Sleep. I Hardly Knew Ye.

I love sleep. Yes, I love it so much, I might consider marrying it. It is like a long-lost friend these days--sometimes we have nice long get-togethers, laughing over a warm beverage; most times we are waving hurriedly as we rush past each other in a crowded hallway. No time to stop, no time to chat. Ah, life with a newborn! It has made me remember how truly blissful a full, uninterrupted night of rest can be. I am anxious to see a day or two of good, bone-healing sleep collect into two, three, four--no!--thirty, sixty, one-hundred days of amazing sleep. Perhaps then I will have the energy to find my make-up, put away the mountain of laundry I've been staring at since 2002, unearth my exercise videos (yes, videos! Helllloooo, leg warmers!), and become halfway human again. A girl can dream, can't she?!

And, speaking of dreams... How about we do away with the ones that involve a continuation of us doing what we already do all day long? For example, I vividly recall working as a telephone operator at a few different jobs, wishing people "good morning", "good afternoon", "good evening", and "good riddance", for a full eight hours a day, then coming home and answering dream phones ALL NIGHT LONG. I remember waking up with a pounding head, bloodshot eyes, writer's cramp from taking dream messages, and an absolute spring in my step to go to my actual job to rinse and repeat. Yes, that last little bit was sarcasm, for those of you with less intuitive powers.

Oh, and my personal favorite--the ex-boyfriend dream. Now, I don't share these with other people often, if at all.... and not because my boyfriend dreams are freaky-deaky, because I generally don't dream that way anyway. My hesitation to share my boyfriend dreams is on the off chance that someone will assure me that these dreams are a message about what my heart (or mind) really desires. If that was the case, I could never trust myself again, because I would then be assured without a doubt that my heart (or mind) was stupid. For the life of me, I can't figure out is what my subconscious would think is so attractive about me finally being able to have that nice, open relationship with [insert name of ex here]? I think I have enough to keep me busy in just one relationship without having to add the complications of maintaining another, already-failed, one in my dream world. Nothankyou. I'll pass.

Dreams aren't always the most entertaining part of sleep in my house, though. Sometimes it's the lack of sleep that provides us with more laughs. When my four-year-old son is upset and trying to soothe himself to sleep, we can hear him--through our ceiling, since our room is below his--cooing and rocking on his hands and knees. If we were watching him when this was happening, we'd almost always find him covered head-to-toe in the cocoon of a warm blanket. It is his thing. (It almost makes me smile thinking of him still having to put himself to sleep the same way as an adult.) When sleep is eluding my husband, he lays in bed, staring into the distance, jiggling his foot. And when I say "jiggle", it's more like flopping it so hard the bed shakes. That's Billy's thing. It drives me up-the-wall crazy, but it is contagious. Recently, I've found myself lying on my side, shaking a hip side-to-side sometimes when I am falling asleep. I sure hope that's not my thing. I think this just means we are totally losing our grip on sanity, which I'm sure we've all seen coming for a while now.

As much as I do love sleep, I also love insomnia. I do some of my best work when sleep won't come to me, or when I ignore it altogether. Maybe it is because the house is quiet and relatively peaceful. Trust me when I say it is difficult to focus on or accomplish anything with any variable of my kids awake and fully-functioning. It is next-to-impossible to clean my house unless the boys are away or comatose. That's why bedtime for the boys is, hands-down, my favorite time of the whole entire day, and I generally hate to ruin a good thing by going to bed early myself. Usually when I can't sleep it is because I am busy doing something other than sleeping that I cannot also do easily when the boys are up and at 'em--maybe sewing or exercising or watching t.v. When Billy can't sleep it is usually because he is horribly upset about something and can't turn the power off to his brain... and the boy can stay awake for weeks. I wish I was kidding. While Zombie Billy is certainly a treat, he's not quite the picnic I imagined being married to.

It is hard to remember a time when sleep wasn't a precious commodity in my life, but I guess that just means that we, as adults, are gaining a new, deeper appreciation for it as each day passes and we see little of it. Sleep will return to us soon, I pray, and maybe it will stay longer than just a visit over coffee.... and then maybe I will get to ask for relationship advice for my new ex-boyfriend--in between answering phone calls, that is.