The big victory was that I finished writing Darwin & the Beast Collector.  I had a lot of trouble with the finale since I had Darwin leave the area a little too early.  That had to be fixed and then the ending had to be more solid.  Just don’t know how it came out because it doesn’t have a hard ending like most of my books.  It’s kind of a soft parting between the surviving characters.  No foreshadowing for the next adventure.  Just a ‘well, that adventure is over and now we go our separate ways’ type of thing.  I mean, it works for the characters, but my desire to be epic isn’t letting this go.  Guess we’ll see what happens when I edit it in a few years.

That was pretty much the only writing I could accomplish.  Never got to my notebooks or preparing any blog posts.  Parenting, work, and the ‘life event’ took all of the oxygen out of my lungs.  I was lucky enough to get to bed at a decent hour and sleep, which is getting better.  Still ended every day on the verge of collapse and didn’t bother touching any shows to relax.  Just ended every weekday crawling into bed around 10 PM, hooking myself to the CPAP, and passing out.

I think a big factor was Monday and Wednesday.  Some of our life skills students were helping out at evening events with our coffee cart.  They needed support, so me and the other life skills TA went back to help.  That meant I handed my son off to his mother, wolfed down Taco Bell (Monday) or leftover dumplings (Wednesday, and drove back to spend 2 hours a night with our students.  It was really one who helped out and he had such high energy after a long day.  No idea how he does it, but keeping up with him helped my energy levels.  Unfortunately, it meant I crashed when I got home.  7 hours of sleep wasn’t countering the high level of activity.

The week ended with a big field trip too.  I was out of it and fought to keep up, which took most of my energy.  All I had left was the power to drive to the sleep doctor and get checked out after being on CPAP for over a month.  Blood pressure is normal, apnea events are within normal human parameters, and the fatigue I feel is simply sleepiness instead of utter exhaustion.  Probably take a few more months before the fatigue issue improves.  Discussed me not being able to sleep within Zzzquil, but I can’t try to ween myself off that until holiday break.  That might be part of the drowsiness problem, but not a big one.

Another thing that put a damper on the weekend was that the ‘life event’ took a fairly big step forward.  At least, it did from my end.  It also let me get a bunch of pent up stuff out, which left me emotionally exhausted.  Still don’t like the situation and have very little control over it, but I may have gained a bit more of the reins this week.  Hard to say until the next ‘life event’ round.  I’m going to be spending the next two months getting my psyche’s bell rung though.  Fingers crossed that I make it through, which I probably will even if I’m a little chomped on.

This coming week is going to be similar to last week, but without the evening events.  I have to make it through 3 weeks before I get to a break.  Hanukkah starts on Thursday evening, so I have to wrap presents on Wednesday.  Next Sunday is the big latke celebration for my family too.  Feels like all of the holidays are rushing forward and the end of the year will strike before I know it.  Can’t think of anything else big going on after this weekend either, so maybe I’ll get some rest.

Tonight, I’m going with my family to see the holiday lights at the Bronx Zoo.  Been a member for about a decade and have never gone.  Usually, I can’t get tickets in time because the weekends get messed up.  So, I’m happy to finally go.  Means another late night and a late dinner, but it’s worth it.  Won’t post pictures of it until January 7th when it’s over.  Don’t want to spoil it and I already have the Sunday posts set, so I’m too lazy to move stuff around. I’ll have Sunday to rest up even though it will probably be a Pokemon Go day.  Depends on how we do with homework today, but it looks feasible.  Reminds me that I should finish an online course I started as well.  Should only have an hour of that to go.  Far too many little projects left that I need to tackle and finish off.

Goals of the week:

1. Wrap Hanukkah presents when son is not around.
2. Parenting as usual.
3. Get back to biking since this week was too crazy.
4. Finish online course.
5. Possibly start outline for Darwin & the Joy Path
6. Do a few February blog posts.
7. Really should finish that one character in ‘Phi Beta Files’.
8. Improve sleeping habits.
9. Probably have a life event thing that will turn up.
10. Enjoy the holiday lights tonight.