I knew that today was going to be trouble before it started. After all, my wife has been sick for a few days, and was going to need me to drive to the doctor for a mid-morning appointment. My sleep was to be curtailed.

Then the kid with the distant school missed the bus. I could complain that it was his fault, since he was playing a video game instead of watching out the front door; but then, I had fallen asleep on the couch and did not hear the six o’clock alarm that tells me he has five minutes to go. That meant that after getting the other kid on his bus I had to drive the first almost half an hour away. By the time I returned, there wasn’t much time for a nap, and I was going to have to get moving on my two hours of sleep–the hour from when I made it to bed after the late night delivery of my son back to his work address until my wife needed my help, and the hour from then until the five o’clock alarm.

That was bad; but I had already been forced to boot Tuesday’s work into today because because I’d booted Monday’s work into Tuesday and had that delivery run in the evening.

So it is not yet late, but it feels like it. Still, I am almost on top of the day, and with a bit more effort I’ll reach bedtime.

I do hope that the run-down feeling and body aches are due to this, and that I am not catching the horribly debilitating illness my wife is battling. I don’t want that.

–M. J. Young