Posts Tagged ‘Sleep’
Flashback Friday! (Muscle Spazz)
Every Friday, I post an oldie but a goodie blog for your enjoyment. To those of you who just started reading The Grownup Girl recently, enjoy the “new” blog! To those of you who have been with me from the start, but have memories like mine, enjoy the “new” blog!
And to those who were with me from the start and who already read this blog and burned it into your memory, word for word, photogenically, I say:
What are you doing wasting your time dilly-dallying on my website? Get out there and find me a book deal!
If you hate to read, just click on the audio link, below.
BatSheva (BatSheva Vaknin) – Muscle Spazz – the BLOG
We don’t appreciate what we’ve got until it’s gone.
NO, I’m not talking about breaking up with people or losing grandparents.
I’m talking about full usage of our body.
Colds, flu’s – don’t get me wrong, they suck, especially the ones that make your body ache so much you are sure you are actually dying.
But the upside of colds & flu’s are that– barring death – you know what it is and you know it will run its course.
Not so clear cut is the debilitating yet mysterious leg muscle spasm. Tonight, I was wrenched out of a fitful sleep by the most painful shin and calf spasm of my life.
I’m no stranger to muscle spasms, or “Charlie Horses”, as they are affectionately called by people who obviously do not have the same low pain threshold I do & can therefore joke about these nightmares of muscular terror. But ½ way through my 2nd pregnancy (I generally would get Charlie Horses about every other night when I’m pregnant), I realized that when my calf muscle would cramp unexpectedly into a tiny little bouncing ball of pain, if I shot out of bed and stomped on the corresponding foot, it would disappear as quickly as it came, and no one was the worse for it except my husband who by that point would have awaken, scared out of his wits that I was under attack from a lead-footed burglar.
None of this prepared me for what I had tonight (twice, so far). It was the double shin and calf spasm, each a foil to the other, so that if I stretched my calf my shin muscle, crafty sliver of a muscle that it is, would spasm & contract painfully, and if I stretched and massaged my shin, my calf would contract. Damn this devious duo! It’s 2:14am and I already was pushing the levels of my bedtime by succumbing to both House AND Gossip Girl instead of sleeping at a reasonable hour, and then dealing with my middle daughter’s pee-pee in the bed situation and then dealing with my baby daughter’s wake up in the night for no reason situation.
(Quick props to my DVR. O, those devastating old days of missing House just to put my first child back to sleep for the twentieth time… How did I survive?)
Then after sleeping for just a half hour, my son – the one child who can be trusted to sleep soundly through the night until one of his sisters wakes him at 6am – came into our room and asked to sleep in our bed. I knew his room still smelled like urine from his sister’s recent spill, so I caved & let him join us. Back to sleep… and a half hour later, up again with the incomprehensible Chinese torture spasms that were my shin & calf. Back to sleep again, and another 15 minutes or so later – up again with the same torture, only this time they refused to be tamed.
I limped over to the computer to research muscle spasm remedies (My kingdom for a banana!) and found myself writing this entry.
Ew, disgusting. Just to be sure the muscles stay calm, I took one website’s advice & drank the only electrolyte drink I had in the house – apple flavored Pedialyte. No WONDER my daughter wouldn’t touch that stuff with a ten foot pole of vomit, even after hurling everything else solid or liquid she had downed.
Na. Sty.
The coolest thing I just read was a short-term solution to cramping: pulling on your upper lip with thumb & forefinger. Huh?
Readers! Help! What else can a sister do in this situation? And don’t tell me send the boy back to his bed – I wouldn’t want to sleep in that pee pee cesspool either. And don’t tell me to clean up the pee pee – It’s almost three in the morning!
Miraculously, the muscles haven’t got into spasm since I sat down. Could writing really be a remedy to Charlie Horses?
In the meantime, I hope this is…
Goodnight.
c/xo
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
P.S. Editor’s Note: Haven’t had muscle spasms since this original blog! (Knocking on lotsssss of wood….)
Those crazy Upper East Siders. Making me stay up all night to catch up on their shenanigans!
Enough is (never) Enough
You know that thing, when your boss wants you to work until 11pm every night, and your husband thinks you’re not helping him enough with his business, and your kids hang on your legs as you attempt to move around the house and burst into tears every time you prepare to leave the house without them, and your spiritual teachers talk about how we must study more, more, MORE, if we are ever going to make any progress in our path, and how that extra 10 lbs just kind of clings to your middle because you don’t quite exercise enough or restrict your diet enough or sleep through the night enough to make it finally go AWAY?
You know that thing??
Turns out, I know that thing quite well.
Nothing like being an overachiever to make you feel like you can’t quite get anything right!
It shouldn’t come as a surprise… growing up, my role model was my mother. My mom – sometimes divorced & sometimes re-married throughout my childhood – managed to raise an average of 5 kids (step ones too) who collectively had around forty thousand after-school activities they were beholden to, while successfully navigating a career path that rocketed her from full-time motherdom to President & CEO of her own lobbyist firm.
