I am so tired lately. A stupid combination of going to bed far too late and getting up too early. I almost always have work left to finish up in the evening because it can’t all get done during the day, and by the time I finish I should go to bed to get a good night’s sleep, but I need that time to unwind – time to watch TV, drink some tea, check out Flickr, catch up on blogs, just time for me. Then I lose track of time and next thing I know I have six hours – if I’m lucky – to sleep before my alarm wakes me up at 6:30 the next morning.

Even now, I should be in bed but I just really wanted to update so I’m sitting here feeling like I might pass out into a dead sleep for two straight days. Eventually I will be unable to stay up and there will come a night where I’ll be exhausted and fall asleep at 10 pm and I’ll feel better, and ready to start the cycle again. Being a night owl is great sometimes but it gets complicated when you have kids and early mornings.

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I’ve been reading Wicked and really enjoying it but I’ve now gone three days without even picking it up. I need to carve out some time to read. I still have two more books sitting and waiting for my attention, and then I have several Amazon.com gift certificates waiting for me to order some more books.

I wish I still read like I used to as a teenager.

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The weather was nuts here today. Ice and slush and water all over the roads and sidewalks, followed by a weather warning for high winds (we sure got those) and a warning for flash freezing, which would be a joy with all the liquid on the ground ready to turn to solid ice. When I took Hayley to school this morning, I refused to let her walk through the school yard to go in her usual door because it was a sheet of ice covered in a river of water. Instead, I took her in the front door (where we both nearly fell in the slippery driveway) and took her to the office. The receptionist was more than willing to let us sit on the bench in the hall until the bell rang, and then Hayley wandered off to class.

The wind is still blasting. Between the rattling windows and the shaking exhaust fan over the stove, it’s really noisy in here.

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Two young children were found frozen to death out West. The Prairies have been dealing with bitter cold – lately it’s been about -30C (-22F) with the wind chill making it feel like -50C (-58F) out that way. The girls, ages 3 and 1, were found in just t-shirts and diapers out in the snow, somewhere between their own house and a neighbor’s house. Their father was picked up for severe hypothermia in the wee hours and was unable to talk for about eight hours, at which point he asked where his daughters were. By then, at those temperatures, it was far too late. There was alcohol involved on the father’s part and charges may be laid against him pending investigations.

The story is here. When it was on the 11 pm news before, I sat and bawled through the segment, then resisted the urge to wake my girls up just so I could hold them.

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Flickr is calling me. Photography web sites are calling me. But I think my bed is calling loudest. I’d better get some sleep so I have a little energy to deal with dragging Hayley out of bed to get ready for school tomorrow – it never ceases to amaze me that the same girl who can get up at 7 am on a weekend and be full of life can be so damn stubborn about getting up a half hour earlier during the week, even though she loves school. Maybe I should start putting her to bed a half hour earlier, even if it’s a bit rushed in the evening that way.

And maybe then *I* could get my ass to bed a half hour earlier too!