Raise your hand if you need a nap. Doesn’t that sound glorious?
We work hard, we have tasks and chores at home, we run around doing errands and keeping up with our social lives … it’s exhausting.
Little kids are encouraged to take daily naps, but when it’s time to go schluffy, they fight it. They’re way too young to realize what a privilege it is to be required to stop in the middle of the day for a little siesta. These kids don’t know how good they’ve got it.
As little kids become teenagers, they want to extend bedtime or not have a bedtime at all. They want to stay up late because it seems cool and grown up to them. What do they think is happening after 10 p.m. on a school night? Most adults I know want to be home in pajamas by 9 p.m.
You might think your teen is staying up scrolling social media, but I think they’re creating more teen slang so they can talk in secret code in front of their parents instead of adhering to bedtime. Don’t get me started on curfew. Curfew is buns (teen slang for, well, that’s one you can probably figure out).
On the flip side, you’ve got adults who are so busy adulting that they either crash the second they lie down or end up wired and wide awake, daydreaming about night dreaming.
We all know and probably live with someone who sits on the couch, melts into it, and is catching Z’s within minutes. No offense guys, but it’s probably you. Guys can sleep any time, any place. My own legal life partner might be doing this right now, in broad daylight.
My father could sleep anywhere. Once he fell asleep behind the wheel … of an electric shopping cart at the grocery store. My mom heard a crash, looked over and there he was in the scooter thing covered in a Halloween display of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Scary and delicious.
Women are a different story, especially those over the age of 40. Many of my adult female friends say if they wake up in the middle of the night, perhaps for a potty break, they can’t fall back asleep. Or they think about their to-do list and can’t fall back asleep. Or they think about that embarrassingly ugly haircut they had in eighth grade and can’t fall back asleep.
I know a woman who does laundry when she can’t sleep. Just gets out of bed and starts a load, sometimes at 2 a.m. I don’t even want to do laundry during regular waking hours. Can’t she just lie in bed and worry about things that have no basis in reality, like a normal person?
I like to play little word games like you’d play on a road trip in hopes of lulling myself back to slumber. Unfortunately, it always devolves into a game of “name that stupid thing you said on a date in 1991.” Then I shame spiral into embarrassment and regret, downshift into self-doubt and stay awake another two hours until my bladder alarm rings again. Looking at the bright side, though, it gives me something to do between potty breaks.
Curse Mother Nature! She and her evil circadian rhythm and perimenopause hormones and Jewish mom worry have created a disaster of our restful slumber.
You’re wide awake now, letting your brain run laps around your sweet little keppie lying still on the pillow. Wait, is that a twinge you feel in your ear? Oh no, you’ve probably got an ear infection. Or a tumor. And now your leg feels sore. You probably have a ripped muscle. Or a tumor. Your leg is probably going to have to be amputated tomorrow. Forget the fact that you went for a run today, that can’t be the reason your leg hurts (and remember what I tell you … if you ever see me running then you should start running because something really bad must be happening).
Next thing you know it’s dawn, the alarm goes off, and you’re off and running in your day. Maybe you’ll tucker yourself out today and finally get a really good night of sleep tonight.
Let’s plan on that.
