Ode to a Wilted Southern Flower

I’m struggling today. I feel like one of my little red petunias in my porch planter that has wilted in this horrid NC heat wave. It’s a struggle to bloom and be colorful when your leaves are dragging the ground, your earth is parched and cracked and the sun is beating you down. Not even the bees are attracted to your pollen.

Southern belles are never supposed to look wilted and weak. We are proud women who even in a heat wave sip our sweet iced tea and fan ourselves with big cartwheel hats while saying things like “fiddle dee dee” and “bless your heart.” (Okay, I don’t say the first one but I do say the second). We serve up fried chicken, grit casserole and coleslaw in the blink of an eye and always have some type of pie and casserole fixings on hand for emergency rations (new neighbors, babies, funerals). We are garden warriors, over the fence rail gossipers, flower mavens, and manipulative maidens disguised as sweet maple syrup and fresh honey. We do not WILT or fail.

My southern belle card is going to be revoked soon. I can feel it. I’m still not sleeping. I do not know what the deal is. Besides being up 20 times last night to relieve my bladder and intestines (oh what, I said we were polite in the South, I didn’t say we didn’t blab about our bodily functions on the internet!) I lay there all night, tossing and turning, uncomfortable and mad. I’m mad at the world today. I woke up that way this morning. I was ticked off at the alarm clock which went off a total of 5 times every 9 minutes before my husband woke up enough to sit up and turn it off. After the fourth time I threw the covers back and stomped to the dining room to take the dogs out. I was furious. I don’t even know why. The alarm did what it does every day, as did my husband. Nothing changed either of them. It was ME that was exhausted, ill and irate.

I worked out yesterday: walked and swam. I went to bed at the normal time with a glass of milk. I was tired from not sleeping the past few nights. By all standards, I SHOULD have slept last night. Oh nooooo, I apparently don’t follow logical standards. So today I’m alternating between being deliriously spastic and a walking zombie hugging my cup of green tea.

I’m not stressed or worried per say. I’m on a rather even and calm ground yesterday and today. I’m a little irritated as they scheduled my second interview for August 19th at 9am so I had to reschedule my ultrasound YET AGAIN to the 20th. My Dr’s office and my husband are getting irritated on having to work around my job. This is the second time I’ve rescheduled and just a few minutes ago the meeting for the 18th got cancelled so if I had never started rescheduling, I would have been fine. Very frustrating, but yet none of that has any bearing on not sleeping last night or waking up ill as a hornet this morning as all of that happened AFTER the fact.

So here I am, irrationally ill, exhausted and deciding if I want more apple juice bad enough to stop by the store on the way home. Apple juice and I have become great friends this past week. ::ponders whether that may have something to do with my nighttime bathroom trips and sleeplessness:: I actually think I may choose apple juice over sleep. Interesting.