why daddy drinks
Mer has her own story of recent events in our house, but I have a few extra impressions from my side of things:
Monday night (my night): baby wakes up at 5. Not a good omen. Doable, but makes you grumpy, especially when you're spoiled by being used to said baby sleeping through the night.
Tuesday evening: watch Batman Begins. Good movie, but images of Scarecrow character are dim harbingers of what is about to befall us. Nightmare imagery cuts too close to home.
Tuesday night (her night): baby wakes up at 3. This is really starting to suck. At least baby is still generally happy, although signs of trouble are increasing. Coworkers are starting to notice hangdog expression, irritability, and impressions of computer keys on face. This would be a problem if other departments weren't more dysfunctional.
Wednesday evening: Sense of fear and trepidation pervades evening. Bad craziness.
Wednesday night (my night): aforementioned scene of horror, screaming and sleeplessness. Entertaining thoughts of jumping off bridges. Explain to wife that posting embarrassing pictures of baby boy on Internet does not even begin to compensate for what is befalling us now. Images of wife coming home, finding husband in puddle of booze and urine becoming more prevalent.
Thursday morning: both of us awakened by baby boy promptly somewhere between 7 and 7:30 AM, his normal time for greeting the morning with talking, singing and shouting. Changing of diaper reveals a stunning collection of little poo nuggets. Feeding goes uneventfully. Boy is laughing and happy, which actually makes my mood worse. During the 15 minutes it takes to shuffle from living room to bedroom, there are many reflections on where I went wrong -- how I came to this pass where I am considering committing seppuku with one of L's noisier, more annoying toys.
After a shower, am just barely functional (but, as here, favoring weird sentence structure), but dreading drive to work.
It's not as bad as when L was just a newborn -- between the round-the-clock shifts, mood swings, colicky baby, and M's mom as roommate, there were a couple times where I could actually feel my mind begin to slip away from me, which is a scary thing -- but L is on my bad side. He's grounded an extra day when he's 16.