I have been so tired the past couple of weeks. I’m sleeping better and through the night (mad props to the Melatonin supplements I’ve tried) but I’m going to bed earlier, getting up earlier, and just generally feeling like my schedule is off.

It reminds me of the summer between my junior and senior year in college. My junior year I was struggling with Organic Chemistry and really heading high speed towards failing it. Rather than risk it (actually there was no risk, I was going to fail this course), I withdrew, which meant I had to take it in summer school.

This totally screwed my summer plans. I was going to work as a 4-H camp counselor for the third year in a row, hang out with all my friends driving around West Virginia, working during the week, and partying in Morgantown on the weekends.

Instead, I lived at home in Charleston and got a job as an orderly in a hospital working the overnight shift! It was AWFUL. But the pay was good and I got a nice salary differential for working nights.

Between calls to roll patients over, move patients from room to room, lift heavy things, and clean up some of the more bizarre things I’ve ever seen, I would sneak off to stairwells or storage closets to memorize chemical reaction notecards.

I would come off of a 12 hour shift and have just enough time to rush home, shower, and change clothes before my ride picked me up to drive the hour from my house in Charleston to my class in Huntington. My friend Jodie drove to class so I could sleep, and I’d pitch in and drive home…sometimes.

And every day that summer, my mom would get up when she heard me get home from my shift, go down to the kitchen, and make muffins. Each morning she made some kind of homemade muffins. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t just make them the night before and sleep in. Now I realize it was probably because she knew how much I was struggling that summer with work and class and this was something she could do to support me. It was her time to check in, ask me about work, ask me about class, and make sure Jodie and I got out of there on time every day and didn’t skip breakfast. (I have always hated breakfast).

I remember her standing at the door, waiting for the muffin hand off, so I could run out the door and get on the road. I don’t know about Jodie, but to this day, muffins make me think of that summer and my mom waking up every day and never complaining about it.

(AND to this day, I eat anything except muffins. Carbs aside, a whole summer of muffins, people, is a LOT of muffins.)