Mom, go to bed, you’re tired

I’d like to share an example of what can happen when you don’t take care of yourself and get enough sleep. I’ve talked before about how I used to work and go to college and care for my baby all at the same time, and I never slept which caused me to hallucinate among other things. My doctor told me it’s as bad to your brain as doing drugs when you do it for that long. Yikes!

So this week has been really tough, and I’ve had a lot of catching up to do at work and a sick kiddo to take care of. I went a couple of days without sleep—something that I’m just too old to do these days!—and had the following incident happen:

I’m trying to take a nap with Wood Sprite, and the cats keep crying to go outside. Every time I let one out, another wants in—those of you owned by cats get what I’m saying here. I’m stumbling around, it’s a little dark (the light is shining in from outside but we have the lights off) and my glasses are off from trying to nap. So I open the door and see a snake coiled up between the screen door and inside door, and I scream, slam the door and call my husband at work. He comes home to deal with the snake and holds up his flip flop. “Is this your snake?” he asks.

Um… yeah.

I felt SO embarrassed. Luckily he took it all in good humor; he works very close by and was able to take one of his breaks. His flip flops are huge—he wears a size 12—and they are black with ripples of silver that look like scales. Still, a snake from a flip flop?

Go to bed, moms. Take care of yourselves before you start seeing things. You can’t take care of your kids if you don’t take care of yourself, too!

Photo courtesy of Sara S.