Sleep Haiku

rest for the weary

escape from reality

the soul's siesta

Inspired by the prompt at

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Falling to Sleep

Written for the NaBloPoMo prompt "How long does it take you to fall asleep at night?"

      I fall asleep moments after hitting my pillow.  I say my prayers and I am off to la-la land.  When my kids were small I would be wide awake instantly after hearing them stir.  A mouse could fart in the next room and it would wake me up.  These days I wake up with the need to pee…NOW. 

      For some reason all the dogs love to sleep beside me.  I sleep on my side, so I have one dog in a teddy bear hold, one lying snug against my back, one up against my legs, and the last snuggled up by my feet.  Snug as a bug in a rug, when the urge to pee wakes me I roll over dogs, kicking them out of the way as I go, and race to the bathroom in the dark of night with the hounds of hell barking all the way.    Once the dogs are awake they think they have to go too.  So I stumble out to the garage and let them out the back door.  By the time I have let them all out and back in, I am wide awake.

          I am thirsty.  I have to pee again.  I can’t sleep, so I read.  The book is good, so I read some more.  If I am not in the mood to read, I will fire up my laptop and check the obituaries to see if anyone I know died.   It is always a bit of a relief to realize I am still among the living.   I check my email.  I check my Face Book.  I check the front page of the local newspaper.   I might even leave a comment here or there.  Another hour before the alarm goes off, so I decide to pee again, and turn out the light and sleep.  Once again sleep finds me almost instantly.

          Buzz!  Buzz!  Buzz!  I bolt upright and turn off the alarm.  On my way to pee, I turn on the light in my daughter’s room and announce loudly “its morning!”  The dogs, sensing movement are hot on my heels biting at the bit to go out yet again.  I pee, and then let them out.  These days the cold wind wafts up my nightgown and says “Hello” to my vagina and if I wasn’t awake before I am now.  Leaving the dogs to do their duty, I rush back to my cozy bed and dive under the covers.  Oh sweet heavenly warmth!! 

           Once the kids are on the bus on their way to school I am free to return to bed or get busy.   Once again, it doesn’t take much and I am out for the count.  It wasn’t always this way but lately I fall to sleep quickly without a care in the world and all worries fleeing as I drift away.

I Can’t Sleep!!

     Today’s host for Blogfest 2012 is Susan at Today’s Working Woman.  The writing prompt for today is “When was the last time you couldn’t sleep and why?  What was the reason for not sleeping?  What did you do to overcome it?”

      I woke this morning in the center of the night having to pee.  The dogs followed me and sat with eyes glued on me as I went.  It is a good thing I have no problem going with an audience.  I ambled through the rest of the house turning on a light here then there to let the dogs out.  Anxious for the prompt for the day, I fired up my computer only to discover I had no internet connection.  “What the hell! Did I not pay the bill?”  I racked my brain.  It was surely possible.  I let the dogs back in with the cold wind whistling up my night gown.  A call to Comcast reveals there is a service outage in my area.  Well that is just lovely!!

       It is 4:19 in the morning and now thanks to cold breezes whistling up my parts I am wide awake with no internet.  Not a great way to start the day.  I hope they fix whatever is screwing up the works as soon as possible.  My brain tells me I still have a couple more hours to sleep, but here I am.  I decide to write my post so that when my internet is restored I can post it.  Seems like a good idea since I can’t sleep anyways.  Subconsciously I wonder if the theme for the day has jinxed me since it is all about insomnia.  What are the odds?  

        On the upside, I don’t have a migraine.  I am simply awake.  I can still remember the g0d awful headaches that woke me nightly for months.  Thinking they had to be migraines I would pop a pill prescribed for just that purpose and take my weary butt back to bed.  Since I have been diagnosed with hypertension and prescribed pills to force ,my blood pressure down to near normal range, I can happily say I haven’t had a mind blowing headache since.  The headaches were exchanged for chest pains.  The doctor increased my dosage not long ago, and thankfully even the chest pains are few and far between as long as I take those magic little pills on time.  It is a bitch getting old.  For what it is worth, I am following the microscopic diet the doctor gave me to a tee and hopefully getting smaller all around.  I don’t even bother weighing myself because I know that when I go back to the doctor only his scale will matter anyways.  That stupid scale always weighs on the heavy side.  Why be depressed that all this healthy food I am stuffing my face with is actually not helping if I don’t have too?  Better to prolong the inevitable for as long as I can!!

