WRESTLING IN BED

Doesn't this look like someone has been wrestling in this bed?

Well, it's was me. Last night was one of those nights, although unlike Jacob in the Bible I was not wrestling with an angel. I was wrestling with insomnia.

One of the last e-mails I sent last night was to a friend who often sends me e-mails in the middle of the night when she wakes up and can't go back to sleep. In that e-mail I told her that I really wasn't sleepy yet so I was going to get off the computer and read a bit until I felt I had a shot at sleep.

About 11:30 I crawled into bed. At 12:30 I was still waiting for the sandman when the bathroom called to me. (Three times it called during the night.) Once back in bed, I closed my eyes but thought of a wonderful illustration I might want to develop and use in the talk I'm giving at a seminar on October 30. I tried to put it out of my mind, but no, my mind wasn't taking orders from anyone; it just churned away. In fact, I thought about this idea for so long that I knew there wouldn't be any chance of forgetting it in the morning.

I tossed and I turned. Squeaky, who sleeps on the end of my bed, kept readjusting herself once I got settled. But I have all these aches and pains in my shoulders and neck at night, so the two of us moved from side to side. It may have been that I drifted off towards sleep at some point, but I was awake enough to hear the cat began "harking" -- which is her preliminary noise before she upchucks a fur-ball. Before I could untangle myself from the sheets, she had disgorged the fur ball on the carpet in three places between our beds. Of course I couldn't see where to step in the darkness but Jerry woke up too, turned the light on for me and I got up to do the necessary clean up. The cat went out into the living room to sulk. I crawled back in bed.

At this point I began thinking about what I would write for the blog in the morning, and mulled over a few things that I'd had in mind. I do not want to mull things over in the middle of the night, but I can't figure out how to make myself not think. And all this time I'm doing a left side, then flat on back, then right-side turning. It's a good thing I can't sleep on my stomach or my nights would find me rotisseried.

At 3:00 a.m. the cat jumped back on my bed and began playing with a ribbon that is on the front of my nightgown. We really don't like to sleep with the bedroom door shut; it's a small room and the only ventilation we get is if the door is open, but sometimes the cat needs to be blocked out of the bedroom so I got up again, tossed her in the living room.

This time when I got back in bed I began making a list of everything I wanted to accomplish this moring. I thought of getting up and e-mailing Nancy and just forgetting about sleep, but frankly I knew if I got on the computer I'd probably start indexing a page or two for FamilySearch. So I stayed in bed.

I suppose I fell asleep not too long before Jerry got up at his usual 5 a.m. I did manage to stay in bed until 6, but I have this thing about always having a dream just before I wake up wherein I am terribly frustrated by something -- either I can't find my way out, or in, of the classroom or something that is of such a nature that I have to wake up out of sheer frustration. This happens almost every morning, and I'm sure is my mind's trick for getting me out of bed. This morning was no different. Obviously, from the looks of my bed the dream must have been that I was tangled up in the bedsheets and couldn't get untangled.

I read in this morning's paper a funny and interesting column by LA Times writer Sandy Banks about her going to a sleep clinic for testing. Although she said she only slept 45 minutes the whole night, the test results showed that actually she slept a whole lot more than she was awake. I don't need to be tested, because unlike Sandy, MY test results would truly show that I didn't sleep but a wink last night. She doesn't know how lucky she is!