:: Sunday, Lovely Sunday ::

When we are home in Rochester, I seem to be completely incapable of taking a moment for myself. I barely grabbed a few minutes to sit here and write, and only because I thought I might lose it -- and I mean lose it -- if I didn't.

With each day that passes I grow more and more exhausted, more and more frustrated. Like Evan, I grow weary of all the people and all the noise. My favorite moments are the few quiet moments I steal with him: a few minutes during a diaper change upstairs while everyone else is downstairs; the first ten minutes after he wakes up and before anyone realizes he's awake and cute and happy.

In theory, I'd love to take a couple of hours and go do something. I think I wrote before we left Columbus about how I'd like to hit the mall and do some after-Christmas shopping without Evan. I'd even just like to go to Babies R Us and exchange the too-small clothes Evan got for Christmas (he's growing like a freaking WEED) for ones that fit. I'd like to get out and do something. But in practice, I am too tired to do it. My days are filled with visits with aunts, cousins, uncles, and grandparents. My parents are divorced and live in the same town as Brian's parents, so we effectively have three families to see in our six short days home.  No one feels like they get enough time with us, and by the end, we're spread pretty thin. It's fun, and I look forward to it for weeks before we get here, but it just drains me so. I become a dandelion with all her seeds blown off: a stem and a clump of something on top where there used to be something pretty and delicate. Or so I fancy.

This morning I'm just done. Done. No more. Take me home. I've nearly cried three times since breakfast, barely keeping it together. Brian is urging me to get out, go do something, but all I really want is for everyone else to leave the house and for me to lie on the floor alone in absolute quiet. I don't want to go to the store. I have no desire to sit in a cafe where it's just a different kind of loud.

It becomes a kind of self-perpetuating stress: I feel crazy so all I want to do is stay home so I just feel crazier. There's no right answer, I fear.

This is why we're going home tomorrow. I am going to need Sunday. Oh boy am I going to need Sunday.