To sleep, perchance to dream

I tried it, I didn’t like it. I tried that whole, sleep for 10 hours or so thing and I can officially state it is NOT my thing. My normal routine involves waking between 5:15 and 5:45AM, taking care of the dogs then getting ready for work and hitting the road.

At night I hit the bed somewhere between 10:30 and 11:30PM. Sure there are mornings when getting up in the 5AM hour is tough and I want to just fall back on my pillow for another hour or two but now I know that falling back on the bed for another three or so hours is just not for me.

Hubby loves to sleep. LOVES IT. It may just qualify as a hobby for him. He needs to clock in a solid ten hours of sleep to consider it a good night. Being staycation week for me I figured I’d give it a try. I hit the pillow around 12:15 last night, got up with the dogs around 5:30 and instead of staying up and enjoying this wonderful summer day I went back to bed. My intention was to get up no later than 7:30ish but there was a certain allure to being in a cold, dark room so I did nothing to jolt myself out of the sack at 7:30 as intended.

‘Round about 9:30 or so I toddled out of bed. I felt like crap, I was cranky and a tad disoriented. Truth be told I almost felt hungover (for no discernable reason). I didn’t like the feeling at all and felt even worse when I saw the great day I had been sleeping away.

Sleep is something our bodies need to regenerate and keep us alive but too much sleep just makes me feel dead. Was it Warren Zevon who proclaimed “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” (which, sadly, he now is)? There are only so many glorious summer days to enjoy and sleeping it away seems like just wasting a really awesome gift.

Hubby, who had hit the hay about half an hour before I did last night, rolled out of bed just past 10AM stretching and yawning and scratching his belly while proclaiming how great it was to have slept so much. Being still cranky from, well, sleeping to damn much I snarled at him. He asked if maybe I needed a tad MORE sleep! I told him that no, that was exactly what I did NOT need. What I needed was to get back those two hours between 7:30 and 9:30AM when I should’ve been up and cruising the beach on my bicycle.

I don’t understand it, I really don’t. I see no joy in sleeping in even on a shitty day. On a shitty day in a season other than summer I could be cleaning my house so it feels homey, I could be reading or writing or learning some new thing. If the weather is cooler I could have the dogs running and playing at a park, I could be embarking on a home project too laborious to be worth attempting in summer.

This isn’t to say I’m encouraging people to get to bed early either, heavens no, stay up late and enjoy the nightlife, we did last night. Go out with friends, sit up late on the deck and look at the stars, go for a midnight dip in the pool but for heaven’s sake get the hell out of bed the next day at a reasonable hour.

I thought that maybe by whiling away the hours under the covers I could discover some secret that hubby was already privy to since he seems so adept at sleeping. I figured maybe we could develop some special bond under behind the shroud of sleep…nope, sleep is his to keep. Whatever he finds there isn’t there for me and I don’t want it. I want to be awake and living life AWAKE. Life is short, why sleep it away. I’m more disgusted with sleep now than before this little experiment in sleep that I conducted this morning.

WAKE UP PEOPLE, JUST WAKE UP...DO SOMETHING WITH THE LIFE YOU’VE BEEN GIVEN…

I gotta go, sat around too long, need to get on my bicycle and ride with the wind!