Not too shabby.
These days, my role models include women I know through the Kabbalah Centre – spiritual versions of the “Do it all Mom.” Karen Berg, Monica Berg Michal Berg & Ruthie Rosenberg… to me, these women are giants. While their ages range from ‘younger than me’ to ‘old enough to be my grandmother,’ they all accomplish the miraculous on a daily basis – raising grounded, caring, motivated and bright children, caring for busy, accomplished husbands, taking time to care for themselves, spending time with friends and tending to their endless students around the globe, who seek their companionship and advice… oh yeah, and also working full time – and by “full time” I mean in jobs that never clock in or out. They are always accountable, always producing, and always stretching to do more, more, more…
Are you as tired as I am after reading that paragraph?
It’s exhausting sometimes, trying to do it all. I miss getting 8 hours of sleep a night. Heck, once upon a million years ago, I used to get TEN hours of sleep! (During college, it’s called “scheduling all your classes to take place in the afternoon.” After college, it’s called “unemployment.” It’s also called “not yet a parent.”)
On the other hand… it’s exhilarating. I LOVE being a mom to three amazing kids, I love my husband, I love to work at a job that is high-pressured and creative, I love to study Kabbalah and live Kabbalah, I love exercising and trying to improve my body, I love to go out, I love to be with friends, I love to try new things, and I love to write and perform.
I know, I know, I’ve exhausted you again, right!?!
So what’s new under the sun…
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
My mom... the original role model. [You'd never know she's already fed 20 people, had 3 conference calls, made 2 business deals and planted a new garden, all right before this photo was snapped, right?
Give me a Break
I love The Week magazine. And by “love” I mean, it’s crack.
Pop SAT Quiz: choose the answer with the same relationship as the top example.
1. The Week: Magazines
a. Chocolate: Food
b. Baby Kittens: Spam Emails
c. The Daily Show: Television
d. Crack cocaine: Drugs
e. All of the Above
Where am I going with all of this? In short, arriving at conclusion: I am nothing short of a petulant, cranky jonesing addict when my Week Magazine doesn’t arrive for two weeks straight over the winter holiday (not to mention the 2 weeks they shut down during the summer). How dare they!! Don’t they know that their readers need their crack I MEAN THEIR MAGAZINE more than ever, during the dreary ‘lots of time to read’ holiday break?
I mean, COME ON!
But as my kvetchy Jewish great aunt probably never said but let’s pretend she would have (with a nasally New York accent), “who am I to complain?”
Because… I meant to keep up my GrownupGirl blog while I was on my “break”. I put the word ‘break’ in quotation marks because I was actually working the whole time during my one week out of the office (btwn Christmas & New Year’s), and actually, my job got busier than ever, PLUS I was home with my three kids full time for the week, but anyway, it was a “break” from routine, that’s for sure… (and by ‘break from routine’, yes, I mean I ate about three thousand cookies and hundreds of desserts and drank a good bit too).
[A break, by the way, which was also AMAZING and wonderful because it allowed me to spend so much time with my kids that it spawned an equal number of fantasies that I should ‘chuck it all’ and be a stay-at-home mom as wells as endless fertile opportunity for more fun blogs like this one I wrote (the week before my break, but the first week of their break).]
Anyhoo – bottom line: I’m sorry I left you guys hanging. And by “hanging” I mean devoid of new Grownup Girl Goodness. I meant to keep writing. I actually thought perhaps I’d write more than usual, since I wouldn’t be in the office all day like my usual routine. Turns out, life is MORE hectic, not LESS, when you stay at home with three little kids AND still have to work practically full time from home.
So…. welcome back, world! I’m sorry I left you for a while. And, while I won’t flatter myself to think that The Grownup Girl is as addictive to any of you as the above list is to me (the ‘crack’ bit just in theory, of course, you know – so I’ve heard…) – I imagine it is possible that a few of you stopped by while I was gone and were perhaps just a little disappointed not to see some new stuff.
Here’s to hoping this year will bring us all more joy, abundance, love, health, peace and creativity….
Here’s to a Grownup Girl World!!
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
Racheli deciding that her new "Orbeez" WILL be the mani-pedi kind - even tho the kind "Santa" bought her was actually for making necklaces. Yeah, this is the kind of thing that happens when you're home for a week with the kids...
Yep. And this is what happens when you sleep in, and tell the kids they can "dress themselves" for a change.
Flashback Friday! (Up All Night)
Flashback Friday!
Every Friday, I will post an oldie but a goodie blog for your enjoyment. To those of you who just started reading The Grownup Girl recently, enjoy the “new” blog! To those of you who have been with me from the start, but have memories like mine, enjoy the “new” blog!
And to those who were with me from the start and who already read this blog and burned it into your memories, word for word, photogenically, I say:
What are you doing wasting your time dilly-dallying on my website? Get out there and find me a book deal!
If you hate to read, just click on the audio link, below.
BatSheva (BatSheva Vaknin) – Up All Night
“Sister, sister, please let me hold him. I wanna make him stay up all night, here we go! All night long!”
