3:56 AM

"Good Morning" said The Kiddo ever so sweetly.

"Wha?????" said me not so sweetly.

I fumble for my phone and peek at it in disbelief.  3:56 AM.  Kill me. Shoot me.  Put me out of my misery.  This can't be right.  I couldn't even lift my head from my pillow.  He had woken me up during a dream or maybe I was dreaming this. I'm not even sure.

We haven't had this early a wake up in a while.  The husband first clocked hearing him at 3:40.  When you are an autism parent, that sixteen minute difference of extra sleep matters.  The lights went off.  I think my husband ushered him back to bed.  At that moment I was so deliriously confused it could have been the killer clown from Stephen King's "It" that walked him back to his room.  I really didn't care.  I was all "Night Night angel." and Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

But I was not fully back asleep.  My body so desperately wanted to be but my brain was having a fight with it.  I heard it yell "Don't fall back to sleep. He'll be up again."  A bit later he was and so starts the madness of the day.

After he went to school I had to make a quick errand out to the local pharmacy because I'm an autism mom.  If the staff there doesn't see me once a week, they get worried.  It was a quick ride but it really took whatever little energy I had left completely out of me.  I found myself pep talking to get through this one dopey errand.  So I could safely drive there and make sure I got what I needed.

I still felt like I was walking through a mind fog in the aisles.  I either ran my debit card or my haircut appointment reminder card through the register. I proceeded to putter out and then almost go to the wrong car.  Maybe that woman in the minivan would give me a ride home.  She seems nice.

I literally sat in the parking lot of the store for five minutes to wake up enough to drive home.  I kept thinking to myself, "This is effing crazy.  This is not safe for me to be driving."  Again, I'm rolling down the windows, blasting the radio and psyching myself up just to concentrate on driving.

By now you might be thinking, "What could she have possibly needed? She could have stayed home."

That answer would be MELATONIN.

Because God dammit, we would not be doing this TWICE.  We have too many times of that.  We have had weeks of that.  I thought some of that was actually getting better or we had come to some sort of middle ground where I accepted 5:45 as a wake up time and he thought that was his gift to us.

But I was not going back to 3:40 AM wake ups.  I can only speak for myself but at least I have home court advantage today.  My husband and my son are out in the world. I can at least vegetate on the couch and be a little spacey.  Husband has money to make and Kiddo has learning to do.

I've accepted I will never be fully and completely rested but you and I both know there are different levels of tired.  A two hour difference of sleep is huge.  We all can't function on that little sleep.  Physically or emotionally.  The ripple effect that deprivation has is just awful.

Here's hoping this sleep blip was just that or my future posts are going to get a Hell of a lot more punchy.