I sleep a lot.
I am not sure if anything makes me more happy than sleeping. Actually, I am sure, and nothing does.
There is nothing more beautiful to me than unplugging my alarm clock and letting my body to decide for itself when it has finished resting. Yums.
I am obsessed with sleeping. Seriously.
Don’t believe me?
I often talk to people about their favorite positions-and it has nothing to do with sex.
When I first learned what a “bed sore” was, obtaining one became a personal goal of mine.
My earliest memories of truly enjoying being asleep are from when I was around 11 years old. When school was out during the summers and my daily schedule was delightfully void, I would sleep until at least noon every day. Well, not really. I would have, but my mother would call the house at 9:30 a.m. every day of the week to make sure that my sisters and brother were alive and awake. Every single day, everyone in the house would be awake when that call came, except for me. Inevitably, my mother would send one of my siblings up to my room to drag me out of bed.
Off top, I cannot think of many things that make me as angry as being woken up against my will. The only two things that are coming to mind are Nathan Lane’s stupid face and Nathan Lane’s stupid voice.
I never understood why my mother so desperately wanted me to be out of bed. I had to wake up early everyday during the school year; was it too much to ask to enjoy myself and get extra rest during my time off? It was at this time when I first began to realize that when people are miserable (i.e. at work) they want everyone else to be miserable too. “Misery loves company” as some say. This principle is what makes mothers want to ruin their children’s summer sleep-ins. It is this very same principle that also makes people want to make each other feel guilty for being unemployed.
[SIDEBAR: What is the deal with people making their family and friends feel bad for being unemployed? Unemployment is rarely something that people choose (and if they did choose it, more power to them). When you do not have a job, it rarely helps to have people constantly reminding you. I just became extremely angry. I am shutting this down and turning this topic into a completely separate article.]
My mother’s diligent efforts to wake me up early during the summer were thwarted by my laziness. Each morning, when one of my siblings would enter my room and yell at me to get out of bed (per mother’s orders), I would wake up…for about 14 seconds. I spent those 14 seconds sleepwalking down the staircase to the living room couch where I would immediately begin work on a nap. Either way, I was going to sleep until I was ready to be awake. It could have either been in the privacy of my own room (out of everyone’s way), or in the middle of the house (where everyone had to maneuver around me). I have no idea why my mother felt compelled to disrupt my sleep pattern and make me everyone else’s problem. No matter her reasoning, it was all wasted effort.
Did it make my mother feel better to have someone “wake me up,” even though I began napping 14 seconds after “waking up?”
Can a nap even be considered a nap if it begins 14 seconds after a full night’s sleep?
Would my mother have been happier if I had slept four hours every night, jumped out of bed at 7:00 a.m., and then taken two separate two-hour naps throughout the rest of the day to get my full eight hours in? If so, how long after waking up from a full night’s sleep (four hours) would I have to wait before I could start my first nap and have it NOT be considered an extension of the previous night’s sleep and risking being classified as “sleeping in?”
It is these types of questions that kept me up at night. Well, those questions and soft porn. Amongst all of the confusion I was facing as a teenager, I really did not need all of the red tape. What I did need was sleep.
Leave me alone people.
I vaguely remember my mother explaining to me why she never wanted me to sleep in. Her explanations cited something pertaining to irregular sleeping patterns being unhealthy (I was always half asleep when she was explaining this stuff to me). Either way, nothing my mother did, or attempted to do, made any difference. In my older age, I am pretty much the worst sleeper in the world. I have wildly irregular sleeping patterns. I go to bed late and wake up late. Some nights I skip sleeping altogether. When I do sleep, I do so in 15-minute increments, change positions with an angry attitude and then repeat the process (for anywhere between 15 minutes to 12 hours).
When I am not on my home court, things are even more awful. My bed at home is stupid plush, so sleeping on couches and futons at other people’s houses only make my incremental thrashing fits more intense.
It turns out that it’s not just my mother.
(When I sleep over with friends and family, they are always banging on the door way too early in the morning telling me to wake up. Don’t these people realize that this is like me banging on the door when they are trying to FALL sleep? Either way, you are keeping the other person from sleeping when they have obviously chosen to do so.)
I generally go to sleep last, so I generally wake up last. Somewhere along the line, people who go to bed the earliest (and consequently wake up the earliest) decided they had the green light to be annoying and wake up the people that are still sleeping.
This makes me want to strangle everyone involved AND passers by.
Keeping me from sleeping late in the morning is like me keeping these bastards from falling asleep before me at night. Eight hours of sleep is still eight hours of sleep, no matter which eight hours you choose to sleep through. Why is it that people who go to bed early and wake up early feel they are the only ones choosing the correct eight hours to be asleep? Moral high ground? I think not.
