Sleep is highly over-rated

I’ve come to the conclusion that there is nothing more elusive than sleep. We spend so much of our (forgive me) waking life in active pursuit of it – yet it’s said that we can never catch up for what we’ve missed. Never mind catching up… I appreciate netting any at all. Witness… The teenager: “I can’t wait for the weekend so I can sleep in!” The competitive co-worker: “Well, you look great today… how much sleep did you get last night anyway?” The husband: “Honey, I’m done with the dishes so I think I should sleep for a bit.” The young, misguided, expectant mother: “Oh, I’m not going to be sleep-deprived. I’m going to sleep when the baby sleeps.” Comments like these leave me not only shaking my head … but nearly shaking it right OFF! It has become a sad accomplishment of adult life that we have learned to function quite admirably, really, on very little sleep. On a good night like, say, a Saturday, I might get 6 or 7 hours. WOOHOO! However, on a regular basis, I probably get a disconnected, disjointed, disappointing 4 or 5 hours at best. That doesn’t sound too bad – until you look at a pretty typical schedule: 10:00 PM: Finish work, shut down computers, quickly straighten up the office, go upstairs and load straggler dishes into the dishwasher, walk around the house turning off lights that were left on, closing windows that were left open, checking that doors are locked, tend to personal needs 10:30 PM: Go to bed 10:32 PM: Get up to remind older daughter to put her gym clothes in her backpack (she forgot them last week and I only spotted them in her room after she’d left for the bus. I’m not spending another Monday morning running down the street bra-less, in my socks, gym bag flailing wildly, sporting some nifty bed-head and trying to get to the bus stop before she leaves on her two-hour trek to college. I didn’t make it, by the way, and she took Pilates class in some 8-sizes-too-big gym clothes that the school reserves for those poor students whose mothers can’t run a two-minute mile) 10:34 PM: Go to bed again 10:36 PM: Get up and check clock radio, obsessively making sure the volume’s up and it’s set for AM and NOT PM (because, although I love him with all my heart, my husband is completely and utterly useless when it comes to getting up on time. He usually doesn’t even hear the alarm. This is why I am staring at an alarm time of 3AM when I don’t start work until just before 8AM) 10:37 PM: Go to bed again 10:38 PM: Run through lunch items in my head and decide (like the idiot that I am) that I’d like to give them all something different tomorrow. Get up and head downstairs, to the freezer, to extract Kaiser rolls and some kind of muffin. Place these items on the kitchen counter to thaw. 10:40 PM: Go to bed again 10:41 – 10:45 PM: Listen to husband snoring out "William Tell’s Overture," hoping it may be a condensed version 10:46 PM: Kick husband firmly in the ass… with a cold foot… and hang on to the edge of the bed for dear life while he flops around like a fish out of water, thus concluding this evening’s performance. 10:47 PM: Re-start the falling asleep process with an ETA of approximately 11:00 PM 3:00 AM: Hit the floor running to the tune of Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild,” courtesy of our “classic rock alarm” 3:00 AM and 3 seconds: Put a slamming end to the illusion of being “wild” at this hour and, instead, focus on trying to “get yer motor runnin’…” 3:05 AM: After tending to the obvious physical result of being jolted out of bed, I head to the kitchen and begin making my husband’s lunch 3:08 AM: Slam the fridge door out of sheer frustration at hearing the rumblings of an encore of "William Tell’s Overture" 3:20 AM: Finish packing the lunch bag and “head on down the hallway” to wake the sleeping maestro. Although this is fraught with the potential dangers of grunts, groans and horribly misguided flatulence, it’s a risk I have to take. 3:40 AM: Out the door he goes 3:45 AM: Reset “classic rock alarm” for 4:45AM and go to bed again 3:50 AM: Still awake and staring at the ceiling, wishing someone would smash my running mind with a brick Somewhere around 4AM: Finally fall asleep 4:45 AM: Hit the floor running to the tune of “Stairway to Heaven” 4:45 AM and 3 seconds: Put a slamming end to good ole Zep while thinking that I BETTER be getting one of those stairways some day for caring about my family THIS much 4:50 AM: Call older daughter no less than three times before getting a response that sounds like “MRPHX.. snort.. RXDFSZZZZZZ” and ask her the morning equivalent of “paper or plastic?” which, in our house, is “oatmeal or cereal?” 4:50 AM and 3 seconds: Slice a bagel and place it in the toaster, wondering when the hell I opened a diner 4:55 AM: Bagel is laid out on the table and teenage daughter is laid out on her bed. Under the threat of being permanently laid out, she arrives at the breakfast table and buries her face in the newspaper 5:00 – 5:30 AM: Make two more lunches, one more bed (having to ignore one that is still inhabited) and bark at daughter that she must be ON a bus in 20 minutes. Analyze the 75 or so pairs of shoes in the entryway, briefly wonder how four people can have so many feet, tidy living room. 5:45 AM: Issue the five-minute warning bark and duck the lightning bolt which narrowly misses my head 5:48 AM: Throw open the front door as daughter, 870 pound backpack, purse and lunch bag haul ass down the front steps and around the corner, in a desperate attempt to catch the only bus that will get her to school on time 5:50 AM: Hear the bus pull away… brace myself, expecting to hear daughter, 870 pound backpack, purse and lunch bag come back through the front door. They do not. WHEW! 6:00 AM: Wake younger daughter who, fortunately, is fully onboard with the morning selection process and mutters “oatmeal” before I’m even finished asking 6:05 AM: Oatmeal is laid out on the table (YES I USE INSTANT… do ya really blame me?!). Second offspring arrives at the breakfast table and buries her face in the comics. Start coffee. 6:10 AM: Make last bed and replace the four throw pillows and two stuffed animals. Return to the kitchen, lean against the counter, yawn, stretch and seriously contemplate if there is enough room to just add milk straight into that freshly-brewed pot of coffee. Decide against it and pour first cup. 6:30 AM: Standing with coffee in hand and staring out the kitchen window, I suddenly realize that – holy crap! - a good 15 minutes just vanished from all clocks in the vicinity 6:31 AM: Run down the stairs, put in first load of laundry, walk to the office, start computers, feed the fish (he’s a Betta and doesn’t get a choice of oatmeal or cereal), check email and organize tasks for the work day 7:00 AM: Return to help daughter with her sometimes unruly, suddenly curly hair (seriously, I never met the mailman!), make sure that (a) her glasses are properly cleaned; (b) she’s wearing a jacket; and (c) she has a lunch bag in hand. 7:15 AM: In a much more civilized and controlled manner, second daughter says goodbye and heads off to the bus, on time and without bowling me over or leaving tread marks on my back 7:15 AM and 3 seconds: Flirt with the intensely guilty pleasure of diving back under the covers for just another half hour or so. Haul out the vacuum. At this point, I know you’re thinking that I’m some kind of fool for running this marathon on a daily basis. I am fully aware that my family should make its own lunches and its own beds and be capable of waking up on time each day without me having to lace up and take one (or three!) for the team. However, in my heart, I really want to give them the one thing I haven’t had since 1990 (which, for that young, misguided, expectant mother is the year I gave birth to baby #1)… SLEEP! The way I see it, a few years down the road, I’m going to be wishing that I had so much to do for so many. Sleep will no longer be elusive… it’ll no longer be a luxury… and I’m really quite sure that, once I can have as much of it as I wish… I won’t even welcome it one little bit. Funny how that works, isn’t it?