Outrageously funny and suddenly sad, then full, like a stone

Tiredness is such a funny thing, does funny things.

So the other night I had 21/2 hours sleep. I stayed up till 4.30 – why? Unexpectedly, possibly unnecessarily, but it just happened, the hours slid away and before I knew it it was 4.30. (I had been working, only so late because I’d procrastinated all week – oh well been busy with more interesting things, and it was suddenly due, even though it was only meant to be a little parcel of work, something that someone more focused than me could have done in a focused couple of hours and tidy couple of pages, but for me stretched out to about 6 of both. And partly because I was happy to be interrupted and had some great big picture convos with LM when she got home late from hospital after having dinner and a lovely quiet evening with her other half and the little one-tenth, and needed to process and say ‘wow’ and such like. We had great chats, and I did good work stuff, and then the phone rang and it was MMG needing some back up help as bub discovered his lungs and changed his feeding pattern and thought it would be cool to just eat for hours on end and not sleep and then scream.
So after that it was 4.30 and I hopped into bed to be woken at 6.45 by my mum calling - as planned, the day before in a different universe and she would have needed to call pre early start at hospital, in a different universe where LM wasn’t already at the hospital, and I wasn’t so tired. Poor thing, she was being only accommodating, offering to drive half way across metro Brisbane with a toddler, just so we could see each other for an hour or two, but because I was tired I got teary, just sniffly, for no good reason other than I couldn’t quite follow any plan details. And then I felt very very cold and hungry and had to eat baked beans.

So I lined up the rest of my day, those last precious hours, and got to the hospital and had a lovely goodbye chat with MMG, and a last cuddle of bub and a quick holiday slideshow. I was so happy by now, just happy happy happy. It was sad to say good bye but I was feeling really good about having had the chance to go, and about how well they seem to be doing, even with a hard night behind them, and excited at all all the cool things yet to come. Then over to see mum, met near the airport for a quick lunch before my flight.

So there was my little brother, only 3 years old, a blondie, cheeky and taller than I remembered and grinning and obsessed with sticks, and dragging a particularly long one that he’d found in the garden, and mum having to explain firmly that no, he couldn’t take it into the café because it was dangerous, but that if he wanted to hide it in the garden bed he could get it on the way back. So a whirlwind lunch and then off to the airport together with me thinking ‘oh shit. I am now very likely to miss this plane’, as we counted back in minutes and banked on short queues and nice staff to let me still check in, and I felt like in fact, it didn’t really matter at all, I could miss the plane and I just didn’t care because it would mean more time with them and anyway, that’s what credit cards are for, and anyway, my next flight for work later in the day was scheduled with 3 hours buffer for catching up on work at the airport (or browsing in bookshops – whatever pans out) and so I could run a little late and still make it. Mum was maybe more concerned than me, but I felt fine, still just happy, not stressed, no extra energy for mustering up anxiety. Then we get there and the flight is cancelled! Moved to an hour later, so we get to have coffee and be silly and for bub to run around and bounce up and down a little, and stare at aeroplanes out the window. And I’m writing this now, from a peaceful and slightly more rested state so I can barely conjure up the feelings, but I was so tired it felt like I could cry or laugh at any prompt, just the slightest provocation. Mostly I laughed, so that was good, although verging on a little strange. For example, bro wandered around in a few metre radius of our table, just doing his thing, checking things out, circling to see different views, check out people and… help himself to wedges off the plate that someone had just left a table behind us. I saw him and instead of casually getting up and saying ‘oh sweetie, don’t eat other people’s food’ or whatever sensible responsible and appropriate thing you are meant to say (probably not – ‘yah rock on, you eat that up, it’ll only go to landfill and make methane otherwise’ probably isn’t socially acceptable) but instead I just laugh and gesture to mum and keep laughing, uncontrollably, crying and say ‘he’s like a seagull!!!’ as tears stream from my face. We get the giggles several more times before we have to say goodbye, I hop on the plane and sleep, asleep deeply before we even leave the ground, and awake only minutes before we dive for the ground.

It felt like somehow the act of sleeping pads out the emotional cells of your brain, each one is usualy buffered by reserves given in sleep, and without these, these buffers shrunk, one becomes more exposed, more susceptible to stimuli, and an emotional response is there, at the surface, ready to come out at the slightest provocation.

Now after sleep, I am peaceful and quiet. My mind is still. Like the eskimoes* with their words for snow* I am wondering now about a typology for peacefulness, for contented feelings. This one is stone like – when you feel contained, and rounded and smooth like a pebble, as unperturbed, as unhurried, as calmly dreamless as a pebble.

* I know this isn’t what these people are called, but the saying seems to need that word. And I know they don’t make ice cream pies.
**has anyone actually heard them? Is this an urban myth made up by early colonialists, or true, actually true like the snow itself?