         A lot of times when I find I can not sleep it would seem to be because I am worried.  Maybe my kids are sick or the bills need paid and I have no clue whether there will be money to cover it.  Whatever the case the end result is ALWAYS the same, I am wide awake in the middle of the night wondering WHY. When I don’t write, I read, and sometimes that helps.  When my soul is especially troubled I will pull out my Bible, read some passages, and have a little chat with Je$us.  It can’t hurt and it usually calms my worries down to a dull roar so I can sleep.  

      If I wasn’t on this crazy diet, I would raid the refrigerator.  I still could.  No one would ever know, except me.  Damn it to hell that is the problem.  I would know and then guilt would overwhelm me that straying from my prescribed course would result in a heart attack or worse certain death.  A little dramatic perhaps, but not far from the mark considering the dire wake up call the doctor issued on my last visit when the EKG showed my arteries were already starting to clog.  I can not check out yet because I have signed up to blog the month away with NaBloPoMo and BlogFest 2012.  Besides, my kids would be screwed with no where to go and no one to watch them.  I have to reverse the effects of my gluttony.  Goodbye potatoes and corn!!!  Goodbye crackers and cheese!!   Parting is such sweet sorrow! 
  

        Amazing how much a person can ramble on at the butt crack of dawn when normal people are sleeping.  I wish Nickelback would beam into my room and sing me a lullaby.  Well that wouldn’t work because then I would be entirely too excited to sleep.    Hot damn!!  Set off flares and firecrackers and serve pink lemonade!!  My internet is restored!  Thank G0d and sunny Je$us that I can now post this little rambling of insomnia right on time for today’s challenge.  I yawn long and deep.  Writing this bit of nonsense seems to have done the trick.  I am off to bed for a couple more precious hours of blissful sleep until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.

S is for Sleepy Saturdays

     Yesterday my daughter greeted the day feeling sick, and evidently today was my turn.  Her sore throat had dissipated settling into a good old fashioned head cold.  I seemed to have skipped the sore throat and went right to the head cold stage.  Even my son doesn’t seem to be in top form.


     

      Therefore after we returned from paying some bills, buying some groceries, and eating a bit of lunch, our beds seemed to call all three of us because we all ended up sound asleep burrowed deep into the covers surrounded by sleeping dogs and snoozing cats.  What a better way to restore the body and the soul when sick than to sleep?  

         A person needs their sleep to help regain strength and fight off sickness and infection.  My mom always used to say that if a person slept more than normal, they obviously needed to.  I believe that to be true. If I am tired, what will I gain by fighting it?  When sick, isn’t sleep the best true way to the road of recovery?  In my mind it is.  Obviously it is so according to the experts too.   So with no trains to catch, and no where to be, kiss my eyes and lay me to sleep until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.
      

Wordless Wednesday: Best Friends

Talking in Your Sleep- BFF 133

       My Dad used to snore so loud you could have compared it to laying next to a roaring chainsaw.  Still my mother who experienced it first hand often complained it sounded more like he was talking Chinese.   


       

      One night we had retired for the night.  The house was enveloped in silence and darkness.  It was one of those not a creature was stirring kind of nights.  Even the cats had found warm places to curl up and sleep.  One cat in particular would experience the fright of its life.    


      On this particular night a golden tabby cat who had a special fondness for my Dad had chosen to burrow under the covers snuggling in close to his legs before falling asleep.  Even the tremors of his snoring and Chinese reverberated down the hall,  I soon succumbed to dreamland.  All of a sudden I was awakened by the sounds of a yowling cat, claws scratching the tile, and the definite sound of upchucking.   I raced from my bed to discover what in the world was going on.

       To my surprise I found my mother laughing hysterically as the cat upchucked in the hall.  To make a long story short my Dad had farted on the cat in his sleep and blew that poor feline clear off the bed!  It raced from the room in terror making a terrible racket in it's wake.  The smell alone upset the cat so bad it proceeded to dry heave in the hallway.  My mom and I couldn’t stop laughing, and I nearly peed my pants from laughing so hard.

        After all the racket that my mom, the cat, and I made, my dad finally stumbled out to the hallway to see what was going on.  He found it hard to believe that one sonic boom of a fart could have created such a disturbance and thought we were both full of it.    Not only had the sheer loudness of it scared the be Je$u$ out of my mother, it had also caused the poor cat to flee in terror and upchuck in the hallway.  That night will live on in family folklore and my memories for eternity.   It was the night my dad dropped the bomb to the detriment of one unsuspecting pussy cat.   The cat survived the ordeal relatively unscathed and never again dared to sleep anywhere near my dad again.  Until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a truckers wife.

Silent Sunday

Snoozing....

And Snoring...

...and lazing about! 

Such a sleepy day!!