Do you ever sit around at night, growing more and more tired, knowing that you really need to take yourself to bed.. but somehow the effort involved in doing that seems too much?

So you just sit, doing nothing of consequence or importance, feeling even vaguely nauseous because you are tired.. but you still sit. And sit. Knowing you have to finish up in the kitchen before you trundle upstairs. So you put it off, and off, and off...

You don't? Bet you jump out of bed all bright eyed and bushy tailed at sunrise as well...

Gah, I wish I wasn't such a night owl. (Because shortly I will suddenly get a second wind, so I'll still be going well after midnight.) I wish I didn't mind getting up in the dark as much as I don't mind hanging round at night - in the dark. Funny how I find one "acceptable" and the other not.

So much for the big plans to bike ride this morning, and all the 'Go Tracey Go' motivation racketing through cyberspace into my blogspace. (I really milked it in that post didn't I?!)

It rained! I woke up to the sound of rain around 3.45 am, and so had to go around the house (down and up 2 flights of stairs) closing windows. Barely another hour of sleep and I woke up with the alarm at 5 am, peered out the window into pitch black, and was actually somewhat relieved to realise it was still raining. (I don't do any form of sleep interruption in the night at all well anymore... I know that will sound really pathetic to anyone struggling with crying babies...sorry!)

With daylight saving still happening, but the days getting shorter again, sunrise isn't till around 6.30am (civil twilight around 6am). Which leaves one whole hour of dark still - if you are mad enough to set your alarm for 5 that is! Perhaps if it had been light already, I may have felt gung ho enough to stick the bike on the roof rack and head in to ride in the rain and pretend to be a hard core cycling nut. Sometimes I would like to be that nutty, because afterwards you feel kind of charged with some weird sort of manic adrenalin.

But not in the dark AND wet. No, no, no. Back to bed for me. Back to bed, then sleeping through the re-set alarm to panic dream about sleeping in till 10.15 am so that my daughter missed going to a netball rep squad training at 10.00. (Which she really had at 10.00 today!) In the dream I find out that despite the rain, it was still on, and the coach (not the same as the one in real life - you know how dreams are weird like that) was vague about whether she was still going to be eligible for rep selection. Arrgh! I was feeling so terrible about it all... Imagine my relief when I really woke up, and saw that it wasn't quite 9.00! And it was still raining! (And thus I had time to ring the real coach and find out that it was called off!)

The rest of the day comprised of 'hours' of netball registration. Me assisting (because I am on the committee) for two hours in one place. Then a mad dash to get to town by 2pm to register the eldest in a club in there (because that daughter plays rep in there; our association being 'new' -it was formerly a 'club'under the umbrella of the other one - and not having the numbers in her age group to form a rep team. And if that makes sense to anyone it's a miracle..heck, most of you won't even know what netball is!)

Registering in there had its own challenges because of the choice of clubs, tied in with training afternoon availability, and the blatant snubbing of my daughter by the girl from 'our' area club/association who she has played rep with for the last 2 years. This other girl has become (according to my daughter) one of the 'plastics'... Even I can see that she (and others from the rep team) are just a bit 'too cool for school'. Luckily Cait is pretty unfazed by it. I think she had hoped that she would be included for her netball ability (they work well together on court), but it was clearly not so, and so she reckons it doesn't bother her. She wouldn't choose to hang with them normally, so, we joined her up with a different club, on a different training afternoon, and she's well out of that company, really. For all her faults, she is, at least, not (yet - and I hope not ever) one of the type who have to try to act all cool and smart and cliquey (and call other people names to look cool - or whatever the latest variant on 'cool' is.)

Quite topically, we finished off the day watching the movie 'Mean Girls' on TV. Bit of mindless trash, but it had a message worth reinforcing.

I feel mentally drained, and a bit bummed that I didn't ride or do any exercise. The rain stopped and it got really hot and humid in the afternoon, so it was hard to feel like bolting out and doing anything energetic. So I didn't.

Tomorrow is another day. The youngest two got left at home today to "CLEAN UP OR ELSE YOU WON'T BE GOING TO ANY FRIENDS' PLACES OR HAVING FRIENDS AROUND HERE... AND NO, I'M NOT TAKING YOU TO THE BEACH THIS AFTERNOON, I WANT BIG GARBAGE BAGS FULL OF CRAP FROM YOUR ROOM, PLAYROOM AND DESKS! AND IF YOU DON'T DO IT, I WILL (and trust me i will be ruthless!)"

I hope to reacquaint myself with the vacuum cleaner tomorrow, and have a bit of a clean out binge. I have to do something in the house cleaning vein that is of some consequence. Something that will look still 'done' in a couple of weeks, rather than a couple of hours.

I had better reaquaint myself with a bike too, because, a month from today, we'll be heading off on our 9 day/500km ride. So bike cred, rather than vacuum cleaner cred, is probably, in the scheme of things, more important!

Labels: bike riding, daily, parenting, teenagers