Must... Sleep...

Tired. So, so very tired. "If I can just get through the day," I told myself, "I can go home and go straight to bed." So I held on, finished my work, and went home.

Beautiful Wife was already asleep, leaving me to fix Secondborn's medicine. (He's on a regular dose of laxative following his hernia surgery last summer, and will be until the doctor thinks his digestive tract will stop trying to be constipated.) This also left me to feed the boys. (I ordered pizza. No energy to cook.) This also left me to get Firstborn to practice his bass. (He did.) This left me to put the boys into bed. (With their mother; she was sleeping on the lower bunk in Firstborn's room.)

The boys were actually very good about all of this, including getting into bed in the most ninja-quiet way possible.

"Thank God," said I. "Now I can read for a little bit, and then go to bed myself."

That was when I heard the voices.

Yes, they were all three awake. Yes, Secondborn needed water and a bit of Melatonin to help him sleep. Yes, of course yes, Firstborn had suddenly remembered that he needed to assemble the materials he'd brought home into something he could present to his class tomorrow. Yes, this was going to take at least another hour. Yes, I was so tired that it hurt.

Fortunately, Beautiful Wife was rested enough to take over. Unfortunately, there's essentially no way I can go to sleep if everybody else is still awake in the kitchen.

By the time they finished (an hour later) I'd passed my window. Still tired, mind you, but not at all sleepy. Of course.

I'd have been a lot more irritated, except that I clearly remember having one of those last minute, just-as-I-was-going-to-bed "Oh no!" moments when I was around Firstborn's age. Possibly more than once. So I did an admirable (I think - I admired it, anyway) job of holding onto my patience through this whole thing, and I did eventually go to sleep. I even managed to wake up for work.

But somehow I have *got* to find a way to be less tired.