Sleep. I absolutely love it. That has not always been the case. Here's the journey sleep and I have taken to get us to the symbiotic relationship we enjoy today:
High School: Who sleeps when they're in high school. I mastered the art of waking up, getting dressed, and rolling out the driveway in 5 minutes. My sister Kathy was thankful she never had to worry about sharing the bathroom while she was getting ready.
College: I worked graveyards doing night audit at a hotel, a good amount of overtime covering day shifts, and took 21+credits at school. One semester my schedule required me to leave for school Friday at noon and not return home to sleep until Tuesday morning at 8AM. I still tremble thinking of the day I pulled in my driveway after driving the 30 minutes across Des Moines but not remembering a single thing I did after clocking out and getting in my car to head for home.
Early 20's: Most of this time I was in Alaska. In the summers I lived 2 hours away from any civilization. With friends, I'd often work all day, drive into Fairbanks for a full night of fun, then head back home in the wee hours of the morning to make it to work the next day. I'm 100% convinced that I ran over a human foot on one such excursion.
Winters I lived in Fairbanks working two jobs. On the weekend friends and I spent our time dancing until closing time at the Greyhound Lounge. I decided it was time to catch up on my sleep the morning I got up and drove to work thinking I was going to be late for my 7AM shift. I drove past 4 bank clocks but didn't register the time until I parked in the hotel parking lot and realized it was only 2:45AM. I'd been asleep for a whopping 30 minutes before waking up in my panic.
Late 20's: Sleeping got better after I got married. My husband and I quickly adopted a routine of not going to bed until well after midnight, but most of the time I could sleep in a little bit and still wasn't feeling like I needed a whole night's rest to fully function.
Now: After having my second baby my body decided it would go on strike if I tried rousing it before getting 8 hours of sleep. We could have a party if I let it have 10. I still haven't figured out how to get in bed before midnight, but my husband is a saint who gets up with the kids and lets me sleep in the morning. Heaven help me if he ever gets a job that requires him to be gone early.
And that brings me to this weekend. At 11:30pm on Saturday night my sore throat decided to explode with a pain I've never felt before. My husband ran to the store for cold medicine. I'm very slow to take medicine, and when I do it's usually only a half-dose, so when he gave me a full dose and I swallowed it I should have expected it to knock me out.
That would have been a huge understatement! I woke up at 10:30 long enough to agree I should stay home from church, and then not again until 12:50. When my family got home from church I crawled back in bed and slept the rest of the day. Literally. I woke up at 7:30. Everyone was getting into bed when I decided to start my day-still feeling a little groggy. And then I crawled back in bed with my husband at our normal time.
This morning I'm feeling pretty great!
0 comments:
Post a Comment