It's almost the last day of the first month of the year, and I'm already tired of 2017.
Not in the way you might think--I have not yet given up on humanity as some might have. I'm weary from the lack of sun.
I have a vitamin D deficiency, so on a good day in June, my vitamin D levels are on the low end of normal and on a cloudy day in January, they are at death levels. To combat this I take 10,000 IUs of Vitamin D daily, and any moment the sun is out I will stand in a beam hoping to soak some of it in. I recently did one of those DNA tests, and found that my Scandinavian and Scotch Irish heritage has a lot to do with this. It also doesn't help to live in Michigan, where a grey film covers the sky from November to late March.
Vitamin D deficiencies leave you lethargic, depressed and in pain. My muscles ache, so I skip my workout routines. I want to do things to make myself healthy but find myself plodding in sand, unable to get up enough energy to do anything. And that's sort of the bitch of it--exercise and getting out would help me--but I have no energy to do it. Faking energy doesn't seem to help, either. Believe me--I faked being "up" all month for events and it leaves me anxious and panicky (another side effect of a vitamin D deficiency).
I know that people reading this will give me a million remedies for this, and believe me I have probably tried them all (don't ask about my failed sun bed experience). It's just something I have to get through and when the first buds of spring come I'll be okay again. But for now I'm finding a rhythm similar to a grizzly bear in hibernation--eat, sleep, have a little wine, read some, and watch a lot of Netflix before slobbering asleep at 8:30 pm. Fortunately the girls are bigger now and pretty self-sufficient.
However, I felt a pang of guilt when my 6th grader's teacher emailed me to discuss her failure to turn math homework in on time, so her grade in that subject wouldn't be good. I felt like a crap mom because were I not yawning and just wishing that homework time was over at 8 pm, I would have noted that. But I didn't--I've been so exhausted from life that I couldn't give a rip. I hated to tell the teacher that I didn't give a rip about her grade, either--no one cares what your math grade was in 6th grade, and my dyslexic daughter finally got an A in reading so what matters more?
Motherhood is a series of moments where you feel really bad about yourself for not living up to some mythical standard. I don't know a single mom who feels like they're doing a great job every day, and there's a sense of "we're all screwing this up together" camaraderie and self-deprecation going on. But why does it have to be that way? Why do we all have to put ourselves down about being human? I don't know. These are really rhetorical questions--in the end I'll probably joke about being "mom of the year" as I skirt through another week of just surviving.
Anyway, I didn't mean for this to be a negative post--aside from my sad existence as a hibernating 40-something, I have been doing a lot more sewing, knitting and reading. I'm making my way through reading the Outlander series this winter, which has certainly been fun. The series is one of those things that's been recommended to me for years but I never found it appealing and now I'm kicking myself for never read it. I've also been sewing a ton of clothes for myself and the girls, and on occasion, a friend of two. And of course I've been knitting like a fiend--last year I finished a set of Christmas stockings for a friend that I had custom designed--no two are alike and they are all of different colored wool. One of my favorite projects ever, and hopefully they will grace their hearth for years to come.
And I've been dreaming of sunny (humidity free) days, moments by water, and warmth to bring me out of my slumber.
xoxo
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