It’s 6am on a Monday morning and I’ve been awake for over two hours and up for one. Before I was diagnosed with depression six years ago I used to wake up really early. It started with waking at 3am and not getting back to sleep. By the time I went to the doctors about it I would sleep until 12.30am and that was it. It didn’t matter if I went to bed at 8pm or 10pm, I would still wake at 12.30am and not go back to sleep. By the time the kids woke up I’d have been up for a good seven hours and was already exhausted. I remember going to the doctors to ask for a weekend sleeping pill. I figured that if I could get one good night sleep a week then I could function ok. Bridie was a baby then and it wouldn’t have been fair to expect Paul to get up every night but on the weekends it would be ok for just one night. The doctor asked me about my life and I collapsed in tears. He gave me an anti depressant with the side effect of sleepiness and it’s worked wonders for the most part ever since. I did try to go off of them after a year. During that time I had given up drinking, started pilates and been to counselling. I’d sorted myself out. It didn’t work though. I started waking at all hours of the morning and ended up back at the doctors in tears. He told me that there’s no shame in depression, it’s a medical problem and if medicine could fix it then take it. If I was diabetic would I be ashamed to have medicine every day? Also, much as I had tried to sort myself out there was (is) lots in my life that I can’t do anything about. Sometimes life is shit and you have to deal with that. If something helps you then why not take that help.
Anyway…. back to today. As I said, for the most part, the sleeping is great but every once in a while I have an early morning and I realise that there’s nothing I can do. I’ve been really tired lately so I’m tipping it the whole end of school thing for Beth and the transition day tomorrow that has me stressed and waking me up. I read Beth the social story for primary school and she hated me reading it. Maybe I made it too similar to her situation and it made her uncomfortable, I don’t know. She of course wont tell me, she just doesn’t want me to read it again. I do have another one that I wrote about the new school, also starring Bronte, the girl in a similar situation to Beth. I will read that to her tonight.
Beth tells me that she’s looking forward to her transition day tomorrow. I’m making a roast dinner tonight so she can have lots of cold potatoes and pumpkin for lunch tomorrow as she’s been awfully fussy with her lunches lately. To keep her busy and happy she’s been cooking her lunch at primary school. I haven’t minded as she’s enjoyed going to school but obviously she wont be able to do this at Emerson next year so I have to try and make up some ploughman’s style lunches for her as she’s gone off bread big time. We’ve got Beth’s uniform for tomorrow and there is a parent information time so I’ll be there for some of the day. Also, it’s only from 9.30am to 1.30pm so it’s not like the other trial days that Beth did last term. Hopefully I’ll meet some other parents that live around here, maybe we can do a bit of car pooling? If not it’ll be good to meet other parents anyway. I don’t know if they have a parent support network or not, there’s a few questions I’ve got so tomorrow should answer some of them.
We’ve had our old cat Henry inside for the past couple of weeks. She’s 16 and was sent outside when the kids were born. She hurt one of her feet so after taking her to the vets and getting medicine for her I decided that she could come back inside. She had pooed on the bed last time I tried this so I made sure she had kitty litter handy and she’s got used to using that again. She can still get outside but I think because she’s so old she’s getting a bit senile. Beth’s loving it. Henry got up on our bed last Thursday and Beth was cuddling her but rubbing her eyes afterwards. The next morning she woke up with the biggest swollen eye it was awful! I took her to the doctors on Friday afternoon and all he could say was that yes, it looks like an allergy. It went down by that night. Beth must have rubbed some fine hair into her eye because it hasn’t happened since. I’m so paranoid about graduation and something happening like that on the day. The dress is already a bit too tight for her so a friend is adjusting the straps tomorrow. I’d hate it if her eyes were all swelled up too! Beth’s also been having staring competitions with Henry. She keeps telling Henry that she’s (yes Henry’s a girl) won as if Beth’s letting her win. As if she has a chance at a staring competition with a cat! 
