ramblings of a tired mom

I'm wiped out today.  It was actually a fun sort of day - nothing really over-the-top fun, but the kids had their group violin lesson, then we did a bit of back-to-school clothes and shoes shopping and lunch out including ice cream at my favorite ice cream shop.  But I slept badly last night, there was a lot of traffic, and the kids bickered a LOT today over really stupid things.  They slept in fairly late, too, so I don't think I can blame the crankiness on being tired.  I just don't know.

So yeah, today really started last night, after my husband's tablet woke me about 45 minutes after I went to sleep.  Once my sleep had already been disturbed, his preparations for bed kept me from drifting back, and eventually I was fully awake.  I've been trying not to take medicine for my insomnia because then I sleep late and I'm groggy when I get up, but without the medicine, I can't get back to sleep during the night when I'm woken up.  So I spent an hour or two surfing the net and catching up on a few chores and emails until I felt tired enough to fall back asleep.

I needed to get up relatively early because a technician was coming to diagnose our broken dishwasher.  You never discover that your dishwasher doesn't work until it has a full load of dishes in it.  In our case, we discovered it really late at night, too late to hand wash it all, so I didn't get around to washing anything until after dinner the following night, when there were TONS of dishes to do.  I powered through and got it done, and this morning the technician told me the pressure sensor had failed and it was going to cost $450 (roughly) to fix.  Great!  Plus another week to get the part.  Well, we're going on a 4-day camping trip this weekend, so at least we won't be here getting dishes dirty.

On the other hand, I need to pack for a 4-day camping trip.  I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with that.  I need to do laundry and figure out food and find all our stuff and replenish stuff that's been used and get bug spray and on and on .... but it'll be fun when it happens!  I hope.

So anyway, we went shopping, to Carters outlet and Stride Rite outlet and Old Navy.  It turned out ok.  We left our kids' sneakers in Hawaii (accidentally), so they needed new ones.  I also wanted to get them some winter PJs to take camping, since it will be cold at night, and I let Tadpole get a soccer outfit to convince her to wear something besides dresses all the time.  I owe Turtle some soccer shorts now.  I also got them each a fall/winter outfit.  But man, they have a lot of clothes.  Like, a TON of clothes.  Somehow I didn't really realize.  I should start trying to sell them, I guess.  And we still need to get shin guards and long socks for soccer.  I'm not going to get cleats this year, since they're not required.  In some ways, I'm happy we're having another kid because I feel like at least I can get more use out of some of this stuff!

And now it's almost time for dinner, and then I'll put the last coat of stain on my coffee table and it will hopefully be ready for final assembly tomorrow.  I will post some pictures when it's done - it's been a huge amount of work.