ZZZZZZZ

"I have never met someone like you. You absolutely shut down whenever you are tired or hungry."

WG has said these words to me more times than I'd like to county, but he's right. My brain ceases to function when I am tired or hungry. I can function under stress (what I cannot do is maintain the image of complete control just so he doen't get stressed because I'm stressed), but throw in a bit of exhaustion or a tinge of hunger, and you have one interesting mess on your hands.

I've complained about it for years. Honestly, I have. My tongue gets twisty, my words stop making sense, and I simply cannot process what you are telling me. It's obnoxious. It also makes quite the dent in my whole "I'm a smart woman" image, when I so frequently am bumbling and stumbling and making no sense at all.

My new solution (we'll see how this works) is, uhm...three fold.

1) I will try to get enough sleep (thus taking the "tired" part out of the equation)
2) I will actually eat enough (Mama, I eat, but clearly, I'm missing something in my diet), and I will pop a few nuts or a sliver of cheese in my mouth when I know I'll be dealing with people for an extended period of time before I can have a proper meal
3) I will not DWELL on my exhaustion and hunger. If I don't think about it, I won't notice it as much. Denial is not ALWAYS a bad thing.

But the real point of this is not to figure out how to fix my problems (contrary to the first 259 words of this post).

The point my friends? It HAPPENS. TO. HIM. TOO. Now, the hunger and stupidity connection? I think that's predominantly a female issue, but exhaustion? Well, let's just say that when I picked him up at the airport on Sunday morning, WG had essentially not slept in two days. There was just too much do to! There were people to see! Talking must be done! Oh, and poker! And, uhm....whatever else they do in Oklahoma.

So, when I fetched him, he was pretty much a walking zombie. He told me, at a rapid pace, about the three different kinds of breakfast offered on the plane. Twice, he told me this, in the ten minutes it took to get from baggage claim to the car.

But midway through a conversation on the smooth, flat road back, he was out.

As soon as he got into my apartment, he just dropped his keys, wallet and cell phone on the table, barely got his shoes off, and collapsed, fully clothed, on top of the covers, and didn't get up again for five and a half hours.

I napped alongside him for a bit, but mostly, he just conked out across the bed. He was dead to the world. And the cat was sound asleep in my closet.

My boys had a napping day. I read. I jogged. I sat on my balcony to breathe the fresh air and soak up the sunshine (wearing my SPF 50, of course).

Eventually, he stumbled out from the bedroom, with his face and his hair all swirly and whirly from sleep.

And he was too cute for me to say, "I told you so."