Things are getting desperate around here. Like, really.

I can’t remember the last time I slept more than two or three hours at a stretch. I had hoped that my brief trip to Chicago would provide a full night’s sleep, but, alas, I spent that night waking up every hour wondering why I wasn’t being woken up every hour. Which, you know: FRUSTRATING.

The source of the problem is this: wakeful little Jasper and his grabby little hands. The boy has been in some kind of continuous developmental spurt/growth spurt/teething bender/WHATEVER since early September and the only thing that calms him down when he wakes – as he inevitably does, every night – is a fistful of my hair, preferably clutched while his little body – conveniently relocated to the master bed – is wrapped tightly around my head. Removal of legs or arms or fists results in high pitched wailing.

Like this, only with my head, and much less charming.

It is not conducive to sleep.

We have tried letting him cry it out. We have tried letting him fall asleep in his preferred, mom-clutching position and then relocating him back to his own bed. We have tried relocating me to another bed. Nothing works. If we leave him to cry it out, he screams with an escalating fury until he works himself into a frothing panic, which then requires an even more intense session of hair-grabbing to calm him down. If we remove him from our bed after he falls back asleep, he wakes and protests. If we remove me from the bed, he wakes and protests. If we move me even a few feet out of his reach, he wakes and protests. If we do anything other than send me off to another city to sleep in a hotel, he wakes and protests, and even then, he still wakes and protests.

It’s all become a bit much. The last few weeks, I tolerated – even took comfort in – his neediness and my own wakefulness, because he was sick, and I was worried – so, so worried – but his breathing has improved and his lungs seem stronger and so there’s a little less anxiety available to fuel my will to lay awake beside him all night.

I am tired, so tired.

I am tired, and my hair is breaking at the ends, and I am reaching the point where little hands – any hands – reaching toward me fills me with cold dread and that just breaks my heart. I think. I am so tired that my heart could have been plucked by crows from my insensible, zombified person some weeks ago and I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t have noticed.

Need help. BAD.

It’s Monday, it’s raining and I think that my house might be haunted. It’s either that or the cats are messing with me. Odds are good either way.

Yeah, Monday. What’s there to say that hasn’t already been said a thousand times already by the Boomtown Rats?

1.) So my mother calls me Friday afternoon and says this: “I just sent you another post to publish. You’re going to kill me.”

Me: “Why?”

Her: “Because it’s about that time you brought home a stripper.”

Me: “MOTHER.”

Her: “I had too.”

Me: “He wasn’t really a stripper, and I didn’t really ‘bring him home,’ in the sense that ‘bring home’ implies.”

Her: “He said he was a stripper, and he was in our house.”

Me: “STILL.”

Her: “Wait ’til I tell the story about the first time that you and I talked about hand jobs.”

Me: “MOTHER.”

2.) Traveling around the world isn’t getting me away from my mother and her blog-cum-child-torment-device, but it is providing some amazing insights into just how much mothers around the world have in common. You should join in.

3.) You know that I’m not really all that outraged about my mother’s blog, right? If anything, it’s a boon. There’s no reason for me to write lengthy essays explaining why I’m so messed up when my mother’s out there giving the world a live demonstration.

4.) I have an essay in this book. You should buy it.

5.) I also have an essay in this book. You should buy it, too.

6.) Oh, yeah, and this one too. More than one essay, actually. So maybe buy more than one copy of this one. You know, so that you can fully appreciate the breadth of my talent.

7.) I guess Monday is not all that bad when you wake up and realize that, yes, you are, kind of, a published author and that’s kind of awesome. And odds are that neither the cats nor the ghosts have themselves ever been published. So. They can just suck it.