’s really all I want.

So far… this is mostly working. He has only once made himself stay up later than midnight.  Mostly, he’s been going to sleep around 11:30.  (I have found that when one is asking the Lord for something, one should be specific. I was. And I am thankful for even an 11:30 shut-eye.)

So that’s going well. 

~*~

Otherwise clogging up my mental highways:

~ An Unexpected Man. It is strange, the time it can take me to establish a personality and a place.  I have done ridiculous amounts of research regarding backstory that might never make the novel.  Like always. And I get GREAT ideas for cars and music and ring tones and clothing and have to check with the years they will affect in the story and the personal histories of my characters.  And, too, I am actually WRITING while this is going on, meaning that I have to — gasp — go back and fix things when I found I’ve made an error.

I’m not fond of making errors.

~ Schedules! There are appointments with Dr. K’nex. Hours of home education with Ms. M.  Time with the speech therapist and the occupational therapist.  Then, too, there are other requirements of the day, in the domestic front.  I have spent many years of late without the real need for a Day Runner or its electronic equivalent.  Most of my doings were fairly easy to keep track of in my head.  These days, I am extremely thankful for the calendar on the wall that divides each day into four parts.  My engagements, Spousal Unit’s work schedule, Builder’s appointments, Cyclone’s testing schedule and his working-at-home accomplishments (the kid has to earn money somehow, eh?) In addition to these things, there are my online gigs.  We’ve re-started Windtoss Weyr again (shocking, I know) and I’ve been asked to help judge an original fiction contest (more on that as the details become available) which requires a meeting this EVENING. And I have a book review due Monday which you will see here on my website.

~ Personal reading. Yeah. Well. I have been trying, anyway, to carve time out to do some reading.  I bought a romance novel (Georgette Heyer) and I shall review that, too… I mean. I will when I READ the BOOK.  Sometimes, it is far too easy to forget I’ve purchased a book on my Kindle…

~ GOD. I have been needing to renew my relationship with my Creator and it’s something that I am working on.  *smile* I think everyone needs to take time to examine this most important of relationships, and when is a better time than this Lenten, pre-Easter season?  So, while I am avidly involved in these other parts of my minutes and hours and days, the Lord Almighty is there, reminding me to keep myself always open to communication with him.  A writer whose work I enjoy was killed in a car accident. Completely unexpected.  Friends are seeking their pathway clear to missionary work abroad.  A friend recently lost a family member as well as a close friend, within days of one another.  People are hurting everywhere…but far away from me. All I can do is pray for them. But talking to God, I know that HE, at least, is more than able to comfort and provide for all circumstances.  I am SO GLAD that he’s GOD.

~ Miscellany can be consuming.  I have all these open tabs on my browsers.  Websites to read for research, websites to read for amusement (blogs et al) email. Twitter. Fox News.  Friends’ blogs. I mean… Shells and shards! What am I trying to prove, anyway, right?

Mostly, I’m trying to keep up with folks.  In the most comfortable way for me:  Remote access.

So when I find myself looking at the night sky and wonder where the day has gone, I can take a whiff of the virtual pot pourri of my life.  Not a lot to look at, maybe, at the end of the day. Not a lot to show in a 3-D way for the payment of 20 hours.  Folded laundry.  Well-fed guys.  A word count. Tired fingers. A brain that has to answer “WHAT IF” questions a thousand times a day (which is a topic for another post).  Not a lot, maybe.

But still, I hope the smell is sweet when the day is over. 

Tags: books, God, Life, melatonin, prayer, sleep, working, Writing