Monday, September 25, 2006

Sleep and the lack there of

Sleep, it is precious.
I'm not worth a lot with out sleep.
When I was young it was different, the lack of sleep put creativity on overdrive for me.
Then I had children and most of my creativity dribbled out my ears.

See, like most mom's I have a sense of hearing that is extreme!
When my children were babies, I could hear them turn over and sigh in their sleep from 2 rooms away.
Even now the slightest sound has me out of bed.
I've lost count of the number of times that the phone has rang in the middle of the night and I wake to find myself down the hall and around the corner answering it before I am even awake.
This extreme sense of hearing was great when DD1 was in her sneak out of the house phase.
I could hear her window open or the back door close over the white noise of the fan in the hall and the air cleaner next to the bed.

I wake when I hear DD2's door open so she can go across the hall to the bathroom. IF she listens to a book as she is falling asleep, then I listen to the same book.

All of this is just the build up to the lack of the most precious commodity in my world...Sleep.

DD1 now works at UPS and comes in at odd hours in the early morning 5 or so days a week.
I wake as the key enters the door. Heck sometimes I wake as the car pulls up to the house.
I almost always get up to say hi and this does not endear me to her.
She almost always stays up for at least an hour or 2 because she is too keyed up to go to sleep right away.
(mountain dew is the real reason) I can hear the TV even if it is almost silent and my door is closed and the white noise is on. I can hear her type on the computer in the kitchen, go to the bathroom or let the dog out the back door. Can no one other than I shut a door silently?

Last night she got in at 2 and finally went to bed at around 4. Every time I started to doze off, my extreme ears caught a noise and I was wide awake again. At 4 the dog came in my room, even he was disgusted.
I pet his fuzzy head and then he lay down and groaned before he went to sleep. I finally dozed off sometime after 4:30 and the alarm rang at 5:45. Don't ask if I accomplished much today.

It is almost 10 pm and DD1 is visiting a friend and I'm ready for bed.
Keep your fingers crossed and wave pointy objects so that when she gets home (and it better be early)
that she goes right to bed and I can sleep most of the night.

Viki

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