Worn OUT.

Piper and I are in Michigan, kickin' it in the suburbs of Detroit for a couple of weeks. Well, more accurately, we have been here for a week and have one more to go.

And I am so TIRED.

I am always tired when I stay at my parents' house. Something about this place sucks all the energy out of me. I am always dehydrated; my sleep is restless; I wake feeling as though I were dragged behind a truck. Piper seems to be feeling it, too; the purple circles under her little eyes are growing larger every day, no matter what time she finally succumbs to exhaustion and tumbles into bed.

The trip (or maybe it's just the house) seems to be having some odd effects. As the days go on, she is getting more and more possesive of me, but it seems to be only at my parents' house. When we are out somewhere, she's okay exploring and wandering around, but when we're here, she freaks out if I leave the room. Yesterday I went to use the first floor bathroom - which is located not ten feet from where she was watching Yo Gabba Gabba! - and she freaked out, came running, and screamed "Mommy! Mommy!" while pounding on the bathroom door until I opened it and let her in.

We worked on potty-training before the trip and have kept it up during, but she has a very high number of accidents when we are at my parents' house. Since we've been here, I took her on a 3-hour jaunt to Ikea, an all-day excursion to my in-laws' house (complete with an hour-long car ride there and two-hour ride back), an all-afternoon trip up to Troy (1.5 hours each way because of #@!@#!$ traffic), and an afternoon play date at a friend's house. She remained dry throughout all the excursions. The only problem we've had was when I took her to the park, and that was my bad - 45 minutes of playing outside where there's no bathroom is just asking for trouble. But here at the house, she has managed to pee on the livng-room carpet at least a dozen times. I don't get it.

It's been nice to have this little trip - the closest thing I've had to a vacation in a loooong time - but I think Piper is ready to go home. I'm getting there, too - no matter how many days I stay when we come here, there's never enough time to go everywhere and do everything I want to do. And usually I can get a lot of the people to come out here to the house, but for some reason this time they all want me to come to them, which has meant a lot of running around. It is making me sort of sad and bitter about our life in Charlotte (well, more sad and bitter, anyway) because it seems so empty compared to all this. I have friends here who want to spend time with me, things to go and do, places to walk around and playmates for Piper. We have none of that in Charlotte, and as much as I miss Ryan and my little house and the rhythm of my days alone with Piper, it is also like a very peculiar version of solitary confinement. I guess I am feeling a bit wistful about the life we could've had here but didn't. We did try, but the pieces just didn't fall into place.

Or maybe I'm annoyed that despite my parents' sweet digital cable setup, I have not managed to get up and catch my morning re-runs of The West Wing even once.