Running On Empty

Running on Empty by Chris Metcalf via flickr

It's been about a million years since I felt like I was full of energy. But lately, I'm really dragging. 

Somehow, I thought once Ellie was older (she turned nine last month) and needed less entertainment and active supervision, it would be easier. And it is, in some ways. I'm blessed with a kid who can happily spend hours with her nose in a book or playing with her Monster High dolls. (Yeah, I hate those dolls for so many reasons. But they're the big thing right now among third-grade girls, and somehow, even though I refuse to buy them for her, she has accumulated a handful.)

But nine-year-olds have a surprising amount of homework these days, way more than I remember having. (And I was nerdy enough to keep a diary of my math homework in third grade, so it's not just my faded memory that I'm comparing!) And supervising homework (which is mostly keeping her on task) is exhausting. 

She also has more activities that she needs shuttling between. Now that she's at public school, she goes to Hebrew school twice a week. She lacks self confidence in her math skills, so she now does Kumon twice a week. And she skates three times a week, but I don't do any of that shuttling.

It's funny -- I used to dread weekends because they exhausted me due to having my family home more hours and doing more with them. These days, the weekdays pile on each other and leave me hanging on by my fingernails, and weekends are good because I'm usually not in charge of anything.

I'm sure it doesn't help my fatigue levels that my thyroid is out of whack. Apparently, my body didn't like the switch from Levoxyl to Synthroid when the former was taken off the market, and a routine test last month showed my TSH level had skyrocketed from 1.0 six months earlier to 9.98. Tweaked the dosage after the results came back, and now I'm waiting to do another test next month to see if my hypothyroidism is back under control. But I've never really noticed an improvement in my energy levels when my thyroid levels are under control versus when they aren't. Maybe this time will be different -- I can only hope!

TGIF!