12:57 am . . .

I'm watching 'Taxi Driver' and mourning my dying manicure. It's cosmically impossible to have both beautiful hands AND clean toilets. It's an offense to the universe, somehow.

I'm up late tonight (as opposed to why I am up late every other night) trying to keep my son awake as long as possible. He is having a sleep-deprived EEG in the AM, a procedure I know was designed to punish parents for bothering neurologists. If you don't believe me, get an autistic teen and try to keep him awake all night. It's not just that he is a walking stress factory and whiny because he's sleepy and stressed because he wants nothing to do with a test involving wires and his brain. It's also that you have to stay awake too. You have to find ways to preserve your sanity while marking the time till you can put him to sleep again.

This is where scrubbing toilets, doing laundry, re-arranging minor furniture and finally taking down the Xmas tree come into play, and why my manicure is ruined.

Both these things, the having to stay awake thing and the manicure thing would be much less bothersome if I didn't need to see a doctor of my own later in the afternoon. I get to go see the stomach doc who will almost certainly attempt to put a camera down my throat again. Somehow, I feel more secure with a perfect, fresh mani and pedicure. If I could get my weave freshened and lose forty pounds, that would help too. I don't know why. I guess I feel I need every advantage I can get, need everything possible to say 'yeah, I weigh too much, but I care about how I look'. This, hoping that if they don't think I am a total slob, they won't make me feel so much like a total slob.

It's funny though, the kid thing. He was so happy and strutting earlier when I told him he could stay up as late he wants tonight. Just now, he asked me when he would be allowed to go to bed.

Poor kid. Poor nails.

My younger daughter just came in here a few minutes ago complaining of a burning throat kind of thing. I'm guessing heartburn, an idea she vetoed. Trying to give her anything like Rolaids soft chews is a farce, though, because the gooey stuff sticks to the retainer covering the roof of her pitiful little mouth. I had to cut Tums up into pieces so she could swallow them with water.

With Santa Anas, she's having a miserable time with her allergies. And she has insisted on having some of the finches in her room. In the last few weeks, he allergic reactions have gotten much worse - this could be a reaction to the season, the birds or the new braces she got a few weeks ago. She sees the orthodontist on Wednesday, so we'll find out then. I'll be yapping at them a lot about making her more comfortable. She just started a new allergy med (that insurance is bitching about paying for) so I'm hoping for all kinds of good things for her.

I love my husband, but he is sleeping peacefully on the bed behind me and I am seriously pissed off at him for it.

Older girl had another headache today. Three days in a row, each time worse than the last. I don't want her to have to go back to the hospital, but I'm afraid that's what we're waiting on. It's like, we know that in a few days or so, the headaches will stop going away when she takes meds and she'll have to go. But in the meantime, she has to deal with the headaches - how she doesn't go crazy is beyond me. I can't imagine what it must be like for her, to always spend so much time having to wait.

Have I said I love them enough, loudly enough? Have I convinced anyone I'm doing everything I know how to do while avoiding being such a good parent that someone insists I am inducing their illness just to get called a good parent? I just feel so fucking helpless. I hate myself for feeling it because that feels like some part of me has given up. And I haven't. . . I can't. My whole life, everything that matters to me depends on my continuing ability to be able to keep juggling the balls in the air, faster, faster, faster and not drop them and if one - if one drops, it's like when we were kids and played hot potato. if you let the potato hit the ground, the world explodes. It's so much like that.

And that sounds like I am not doing it out of love. I am, though. I love them all so much. Everything I can possibly feel, everything good I can possibly produce I feel for them. That doesn't change one whit how tiring it is trying to keep those balls in the air. I'm not asking for applause or accolades or rewards for it. I'm just really tired.

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4:13 am . . .

The boy is sound asleep and I am not. How the fuck am I going to get through this day?