Tuckered Out

It’s not as though I collapsed in an exhaustive heap on the sidewalk. Or succumbed to the heat with full dramatics that included the back of my hand resting delicately on my forehead, precipitating an elegant swoon to the ground. I didn’t make a nuisance of myself or draw attention to my somnolent status or in any way negatively effect the Energizer Bunny vigor of my offspring. I didn’t even bewilder those around me with any type of temper tantrum usually associated with and perpetuated by fatigue.

It was just a continued state of being I found myself in, a sustained frame of mind, an overall persistent feeling, that started with that first asphalt hill scaled at Magic Kingdom and ended six days later with the great mass of land explored at Epcot.

The irony of my weary condition is that I consider myself in reasonably good shape. I work out pretty consistently, and pay sensible attention to nutritional intake, minus the occasional scoop of ice cream or cup of caramel latte, both of which, I feel I must point out, contain enough calcium to count. It is important to look after your skeleton like that.

But the weariness that settled into my almost forty year old body that first day, which was only exacerbated by the addition of sixty more hours in the parks, surprised even me. The tiredness could be felt deep in the flexible tissue found in the hollow interior of my bones. My right leg was occasionally numb from all of the walking, and my left leg aggressively rebelled by lazily dragging behind the right. The hunchback of Notre Dame could not have done a better impression himself, inspiring my spouse to call me Quasimodo for the duration of our trip.

Thievery has never been a consideration before, but I reluctantly admit to occasionally eyeing the scooters of the elderly and of those infirmed, trying to figure a manner in which to momentarily “borrow” their transportation as it sat parked in all of its tempting glory. I managed to get close enough to one to observe that it had dual speed controls – an added delight for those wanting to outrun the double strollers – until the evil eye my husband shot in my direction caused me to reconsider my waywardness. Such a party pooper.

While there is not photo document proof of my exhaustion, I was able to succinctly summarize the way our bodies felt at the end of each day with the following photo tutorial. Each occasion brought us so much joy, allowing us to temporarily forget that we felt precisely the same way.

These pictures of Chandler were taken during a twenty minute bus ride from Animal Kingdom to our hotel.







Mary Mac decides that her legs no longer function. John ended up doing the same thing thirty minutes later:



This is sleep so sudden and so sound that Chase forgets to straighten his legs:


After a particularly long day that began at 7:00 am and then ended at 10:30 pm, Mary Mac sweetly asked her dad for the room key as we rode in the elevator of our hotel. The doors slowly opened, and our five year old used the last bit of energy left and hauled tail 35 yards down the hallway, opened the hotel door with the room key, dropped the key in the hallway for her family to use, and then entered the room. We arrived fifteen seconds later and found this: