Everyone experiences a particular time of year that’s super expensive, like when your car rego is due at the same time as all your electricity and gas bills or when your cat eats an entire chop bone the same week as you have to buy Christmas presents. Mine is whenever I have an appointment to see my endocrinologist, not just because she’s expensive, but because every time I’ve had a blood test in the last few years, my GP is all, “Huh. Well that’s interesting!” because they find some new weird thing in my bloods, which really means, “Well now! That’s expensive!”

I call this time of year Junkie Chic, because I am so full of puncture wounds:

This year was meant to be a routine check up until I woke up from a nap a week ago with crippling pain in my ankles, wrists and elbows. Tests revealed Something Weird* I need a rheumatologist for as well as A New Familial Condition** that my endocrinologist needs to advise on.

The GP I saw today held one of my hands in both of his, softly patted them and said very cheerfully, “Lucky you have an endocrinologist appointment this week! Also, don’t have anything with high levels of calcium in it before Friday! That could be really dangerous for your heart! And if you have any concerns before Friday, make sure you see me right away! Good luck to you!”

I smiled, weakly, thinking about the delicious honey malt chocolate milk I chugged last night after some ice-cream. Sorry heart!

One thing I have learnt is that nothing is as it seems until the fat wallet of the doctor sings, so I’m not actually all that worried about any of it except the part where I can sleep for a million hours and still wake up tired and on the plus side, as if I don’t have the perfect excuse now to wear track pants and slippers all the time and grumble at people and walk really slowly!

* Official term
** Also official term

The nerdphew is getting a baby sister for Christmas and his parents were attending an all-day baby class on Saturday, so I offered to wrangle Short Stuff for the day.

It was mostly fine, V and I have been good buds for almost four years now. I found the best way to cheer him up in the morning when he was asking for his parents was to take him to a park underneath the Sydney Airport flight path so he could swing and watch planes, as well as mercilessly mocking his whispered, “I want my mum and dad”. Whispering back, “What? Who do you want? Mum and Dad? Oh well, too bad. Oh no, life is terrible!” soon had him laughing and ordering me around the playground like some kind of hired entertainer. Quick Julia! Come here and steer the spaceship to another planet! No Julia, get off my spaceship! Push my higher, Julia! Why are you too big for the slides, Julia?

*narrows eyes* Trolled by an almost four-year-old.

Afterwards we went to B’s place, which as it turns out, works well as a bachelor pad and a toddler day care! Strange that. We ate giant pancakes and played with trains and watched videos of planes taking off. Four-year-olds and 30-something-year-olds have very similar interests.

After some time at the park shooting hoops and racing around on a flying fox, we thought V might like a swim, but the week before he had an accident with a door, a toenail and a tantrum and so was very precious about getting his foot wet and even more precious about getting his tender, pale baby skin in the sun, so B constructed him a sun hut, in which he could sit and order us around:

Look at that face. That’s a face that knows it can get exactly what it wants, when it wants it.

B had to leave and hang out with people his own age, so V and I settled in to watch a Thomas the Tank Engine movie staring Alec Baldwin and eat the chippies B cooked for us. I have similar interests to a four-year-old in that regard.

All too soon it was time to pick Mary and Drew up, which I thought would be incentive enough for V to make yet another pleasant car ride with me, listening to Playschool. Instead he decided to be a right Mucklebird (Mucklebird!) and undo his seatbelt while we were driving, constantly howl about how far away his parents were and at one heartbreaking stage, scrunch his nose up and fold his arms and tell me we were no longer friends. “I never even wanted to be your friend! I’m so telling your mum on you anyway, so shut up!” I yelled, before bursting into tears and handing him the wheel.

After handing him back to those who spawned him, we all gathered to have some dinner, during which V displayed no interest in eating, yet immediately after which I found him outside trying to eat a bowl of lamb … printed on a poster:

What a Chucklebird!

So would I do it again? Sure … in about 8 years when my energy levels have recovered!

I have not been sleeping well since Anna went to America. Neither has Wuz.

I believe this is a combination of missing Anna and now being the first bedroom port of call for burglars whether they break in through the front or back door. That’s a lot of responsibility to shoulder.

This means that by day, I am one 31-year-old lump of tired and if any of my joints move to an angle which my limbs can even vaguely construe as horizontal, I fall asleep. At night; however, I fall into bed exhausted and then lie wide awake, eyes glowing in the dark for hours.

Because The Wuz knows I am Queen of the Pack, when I am awake, she is awake and if I am awake, she knows her chances of pats are exponentially higher than when I am asleep and much more likely to accidentally kick her off the bed and when she thinks she might get pats, she purrs and when she purrs, she drools and so if you times the amount of hours I’m not sleeping with the amount of drool she can produce in the same number of hours, there’s been huge puddles of drool in my bed every night.

It’s been gross.

Last night though, I had a reasonable sleep. I enjoyed some Oryx and Crake and took a melatonin and slowly drifted off to the sound of The Wuz’s face motor and the steady drip of her tongue.

The difference a little sleep has made to my mood has been amazing!

How happily I took bathroom breaks today! How many conversations I started over the communal cookie jars at work! How enthusiastic I am about my deskmate’s outfit! How many jokes about turning things off and on I made with IT! What a slow-burn of a Roxette joke I created!

Sleep! We need it, we need it for fun and for dancing and for jokes.