Sleeping Giant

This morning, while I was gone on a run, Spencer got out of bed and went to a friend's house for some early morning yoga. He and this friend have been intensely lifting weights and they decided to add yoga to the routine.
He came home and showered, screeching out the door to get to school on time.
He lifted weights after school and just got home.
"How'd the yoga thing go this morning?" I asked. Spencer isn't exactly a morning person.
He explained how they do "downward dog" and "plank." They do balance poses like "tree." "I fell asleep in 7th period study hall," he said.
"Really?"
"Yeah. I woke up 7 minutes after school got out."
I can picture him with his head on the formica desk, drool dripping from the edge of his mouth.
"Your friends and the teacher left you there asleep?" Earl asked.
"Yeah. They said they tried to wake me up. Then they just left."
As I was writing this, I realized that Tucker shares a study hall with Spencer. I called down the stairs to him.
"Hey, Tuck. Did you leave Spencer asleep in study hall?" I asked.
"Well, Joe tried to wake him up," Tucker said.
"So you just left? What if he'd had a heart attack or something? He could have been unconscious," I protested.
"Mom, it was obvious he was asleep with his face in his book," Tucker explained.
Now my vision changed from him lying with his head turned sideways on the desk, to him face down in his Calculus book. I feel pretty certain that it was his Calc book because that's what he has homework in tonight.
I'm not sure what the teacher's reaction was. Did she try to wake him up or did she give a shrug and close the door behind her? He did give her a hard time when she told them to sit in assigned seats. She might have given a little smile as she walked out the door, leaving a slumbering, and no longer protesting, Spencer asleep.
At least they didn't lock the door.

Exercising for Energy

The other day when I was kvetching to my friend Ruth about how tired I was, she said, "Isn't exercise supposed to give you energy?"
That stopped me. If exercise gives me energy, then I should be a whirling dervish. Instead, I wake up tired, catch a 20-minute nap when the day allows and move like I share joints with the Tin Man on the Wizard of Oz.
Most exercise gives people extra energy, it's true. But not my kind of exercise. This summer, I decided to follow the marathon training schedule. That means I ran 10 miles on Saturday.
Creak, creak, creak -- those are my joints as I pull myself out of a chair.
Now, let me be clear, as I have to everyone who asks, including the 20-year-old guy at the running shoe store and the young lady at Starbucks, I do not plan to run the marathon this fall. Running the marathon was the most miserable I have ever been. But, I decided I wanted to get in good shape this summer, and training for the marathon seemed like the way to do it.
Maybe if I got up at 5:30 and ran 5 miles before going to work, like today, then I wouldn't be so exhausted.
Twing, twang, that's the achilles tendon in my left foot when I hobble down the stairs.
But after I ran, I did about a 45-minute core exercise from P90X. Grace and I have been doing this together all summer, but she wouldn't get out of bed this morning.
Jab, jab. That's the shooting pain from shin splints shooting up the front of my legs.
And somedays, when the heat index isn't 100, I might hop on my bike and ride the half hour to work in the morning and back again in the afternoon.
My goal is to get in really good shape. I don't weigh myself and stress about numbers. I determine if I look good and if my clothes fit well. I'm pumped about the number of miles I can run without collapsing or begging my friends to walk.
But maybe the exhaustion is not the fault of the exercising. Maybe I need to go to bed at 10 like I did during the school year. In bed at 10, up at 5:30 -- 7 and a half hours of sleep seems like a good amount.
Instead, most nights, I drag myself to bed around 11 after Tucker gets home and then when Grace or Spencer gets home they come in to kiss me goodnight and tell me about their evenings. Then I may wake up when Earl gets home from work at 12 or 12:30 or 1 a.m. and again when he comes to bed at 2 or 3 a.m.
Last night around 3:15, Spencer wandered into the bedroom and asked whether he could have a pillow because he fell asleep on the couch and didn't want to go to his bed. I woke up Earl and took his extra pillow. Then I felt guilty and got up to get Earl an extra pillow.
At 5:30 the alarm went off and I started over again.
So maybe, it's not exercise making me tired. Maybe it's lack of sleep.
How about you? Does exercising give you energy?

Comings and Goings

Last night at my house was like Gare de Lyon on a holiday weekend.
I'm not talking about the evening when I pulled into the garage at 4:30 and Tucker hopped in the car with his guitar so I could drop him off at band practice. Or the fact that when I returned home Spencer was there for a brief while before he sped off to work.
I'm talking night time, when most families are sleeping.
I went to bed at 10. I'd been up since 5 a.m., ran three miles, taught from 7 to 4, planned my class for the next day then baked an oatmeal cake. I was exhausted.
A little after 10, Tucker appeared beside my bed for a goodnight kiss. At 10:45, I bolted out of bed and stood in the kitchen. Spencer was home from work.
"Go to bed," I mumbled as I staggered back to my bed.
Sometime later, Grace left for a midnight showing of the new Pirates of the Caribbean and Earl arrived home from work.
At 12:20 a.m., my phone rang. "Grace" read the glowing screen.
"Hello? Hello!" I groggily muttered into the phone.
No answer. Just the sound of the movie playing in the background.
She must have butt dialed me.
I staggered into the living room and saw Earl watching TV. I held up my phone in explanation and then plugged it in to charge -- away from the bed.
Earl came to bed at some point but didn't wake me. At 3 a.m., I heard the backdoor open and Grace came in to kiss me goodnight.
I didn't ask how the movie was. I felt more exhausted from my night of no sleep.
"Did you lock the back door?" I asked.
Then she got ready for bed, her light on, the bathroom light on. The cats wandering around, unable to settle down.
"Grace, go to bed," I called.
"I am," she said, and turned off the light, before flipping it back on.
Finally, everyone in the house was asleep.
My eyes shot open. The cat was chewing on the computer cord. I could hear him rubbing against the velcro cord holder.
"Tybalt," I hissed.
He left the cord and jumped onto the bed, pacing up and down until I got out of bed.
5:07 a.m.
Time to catch a train.