…groan…

Gah. Pass the coffee, I’ve had a rough night. It started with staying up too late because I had actual billable work to do – huzzah! By the time I’d tracked down the problem (which as it turned out was not my bad, HUZZAH!), mapped out the solution and sent an email to the client with my radical suggestions, it was eleven o’clock.

The Den was still buzzing with child-noise, too. Captain Adventure didn’t want to go to sleep, he wanted to play. The girls didn’t want to go to sleep either. They wanted to talk. The husband didn’t want to sleep either-either. He was watching one of the endless variety of Fight Nights out there.

I threatened the girls into semi-silence, rubbed Captain Adventure’s back until he finally gave up and went to sleep, then piled into bed myself for a few hours of HOLY CRAP WHAT IS THAT NOISE?!?!

The noise would be Captain Adventure, who was sitting up in bed howling like his little world was ending, ending I tell you!

Enter the fun of trying to figure out why he was howling. Since his communication is rather poor under the best of circumstances, and given that he tends to revert to infant-levels of word-usage under stress, you can imagine how fun it is to get him to tell you what’s wrong when he’s sitting up in his bed at 1:00 in the morning howling.

His own bed was apparently acid-coated, because I couldn’t even get him to lie down on it. He’d start to lie down, then bolt upright again and scream in my ear. (Owies.) (He is loud, people.)

I had no idea what his problem might be. Was he sick? Headache? Toothache? Nightmare? Sheer contrariness? Say something other than WaaAAAAAaaaaaAAAAAaaaaHH, kid!

Eventually, I bundled him into our bed – where he sighed happily, snuggled in, and proceeded to keep us awake most of the night in tag-team style. First he’s digging his feet under Daddy, then he’s head-butting me, then he’s climbing on top of Daddy’s head, then he’s shoving his feet into my stomach.

It was a long, long night.

Followed, of course, by the 5:30 wake-up call so that we could be ready in time for the bus to arrive.

Even the hot cocoa and chocolate breakfast cereal bar couldn’t make my boy happy this morning.

And needless to say, there is not enough coffee in the world to get my eyeballs all the way open.

Now, in the light of day and with a couple cups of coffee in me, I think the problem was fairly simple: Daddy left the ceiling fan on in the Man Cave, which is directly under his bed. When that fan is on, there is a distinct vibration that comes through the floor – his bed hums, and has a slight but noticeable quiver going. With his quirky way of processing sensations, I imagine something that seems pretty minor to us might indeed be like acid to him.

I am a very grumpy mommy this morning. Even the fourteen skeins of deliciously soft Merino ready for the dye pot can’t cheer me up, or motivate me to get off my backside.

Well. Maybe it can. Just a little bit. Got an idea for a Fall-ish kind of colorway, light and dark browns with some spruce and maybe a couple splashes of burnt orange…like late Fall in the foothills, right where the deciduous trees begin to mingle with the pines…should be fun to paint and make for a pretty cool finished skein…OK, OK, I’m moving, I’m moving…