Exhaustion

I don't think I've been this tired in a long time. Okay, well, maybe last week. And the week before. But really, it's been awhile since I've had this sort of exhaustion from just running non-stop. I have a lot of stress that has settled in my neck, shoulder, and upper back. It's tight and painful and as soon as I am done writing this I'm off to bed to snuggle with my heating pad.

Husband has one of those all night training thingys that he does tonight, so at least I won't have to fight for the blanket. His job is just to mostly run around and yell at people a lot to make sure they're doing their job, as far as I can tell. Isn't it nice to know that your husband (generally speaking) is the one who is good at yelling at people all day long? But it's good, he gets it all out at work and comes home happy. Mostly.

We started today off by doing some school work with Drew. When Hunter woke up, the chaos started. Feeding the zoo animals, taking a long walk, playing in the park, chasing the escaped dog halfway around the neighborhood (much to Hunter's delight). Now that Drew is home every day, Hunter has someone to keep him entertained. And Drew has a mini-me who follows him everywhere, and does everything that he does.

As soon as Louisa stepped off the bus, we shoved a snack in our tummy's and headed off for a long night.

Louisa's cheerleading coach asked us to get our girls black and red bows for their hair. One of the playgroup mommy's makes beautiful hair bows for her little girl, so I had asked her to make one for us. We drove over to her house to pick up not one, but three very cute bows that Louisa was really excited about. Eventhough Louisa and Drew aren't an active part of the daily playgroup activities, all the ladies really like them and are so nice to them. I really appreciate how kind they are to my whole family.

We arrived at the Youth Sports Complex a little before 5:00, so I let the kids play on the playground for awhile. I thought that Drew had flag-football practice at 5:00. We waited, and waited, and 5:15 came around. Apparently he doesn't have practice. Okay, I wasn't 100% that he had practice tonight, but I KNEW one or the other kid had something going on.

Drew had Cub Scouts at 6:00 at a park that is right by the sports complex. We went to play at the park and wait for scouts to start. I just had this weird feeling that maybe it was Louisa's cheer practice that was tonight. We drove back to the sports complex at 5:40 and yep, everyone was there practicing. Good thing they start at 5:30, so she didn't miss much.

Thus begins my scatterbrained pattern that will somehow weave us through a very long upcoming deployment. Last year when Husband was in Afghanistan, I could barely remember to get the kids from school on time, much less their hectic schedule.

I took Drew back to the park where his scout meeting would be. It wasn't long before his leader got there.

I went back to get Louisa, went back in time for the end of Drew's scout meeting, talked with the leader and his wife about homeschooling (to which they were very supportive), and packed up the very tired crew to hit the Burger King drive through. That is a story in and of itself.

Burger King is the only major chain restaurant that is contracted to be on any and every military installation in the world (even Iraq and Afghanistan). Our particular BK has a habitual problem of not being able to find good help. This was one of those nights where the good help was seriously lacking. The kid was not only slow, but made me repeat my order countless times. As we drove up to the window I told the kids that it will be interesting to see what we actually get. Which was followed by many good-humored jokes all at the expense of the poor, slow, young man. I had repeated many many times, "no mustard on the cheeseburger". When we got home and started to dig in, Louisa said, "Guess what's on my cheeseburger?" Since she loves to joke around about stuff like that, I didn't believe her. But yep, sure enough, mustard. Ah well, at least that's all he got wrong.

Now I'm off to bed, only to wake up and start this routine all over again tomorrow. The only difference is that I actually *know* Drew has football practice tomorrow.