Nebulous Mooch

Last night, I was peacefully sleeping in my warm, comfortable bed dreaming about grocery shopping when I was awakened by a beep. I opened my eyes briefly, but when I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary in our dark bedroom I closed them again. As soon as I did it heard it again.

BEEP

“Did you hear that?” I asked my husband who responded by groaning.

BEEP

I swore it was getting louder. “That…What’s that?” I asked again.

BEEP

“Just ignore it,” my husband said.

“Ignore it! How can I ignore it?” I was wide awake now and angry. I have such a hard time getting to sleep at night that I really don’t appreciate it when something wakes me up. Convinced the noise was coming from the alarm clock, I picked it up and started trying to take the battery out.

BEEP

“I can’t believe this,” I was practically yelling as I struggled to remove the back from the clock. I was getting ready to throw the clock against the wall hoping it would smash into bits when my husband finally spoke again.

BEEP

“Calm down,” he said as he rolled over.

“How can I calm down?” I got up and took the clock to the hall where I could turn on the light and figure out how to put it out of operation. After a few minutes of wildly pawing at the cover on the back I gave up and returned to the bedroom.

BEEP

“It’s not the clock,” my husband said.

“What is it then?”

“I don’t know, but it’s not the clock.” He lay there with the blanket over his head.

Eventually, I found the telephone off its charger at the side of the bed. The batteries must have been running out and it was letting us know.

Thanks to that brilliant warning system I lost a little over an hour’s sleep. It takes me that long to regain my sleepiness. It’s a good thing the phone is charged, otherwise I would’ve missed the telemarketer calling for Mrs. Jenkins a few minutes ago.

Some people like to get up early. They like to see the sunrise. It makes them feel like they’ve got more time in the day. I know some of these people, and I’m definitely not one of them. I don’t have much need to see the sunrise. I see it set everyday. I think that’s pretty much the same thing just in reverse. In my opinion only the clinically insane would want to wake up before the sun comes out. Nobody needs that much time in their day.

My mother has always gotten up very early. I’m not trying to imply that my mother is insane. I’m just saying that she likes to have a lot of time in her day. At 11:30 at night she’d say things like, “I have to get to bed soon. I have to be up by 4 in the morning after all.” She likes to brag about not needing much sleep. My mother’s minimal sleep requirements used to be what I aimed for. I thought this was a pretty good goal. I’d read websites about how to shorten my sleep requirements. Then I’d try these techniques out and always come to the same conclusion. Sleeping less definitely gives you more hours in the day–more hours to suffer for the splitting headache you have from not getting enough sleep.

I used to think it was because I needed 8 hours of sleep, but recently I discovered that isn’t exactly true. I’ve realized that as long as I don’t get up before 8 o’clock  I’m fine. I could go to bed at 7 in the morning and get up an hour later and be totally fine. I would never do that of course because I don’t need that many hours in my day. Ideally I’d like to sleep until 9 or 10 or maybe even 11:32, but life isn’t always ideal.

The saying goes, Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. I’d like change that saying to early to bed, early to rise makes a man unable to get to sleep at night, gives him a huge headache the next day and puts him in a  bad mood. That saying probably won’t catch on, but I think it’s more realistic.