In our house, Sunday nights used to be chock full of things to do. After getting the kids to bed, we would play Boggle or watch TV or pay bills or talk or...something. No matter what it was that we were doing, it was always a time to look forward to and squeeze the last precious drops out of the weekend before another difficult week started again. It was a perfect time to stay up way too late and be together. Alone.
I fear that those days may be over. For the last two Sundays, one or both of us have fallen asleep on the couch around 9 pm, effectively ending all activities for the night. The first time Craig got up and staggered off to bed but somehow I managed to stay asleep out there all night. I woke up early Monday morning in wrinkled clothes, unshowered, with my teeth unbrushed, face unwashed, and my contact lenses scratching my eyeballs. The second time it happened, I fell asleep out there by myself. That Monday morning I woke up in wrinkled clothes, unshowered, face unwashed, with my contact lenses scratching my eyeballs. (Amazingly, that time I had had the foresight to brush my teeth before laying on the couch "for just a minute.")
I haven't quite been able to figure out what is going on, but I have a conjecture. Recently the dynamic of our entire Sunday has changed. The day starts off innocently enough, but the new normal is for Craig to leave semi-early for church meetings, which means that I am usually the only parent home to get 3 kids bathed and dressed for church, feed them lunch, pack their snacks, find their shoes and break up their fights, all while trying to decide what to put in the crock pot for dinner. Then there is 3 hours of church and then dinner and cleaning up dinner and getting kids ready for bed (which can be, on and of itself, quite a tiring ordeal.) It's pretty exhausting. Meanwhile Craig is at church for about 6.5 hours and at the end of the day, he is also exhausted. Once the kids go to bed on Sunday night, the only thing that either of us want to do is close our eyes. And that's what we do.
Since we had a special shorter church meeting today, sans children, I'm actually still awake, even though it's past 9 0'clock. (This is also in great part because Craig let me sleep in and take a nap. Miracle of miracles.)
I have to hope that one day we will figure out our new routine in a way that will allow us to recapture some semblance of our Sunday nights, because starting a new week with clothes in the dryer from last week's laundry is just that much more depressing when I don't have the memory of a fun Sunday night to spur me on.
Oh well, I really shouldn't think about it too much right now. I need to wake Craig up off the couch so he can brush his teeth and crawl into bed.
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