Tired

I'm mentally and physically tired.
I seem to be like this all of the time.
I blame many things.
The weather.
The media.
The brownies.
The cancer.

Let me start with the weather.
It's been stated this week that the NOAA declared that this winter is the 4th warmest winter in recorded US history.  I agree.  It's been a very weak winter in Illinois.  We did not have to get our snow blower out of the garage once.  Just a few times of shoveling small increments of snow from the house to the garage.  That's it.  But it's still been cold here.  And windy.  It may be the 4th warmest winter in recorded US history, but I sure as hell couldn't sit out on my front porch with a glass of iced tea in January.  Being cold means we are in the house and that's boring.  I can only think of so many things to do inside.  Watching the cat get scared by the package of toilet paper that has been sitting in the hallway for 2 weeks only gives you the giggles for 3 minutes.  Then what?  This weather makes me tired. 

The media is next on my list.
I don't watch too much mainstream TV.  I don't follow the latest and hottest sitcoms or dramas (aside from Downton Abbey, but that's on PBS and we love PBS and it's not always a channel people rush to turn on, so it's not the same...okay, moving on) unless someone I went to college with happens to be in an episode.  Then I'm all about that one episode.  I used to watch the Today Show, but that's turned to crap so I don't watch much anymore.  I do try to watch a few political shows now and then.  I like Hardball, but the endless talk of Newt and Rush and Mitt and Barack and every other man in a suit who thinks he's smarter and wittier and more cerebral than the next just drains my soul of everything it's got.  I try to watch the NBC Nightly News sometimes just to get to the "feel good" piece at the end of the episode so I realize there is an ounce of humanity left in this world.  To know people do care about each other.  But there's always more bad than good in the news. 

There's this Joseph Kony guy in Uganda who is just as bad as Milosevic or Hitler ever were and we, the good people of the world, have been asked to help spread the word about him so others can see how horrible he is to children and families and to put pressure on world leaders to eradicate him from the picture.  

I just read a book called "Little Princes" by Conor Grennan about child trafficking in Nepal that was heartbreaking.  Children are literally sold by their parents to some horrible people and the children become slaves and beggars all the while thinking their parents are dead, but their parents think they have given the children up for a better life in the big cities.  Conor Grennan is fighting to get these children back with their families.  

The interent is full of stuff about how little money goes to fight children's cancer and it seems like I should do something, but it's so overwhelming.  I try in small ways to get the word out, but do people really care unless it's happened to them?   
It's all too much.  
I don't want to be out of the loop with what's going on in the world. 
I do want to know, but it's exhausting on the spirit.   
The hate.
The anger.
The violations.
The fraud.
The sadness.
The media makes me tired.

The brownies don't really make me tired.  They just make my butt fatter than I would like.
But this Pinterest crap makes me tired.  It has sucked me in and sure, I pin all sorts of stuff about working my abs or my thighs with 50 jumping jacks and 12 squats and then pin a salad, but I'm really just eating brownies.  I hope the rest of you are doing this or I'm really going to feel like a schmuck. 

Then there's the cancer.  The cancer makes me more tired than anything. 
I can't imagine how tired Zoe is WITH the cancer because I'm tired just from watching her and helping her with the cancer. 
The pills.
The doctor visits.
The worrying.
The fevers.
The worrying.
The worrying.
The worrying.
All I do is worry. 
About what damage the cancer is doing to her.
About what damage the drugs are doing to her.
About what damage the radiation is doing to her.
I worry about how Jake's death has really affected her.
She doesn't let us talk much about him.
I worry about Gigi getting the cancer, too.
I worry about Zoe getting a different cancer from the drugs that are supposed to be curing her of her current cancer.
It's been 18 months of worry and sleepless nights and heartache and we aren't done yet.
We will never be done worrying.
And it makes me so tired.    
  

 I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it.

~Jack Handey