Can you name that song?
Boyfriend from camp around age 14 introduced me to that song. And now, it’s stuck in my head, on a loop.
Because I’m wired.
I doubt I’ll be up all night tonight – it’s only 11:13pm, so I’ll finish this blog, watch one TV show or so, do my before-bed routine, then sleep… and with luck (translation: no children waking me up all night), I’ll get a good 5 hours or so before it’s up time again.
I don’t like to go to sleep at night. I would rather watch TV, surf the computer, or write emails. Or blogs. Sometimes I’ll go to the gym late, though that means I need to shower when I get home, unwind (TV), which pushes bedtime even later. Or do errands – I mean I do have 3 kids after all, & a full time job. Who has the time during the day? Yes, I’m that weird girl who hits Trader Joe’s at 9:55 pm (5 minutes before closing) and then gets to Target by 10:20 to do a good half an hour of shopping there before closing.
The funny thing is, I love to take naps. If I’m tired, on a weekend day, my favorite thing in the world (short of sleeping in, in the morning, which I haven’t been able to do ONCE since I was preggers with my 7 yr old, so you do the math on that one), is to fall into a cozy, comfy, warm, enveloping sleep. Ahhhhh.
But at night? Hell to the no. Especially once everyone goes to sleep. It’s finally ME time. Veg time. Relax time. It’s not such a big deal, but usually I push the envelope throughout the week so much that once a week or so I crash when putting the kids to bed around 8 and sleep the whole night through. [Editor's note: or I get sick. Like I did last week. 
]
At least I don’t actually have insomnia anymore – almost never, unless I take something caffeinated too close to bedtime. My whole childhood I suffered from terrible bouts of insomnia. I spent many nights from as early an age as I can remember (not that I remember much, see “Memory Loss” blog for details) awake to hear the first birds chirping, the first light rising, and finally, finally, the long-awaited awakening of whatever family member happened to get up first. Mom, usually.
By then, I’d be spent, exhausted, a pale ghost. I’d finally fall asleep and then wake up late, if I could. Then the cycle would start again.
By college, I was partying like crazy. (What was I doing? Use your imagination. Yes, that is what I was doing. Yes, that too. Yes. Seriously. Yup. Yes, at Yale, believe me, nerds know how to party, too.) I was partying like it was 1999, and that just made my insomnia go into an even higher octane gear (if there is such a thing??) and I would go sometimes days or even one week without really sleeping at all.
It only took me another seven years, give or take, before I got help, and helped myself, and broke that pattern.
But that’s another story.
You know what? All this writing is starting to make me sleepy.
c/xo
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
My actual bloodshot, exhausted eye. Live from Los Angeles. Don't be a hater.
You Know You’re Stressed When…
Awww… I just found this list I banged out a few months ago, and I thought I’d better share it with all of you, since you probably have no clue when you’re stressed (vs. when you’re just happy go lucky).
You are welcome.
So here goes… YOU KNOW YOU ARE STRESSED WHEN:
- You have a flash-fantasy of leaving home and running away to Paris
- Your back spasms to the point of 4-Advil pain and three+ day immobility
- Your back thigh muscle Charlie-horses on you
- You dream of writing a “You Know You’re Stressed When” list and actually sneak to the computer to write it while your husband is putting the kids to bed & you are supposed to be doing the dishes
- You are crazy tired
- You think of all the things you need to get done and decide the most important thing is to watch Grey’s Anatomy episodes back to back (thanks to the wonders of Hulu)
- You eat too much chocolate
- You eat too much cake
- You go out and buy chocolate or cake so you can eat it
- You get in a giant ugly fight with your husband (his fault, natch, but why does he keep blaming me?)
- You can’t take a deep breath
- You’ve started to gain weight again
- The thought that ‘the worst possible outcome is death,’ actually has a reassuring and calming effect
- You start comparing yourself to other people, your husband/relationship to their husband/relationship, and your income/financial stability to theirs
- You inadvertently sigh with relief when you find out someone you thought had a perfect husband/relationship/job/financial life is actually experiencing chaos in that area of life
- The piles of papers and crap on your home office are rivaling the towers of papers and crap that still need to be sorted in your office-office
- You are exhausted so you stay up until 1am or later watching too many Law & Orders.
As it turns out, I’m presently traveling through a healthier (physically & mentally) phase of life right now – yippee! – but that doesn’t mean I can’t remember those recent stressier days.
P.S. you probably won’t hear from me again until Monday because I’m going to NYC tomorrow – without my husband & kids, WHOO-HOO! Um, I mean, uh… sniff, wipe tear, whoo hoo…
P.P.S. I told my husband that I don’t drink alcohol and I’m not even eating desserts right now so the main thing I’m looking forward to, going to the Big City on my own, free, no children to stop me, is…. SLEEPING.
Hey, a Grownup Girl’s gotta do what a Grownup Girl’s gotta do! (to get herself some beauty rest)
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
I don't know about you, but to me, this photo just SCREAMS New York City.