I'm having a bitch of a time today. Partly, I'm still reeling from yesterday's sucker-punch. I mean, seriously? Several thousand words down the shitter? I am Not Happy.

My other trouble is exhaustion, pure and simple. Last night the son woke me a bit after midnight, with ear pain. Now, I've taken him to the ped, and been sent home again with the diagnosis of "nope, nothing's wrong." And to be fair, he has no fever, no runny nose, mostly no symptoms at all. But he tugs and tugs and scratches and twists his poor right ear, and sometimes he is in obvious pain when he tries to sleep on it. I'm going to have to try the ped again, I think, but I expect the same reaction. Our ped is very chill, very wait-and-see, and mostly I like that, but dude something really and truly is wrong when my kid is crying from pain or scratching his ear open, and hey, why don't you take a more thorough look and figure out what it is, okay?

Anyway.

I gave son some tylenol drops, then cuddled him on the couch in front of a kid video, until the pain killer could take effect and leave him able to lie down comfortably again. Which was all well and good, except I just never seem to learn this cardinal rule of nighttime parenting: don't take them out of their bed, don't interact excessively with them, and for heaven's sake, don't let them watch any TV! Of course (of course!!!) once the little one was feeling a bit better, he wanted nothing to do with going back to bed. Mom was up, he was up--it must be time to be up! There commenced, until sometime after 3am, when he finally dropped back off again, an escalating series of battles between son and parents. Son wanted to run around the apartment, bounce on the bed, sing songs, and climb all over Mom. Parents wanted to sleep. Oh, sweet, precious sleep. Toddler had to be shown to his tantrum spot multiple times, and Mom had to storm out of the bedroom and stomp up and down the hall counting to ten at least once. By 2:30am, parents were sniping at each other (score 100 points for toddler!) Eventually, son did pass out, although Mom had to relax her "just lie down and go to sleep, already" policy a little and stroke his back to achieve this end.

I slept in till 8am, and son and husband till nearly 9am. The rest of the morning mainly involved sitting around, drinking tea in a vain attempt to wake up (not to mention feeling bloated, which is what happens when a mostly-vegan indulges in a giant cheese plate for dinner the previous night--my cheese goddess sister-in-law's treat, and my lands, was it ever good). Then I decided to do the cooking early (some banana-date bread and a pasta-and-TVP dish for dinner that came out quite well--and I'm not a big TVP lover), before heading to the library. Except there was still the tiredness, and did I mention it is fricking cold outside? No? Hey, it's seriously fricking COLD outside.

So I have set up shop in the kitchen. (Yes, the kitchen. That's where I write when I write at home. Don't judge me. My other major job in life is to cook for my family, so the kitchen is my natural workstation.) Only...I'm not getting much done. Because of the discouragement over tossing my first draft, and because of the unshakable tiredness. And now we are back to where we came in.

OK, this post is really just a time-waster, let's be honest. I will now drag myself back to work by the scruff of my own neck. But don't look for a good word count today. Just sayin'.