Exhaustion + Pregnancy = Bad bad bad

The Fourth of July is a nice time to reflect on our freedoms, to light our hard earned money on fire and watch it explode, and to eat lard disguised as cupcakes. And, yes, I did all that.

The BEST part of any holiday is the family that collects like barnacles at my parents' house. Sadly, even though a good chunk of our family lives in Utah, unless we have a really, really good reason, we don't get together (We'll have to see if this changes when we move to Saratoga Springs....). So, Chris came in with his little family, Becky and Victor flew up, Missy et al drove the horribly long drive from eastern Provo, and Jenny, plus fam, hiked from the bottom of the hill to the top of the hill to make it to Mom and Dad's (Emily and Ben just had to hike up the stairs, for which I am completely and totally jealous.)

Now, in addition to the above mentioned necessaries, the other necessity is to stay up super late. No, not just 10 or 11 PM...like 2 AM or some other similar rotten time of day. And, for some silly reason, pregnant bodies don't like that. It seems a tad unfair since most of the time I have insomnia anyway. Plus, I don't just get tired...I get monstrously cranky. I think pregnancy crankiness is a dirty trick. You can't control it; you just have to wait for it to get bored and leave.

Well, I had one of those crankies and I mentioned it to Rebecca. She said something that stuck to my brain. She said that she used to get really mad about stuff, too, until Victor went into the hospital (If I am getting the story wrong, Becky, I am sorry. Chalk it up to my being slightly crazy.). All of the sudden, nothing else mattered except the relationship she had with her husband, their little nucleus, as she put it. After coming to that conclusion, nothing else mattered really.

"Nothing else matters," she smiled. She said she was happier and things didn't bother her as much anymore (wow, wouldn't that be nice??).

"Nothing else matters," I said to myself. "Okay."

So, I tried it.

Someone says something nasty? "Whatever...it doesn't matter...what matters is..."

Someone is not acting nicely? "Whatever...it doesn't matter...what matters is..."

It went really well! For a day.

THEN, I stayed up REALLY, REALLY late (I thought it was justifiable since the movie I watched was really, REALLY good!), and let me tell you...

The next day...

SNarL GROWL SnoRt ARRGGGHHHH!!!!

I kept trying to remind myself of what really mattered, and that lasted until Jeremy did "something" that bugged me (when you are tired, someone looking at you will bug you, don't you agree?), and then it was "THAT POOP HEAD! STUPID SNALPOIERJKPLKAJPLKJPLKJF GAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" And the WHOLE day was like that, ending with my accidentally exploding a gallon of milk on the kitchen floor. I looked at the glopping milk, and kept looking...closed the fridge, walked into my bedroom and went to bed. Poor, poor Jeremy. Saint Jeremy took it in stride, and cleaned up the giant puddle, put the kids in bed, mopped the kitchen and bathroom, did the dishes and some laundry, and his only regret, he told me later, was that he didn't get around to vacuuming. At some point as I lay catatonic in bed, Jeremy came in and kissed me on the cheek. Talk about knowing what matters...If Jeremy had spilled milk all over the kitchen floor and left it there I probably would have mopped the floor with HIM. Alas, yet another nasty result of the Exhaustion-Pregnancy Effect.

Still, I think Becky has it right. What really matters? What really matters is your family. Thank goodness I have been granted another day to try and remember what matters most in this world.