Sleepless Mornings

As has become the norm for me lately, I woke up on my own at 5:30 this morning, and my brain immediately began churning, so I couldn't go back to sleep.

Mostly, when this happens, I'm planning, figuring out how things will change with the separation. How to take care of the kids. How to handle family events and holidays. Repairs that the house needs that we've been procrastinating on that I should probably get a move on. Renovations that I'd like to do eventually.

My therapist would probably tell me that all this planning is a way of avoiding the deeper questions: the sense of betrayal. The anger. The mourning. The fears. That's probably true to some extent, but I think it's also a sense of pattern. All my life, I have done my most productive work first thing in the morning. It's when I'm the most logical, the most organized, the most focused. It's when I have the fewest distractions, either internal or external.

Yesterday, with its moment of emotional breakthrough, was a rare animal. Today, it was back to the usual planning.

But for a change, it was neither denial/suppression long-term planning nor fretful worrybrain "please don't let this fuck up the kids too badly" planning. Today, I woke up thinking about Penny's birthday party. (In two weeks? My baby is only two weeks away from being nine years old??? Holy passing time, Batman!)

She wants a Harry Potter birthday party. (She also wants a sleepover, and is extremely angry with me that I've told her she can't have a sleepover until the weekend before school starts, but she'll just have to deal with that.)

I've been googling things to do, and mostly what I've found is that a lot of other parents put a lot more time, money, and effort into their small children's birthday parties than I'm willing to invest. Seriously. Some of these people are quite insane. Creative, yes. But insane.

But as I laid in bed this morning, I thought of some much simpler, fun ideas that Penny will probably be perfectly happy with. Like buying some streamers in Hogwarts house colors and making a color curtain the kids will have to walk through to get to the front door, and putting a "Platform 9 3/4" sign on it. Like doing the same to Penny's room, only with just red and yellow, and calling it Gryffindor Tower. Like hanging the Golden Snitch toy I bought from the ceiling in the playroom, and calling that the Quidditch field. Red-and-yellow plates and cups, red-and-yellow decorations on the devil's food cake (she already picked that out).

Anyway, I'm pleased. If I can't sleep, at least I had an actual productive morning.

It's Friday, and there's a decent possibility that I'll get to skip out of work early. And I have a new fridge being delivered tomorrow (hopefully in the morning). And I have friends coming over tomorrow afternoon/evening to make tacos and quesadillas and margaritas. And I have a germ of an idea for a story I want to write (well, re-write) for a submission.

It's going to be a good weekend. I have decided.

(But first, coffee.)