It’s 12:03 am on March 18, 2016.

The snow is FINALLY falling… what my mom and I like to call “movie snow”. (Large, fluffy flakes, that are gently falling… and look CGI… or by some other means, fake.)

The baby is stirring and lets out a few tired whines before getting comfortable and falling asleep again.

And I can hear the mouse that has lived in our kitchen for at least a week… our cat Lyla must have heard it too… she just jumped off the couch to hunt.

I’ve spent the better part of the past two days sleeping. Whatever cold/illness that is going around has found our family again… for the umpteenth time this winter. Our older daughter only had two major colds and one stomach flu in her first 20 months of life. (Little Sister is only 13 months and has had Croup, RSV, and at least 4 or 5 separate colds since January!)  I do not remember any winter being so awful on our immune systems…as this one. And poor Little Sister… she has had more boogers than the rest of us combined!

We have had our fair share of loss and sickness over the last 4 months. With a few, short, happy breaks in between. But I tell, ya… this feels like a marathon that I never trained for… and I am growing incredibly weary…. and irritable… and a little too “woe is me” inside my own head. “Survival mode” has become “everyday mode”… it seems to take me forever to finish projects around the house…which only helps to overwhelm me further.

I knew I was going to struggle getting to sleep tonight, when I turned off the light at 10… tossed until 11:45… and finally gave up. And the frustrating thing is… I already know that tomorrow is going to feel like I can’t catch up… because the tiredness that eludes me now… will find me in the wee hours of the morning… and not leave until my next opportunity to rest. (Which has been the irony of my life lately.)

And I know there are so many things to be grateful for in the midst of all of this… things could be worse… much worse…

Hope makes things better.

I know that the weather will get warmer… illnesses will fade… survival mode will end. Eventually those projects will get finished (one day at a time), and this winter will be just a memory.

So, I’ll take some medicine… go to bed… and even if I wake up sleepier than I’d prefer, I will try to find beauty in the snow (which isn’t exactly difficult for me to do!), make some hot chocolate and popcorn, and maybe watch a movie with my girls.

‘Cause life is too short to wallow.

Happy Friday