A Sleepless Night

Well.  An almost sleepless night.

The night's drama began when our power went out due to a storm in our area about 7:30 PM.  The younger children freaked out, and I am not exaggerating!  It was really dark.  I don't know if street lights in town still work when the power goes out (like are they on some sort of generator back-up or something), but out here in the country, when the power goes out, it is dark. 

So we used flashlights and candles.  We visited with one another a little bit (we had the Olympics on prior to the power outage), and I read some of Johnny Tremain to Leah.  Sam fell asleep in Jimmy's lap before 9:00.  By 9:30, we just all went to bed!

I woke up at 10:30 when the power came back on.  Then I slept on and off (many people in our house were coughing, coughing, coughing, and the dogs were howling and barking) until 1:30 AM.  That is when Leah woke up me to tell me her ear hurt (a slight infection in her newly pierced ear) and that she could not sleep because she could not stop coughing.  Really?  I could not sleep because she could not stop coughing!

Leah and I worked on her ear, and I convinced her to take some cough medicine.  I cleaned the kitchen and started the dishwasher (we had not done that in the pitch black dark before going to bed, and anyway I couldn't have started the dishwasher without power anyway.)  I set up the coffee pot to come on in a few hours. We turned off all the lights that had come back on at 10:30.  We had a cup of tea.  We read Facebook.  She watched me play spider solitaire.  And finally at 4:00 AM, I told her that we had to go to sleep!

So I slept until 6:50 when I thought I heard Sam calling for me.  (He wasn't.  I must have been dreaming).  He actually slept until 7:30.  Thankfully, Jimmy is off so we are not doing school today.  I need to run and make a grocery list.

As you can see, I am putting off running by blogging instead.  Even after almost 7 years of consistent running, I still struggle most days with the motivation to exercise.  I am always, always happy once I am done, but it's the getting started that is hard.  I used to think that I did not need a marathon or half-marathon looming in the future to motivate me to run.  But I have changed my mind.  I think I do need that accountability and I need the weather to warm up so I can meet friends to run in the early morning.

Finally, thank you to everyone who has left comments, emailed me, texted me, and contacted me on Facebook with your suggestions for my Moms' Night Out talk.  Thank you!  I have a place to begin now.  I really appreciate your ideas.

So.  I am off to the treadmill.