I really need to take a nap.

Two plastic cups of soapy bubble bath sit on the edge of the tub. Each represents a culinary delight created to dazzle. It’s the dessert round and both contestants have chosen to make cookies. Barbie’s frothy concoction was a hit with the judges. Now is the big reveal. Who will be going home? “Donald Trump – you’ve been chopped.”

I’m sitting on the bathroom floor flipping through a magazine when I hear this. I do a double take and my heart sinks a little.  I’ve obviously been watching too much Food Network but the part that really stings is Trump has infiltrated my daughter’s imagination. He’s now become one of the rotating characters in her pretend play repertoire.

If only he could be relegated to bath time baking competitions, sent back to the world of reality TV. It seems fitting that this is the fantasy my daughter has concocted because the hybrid of real and fake found in those “non-fiction” formats feels more and more like every day life. I’ve long stopped hoping it was all just an elaborate performance art piece of Shia LaBeouf or Joaquin Phoenix proportions. Like James Franco at the Oscars – we’re all Ann Hathaway being forced to pretend this is normal yet acutely aware that one person is trying to tear down our norms and crash the system. But the show must go on.

Like many people my brain is having a hard time reconciling all of this. It’s coupled with intense sleep deprivation. Partially that general slow creeping dread all of us are feeling, but also because I have a six month old who refuses to sleep. I wake up every morning looking less rested than I did the night before.

Reading the Washington Post and NY Times in the middle of the night, checking twitter to see what crazy thing our president has said at 3am is not helping of course. But somehow I can’t bring myself to go back to reading blogs about cute crafts you can make using washi tape. I am so far down the rabbit hole I have no idea how to get out.

I’ve been here before - the beginning of sleep training, when you don’t know if you are going to survive it. I just want someone else to tell me what to do. Which is what my whole life has turned into. Too tired to make my own decisions, just being led around by others. I feel that way at work, at home and the whole world feels at the mercy of childish petulance.

I really need to take a nap.