Nightmares VS reality

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Nightmare one- I was swimming in a pool of sharks. Hammerheads, to be precise. One swam right for me and I managed to get on top of it and put it in a catatonic state. Was not eaten alive. Though the prospect was terrifying.

Nightmare two- Awake between two iDevice playing toddlers before 6am, after their sleep survived Robbie’s 5:30 gym wake-up call and my 5:40 internalized sneezing fit. A mis-set alarm clock on the other side of the house was what eventually got us all awake before the sun came up. Lying in my bed (which seems all too small these days) with Talking Tomcat on my right, Rockford Rock Opera on my left and parenting alarm bells going off loudly in my head, was a nightmare I wished I hadn’t woken up into.

Nightmare three- Kim’s husband and father of their three children had a heart attack and died at 8am. Three boys under the age of 10 who have played with my own kids and who live two roads down are now without a dad for the rest of their lives. Kim, who smiles and laughs more than almost anyone I know, she is only in her 30’s and now has to work it all out on her own. Lives forever changed. Unexpected and tragic.

I’m in a dwaal all day. Petrified by the fragility of life, lacking sleep and feeling a cold coming on, I'm merely executing the tasks of the day. I try phoning Robbie but he doesn’t answer. I feel nervous and I don’t usually. I fetch the kids from school and the other moms and I look at each other with moist eyeballs and just shake our heads. Reality can be too terrible.

I stop at the chemist for Olive Leaf extract to help the cold pass and know that, like waking up after a bad dream, nightmares get left behind too. 

The reality is that we wake up or shake things up or just push through. The reality is that feeling nervous when loved ones don’t answer or the children go for a walk won’t add to the quality or quantity of the lives we have to live. What probably will is exercise, good eating and saying, “I love you”.  

Also, spicy dinners and full bladders are not friends of peaceful sleep. 

And I need to enforce stricter technology parameters. 

And probably invest in a king size bed so that if all my life's blessing want to cuddle at once they can

xx