How NOT to Sleep

First of all, make the weather miserable. Those of you who live elsewhere, feel free to burn me in effigy. But I hate summer. I moved here for love, not the weather. If I don’t get to wear sweaters in January at least, I’m going to be cranky.

So, it’s been that really annoying temperature here, where it’s hot enough to be gross, but not hot enough to set the air conditioning off—especially at night. And it’s humid. So by morning it feels like the showers have been running all night, steaming the place up.

Hard to sleep in that.

Second of all, add a healthy dose of stress and resultant “gerbil-wheeling” thoughts.

Hard to fall asleep when you’re doing that.

Then add a strained hip flexor that feels fine most of the time, but shoots pain across your hip every time you roll over.

Hard to sleep with that.

Then, just as you drop off to sleep, have your five-year-old run screaming into your room. (He NEVER does this.)  “THERE ARE BUGS IN MY EAR! THERE ARE BUGS IN MY EAR!”

You’re not going to sleep through that.

Yes, the weather means mosquitos are still out. One solitary, slow mosquito was haunting the wall near Little A.’s bed. We dealt with it and tucked everyone back in. And we all went back to sleep until…

TOTAL CHAOS

Piercing beeps, shrieking son running into our room, daughter hollering, “What? What is it?” and husband jumping up like a scalded cat.

NO ONE slept through that.

So, once we turned off the earsplitting alarm that Little A. set for midnight and turned on while playing with the clock yesterday, we tucked everyone in and all dropped off to sleep. I changed MY alarm from 5:25 to 6:00am—I decided to run in the sun rather than wake up early. Sleep over running comfort!

Then came the icing on the cake. I haven’t gotten around to calling the exterminator, so we have a rodent in our attic. The critter did his normal morning commute over our ceiling at 5:37am.

(They don’t weigh much—how are they so loud?)

I didn’t sleep after that.

The only good thing about the night? I have this fantastic mental image of my son running into our room. It’s pure imagination, since I couldn’t see. I picture it like this:

 

 Have you ever seen one of those guys run? Seriously. That's how I imagine Little A. running.

And I have this fantastic mental image of my husband leaping out of bed in shock. Like this: 

  This makes me laugh. I love my imagination.