Sleep, Glorious Sleep

"The amount of sleep required by the average person is five minutes more."
-Wilson Mizener

Sleep, how miss your regular presence in my life. I thought that my sleep deprived nights were over when the babies grew up. Unfortunately, my timing was off and by the time my kids stopped having nightmares, I had entered the next phase of my life: peri-menopause.

Sleep now eludes me on a regular basis. I yawn and struggle to stay awake all evening. I draw the drapes, darken the room and slide between the soft, clean sheets. I may doze off for 20 minutes and then I am awakened.

I am boiling hot, I am freezing cold. My arm aches. My brain races. If I am lucky, I can calm my mind and relax my body to fall asleep until the cycle repeats itself again.

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I would be a teenager again for one reason, to sleep like one. The teens in my household average 8-11 hours of sleep a night; deep, coma-like sleep.

The other morning I asked my son if he had heard the tremendous cat fight that took place under our respective bedroom windows.
His response? "What fight? I never heard a thing."

Now days my husband and I measure a good night's sleep by the number of times we wake up. It's extremely rare to sleep through the night with no interruptions.

My older son was home for a few weeks and complained one morning that he had to get up and use the restroom the night before. It had, according to him, "taken me a half hour to fall back to sleep."

I raised my coffee cup and toasted him. It's all downhill from here.