35 weeks. Are we there yet Poppa smurf?

I am soooo tired.

My ribs hurt. No, my ribs are burning. I can visualize my muscles pulling off my ribs I think. That must be what's happening.

And my brain is full.

Seth had 'itches on his legs' last night (aka bugbites), which kept him up, which kept me up. He crawled into our bed and could barely keep still for the scratching. He has a bugbite issue. They seem to zone in on him and eat him up ten times more than the other kids. And then he swells up like a balloon, much more so than my other two. The swelling isn't nearly as bad this year actually, he may just grow out of this yet, but the itching seems as severe as usual for him. It was torturous (although I'm sure more so for him than me really). I had had the worst time getting to sleep in the first place, my mind reeling with gallery thoughts, compounded with middle-of-the-night panic of knowing I had a big day coming up and I really needed to just sleep! So Seth is panicking and scratching and I'm panicking about the sleep I'm not getting and trying to wake Troy up to give poor Seth some sympathy and perhaps a cool cloth and some of the pink 'anti-itch' lotion, maybe we should even dig out the Benydryl? Now Troy is great at a lot of things, but waking from a deep sleep is not one of his assets. It was one of those situations where I realized in hindsight today it would have been a lot smarter, quicker, and less stressful to just get up myself.

I knew today was going to be an exhausting day for me in the best of circumstances, I was teaching art workshops all day at the elementary school for the gallery, something a little out of my norm that I felt a strong need to be well rested for! On a side note, how do you teachers survive bad days? You can't be just genuinely well-prepared every day? Being a newbie at the teaching thing, I felt like the kids would eat me up if I wasn't in top form, so I stayed up really perfecting the lesson plan and then ended up sleep-deprived anyway.

The workshops were really awesome actually, but were also as exhausting as I assumed it would be at 8 months pregnant. The kids were so great and inspiring though, really seeming to soak up what I had to show them and immerse themselves in their art. So worth the effort. We did mosaics based on the work of Jane Perkins (check out her portfolio at Blue Bower Bird) and discussed the theme of "Rejuvenation", the title of our current exhibition at the gallery, expanding it to discuss examples of artists taking the everyday and giving it new life. I bet at least some of those kids now know who Marcel DuChamp is and what his bicycle wheel did for the path of art!

The gallery has been encompassing all of my thoughts lately. Sleep is getting to be a very difficult thing to begin with, just getting comfortable enough, and thoughts of the loose ends I need to tie up at the gallery are proving impossible to turn off at night. I need to hand my newly beloved gallery over for the year for my maternity leave - eeek - at the end of next week! While I fully realize maternity leave is certainly what I want for me and baby, I feel like I have so many want to-do's, need to-do's, should do's at the gallery... panicking... need to breathe deeply. Aghh...

So today, after I finished up the school day of art workshops, Thane and I picked up groceries and then Seth and Claire from the sitters. We wound our way home in the heat, where I promptly crashed on the couch, convincing Thane to put away the frozen goods. (Again, I can't decide if oldest children get none of the breaks or just all of the life training.) As I struggled to stay coherently aware of where Claire was and what she was getting her popsicle on (so I could remember to wash it when the will to exist returned to me), Troy called and said he wouldn't be home for at least another hour.

At that point, supper for these three became whatever they could scour from the groceries that remained unpacked on the kitchen floor.

It's a good thing they're a pretty self-sufficient trio.