I just do not understand why people take such an interest in when other people are asleep and when they are awake. One of my college roommates always woke up extremely early on the weekends, had breakfast, ran errands, and then came home and napped for hours every afternoon. Occasionally, my roommate would nap a second time later in the evening for an hour or so. Cumulatively, we each slept 8-9 hours on Saturdays and Sundays. I did mine in one lump slumber, usually from 3:00 a.m. to around noon. My roommate, on the other hand, chopped her rest up as described above. I never made fun of her for her sleeping patterns, but she always joked with me about waking up so late.
Why is it that people do this?
I get sick, and in addition, I get tired (I get sick and tired) of people telling me I am “sleeping the whole day away.” I never bust into their rooms at 9:45 p.m. crying that they are “sleeping the NIGHT away.” I let people do what they want to do. It is not too much to ask for the same courtesy and respect in return.
I stay up all night because that is when all of the cool stuff happens. All of the good tv shows and movies are on late. I see no point in waking up before 99% of the rest of the world, making coffee and watching “Live with Regis and Kelly.” Oh, and the reason you need coffee is because your body is saying “F me John. Again? Why are we awake right now?” Nope, I slept straight through that this morning because last night I was up watching Kimmel. Then I went out clubbing and ate breakfast at a diner with a handful of strange women before zonking out at 4:00 a.m. I just cannot see swapping one for the other at this stage of my life (or ever).
If I ever buy a house and have houseguests for the weekend, I am going to make coffee and breakfast at night in an effort to keep everyone awake longer so we can all go to bed so late that it is actually early the next morning. This way, my houseguests will wake up the next afternoon, like me.
Stop sleeping the NIGHT away. And, stop waking your houseguests. If they wanted to be awake, they would have made their way out of bed already.
I’m not sorry.
You’re welcome.
-Todd
I am not sure if anything makes me more happy than sleeping. Actually, I am sure, and nothing does.
There is nothing more beautiful to me than unplugging my alarm clock and letting my body to decide for itself when it has finished resting. Yums.
I am obsessed with sleeping. Seriously.
Don’t believe me?
I often talk to people about their favorite positions-and it has nothing to do with sex.
When I first learned what a “bed sore” was, obtaining one became a personal goal of mine.
My earliest memories of truly enjoying being asleep are from when I was around 11 years old. When school was out during the summers and my daily schedule was delightfully void, I would sleep until at least noon every day. Well, not really. I would have, but my mother would call the house at 9:30 a.m. every day of the week to make sure that my sisters and brother were alive and awake. Every single day, everyone in the house would be awake when that call came, except for me. Inevitably, my mother would send one of my siblings up to my room to drag me out of bed.
Off top, I cannot think of many things that make me as angry as being woken up against my will. The only two things that are coming to mind are Nathan Lane’s stupid face and Nathan Lane’s stupid voice.
I never understood why my mother so desperately wanted me to be out of bed. I had to wake up early everyday during the school year; was it too much to ask to enjoy myself and get extra rest during my time off? It was at this time when I first began to realize that when people are miserable (i.e. at work) they want everyone else to be miserable too. “Misery loves company” as some say. This principle is what makes mothers want to ruin their children’s summer sleep-ins. It is this very same principle that also makes people want to make each other feel guilty for being unemployed.
[SIDEBAR: What is the deal with people making their family and friends feel bad for being unemployed? Unemployment is rarely something that people choose (and if they did choose it, more power to them). When you do not have a job, it rarely helps to have people constantly reminding you. I just became extremely angry. I am shutting this down and turning this topic into a completely separate article.]
My mother’s diligent efforts to wake me up early during the summer were thwarted by my laziness. Each morning, when one of my siblings would enter my room and yell at me to get out of bed (per mother’s orders), I would wake up…for about 14 seconds. I spent those 14 seconds sleepwalking down the staircase to the living room couch where I would immediately begin work on a nap. Either way, I was going to sleep until I was ready to be awake. It could have either been in the privacy of my own room (out of everyone’s way), or in the middle of the house (where everyone had to maneuver around me). I have no idea why my mother felt compelled to disrupt my sleep pattern and make me everyone else’s problem. No matter her reasoning, it was all wasted effort.
Did it make my mother feel better to have someone “wake me up,” even though I began napping 14 seconds after “waking up?”
Can a nap even be considered a nap if it begins 14 seconds after a full night’s sleep?
Would my mother have been happier if I had slept four hours every night, jumped out of bed at 7:00 a.m., and then taken two separate two-hour naps throughout the rest of the day to get my full eight hours in? If so, how long after waking up from a full night’s sleep (four hours) would I have to wait before I could start my first nap and have it NOT be considered an extension of the previous night’s sleep and risking being classified as “sleeping in?”
It is these types of questions that kept me up at night. Well, those questions and soft porn. Amongst all of the confusion I was facing as a teenager, I really did not need all of the red tape. What I did need was sleep.
Leave me alone people.
I vaguely remember my mother explaining to me why she never wanted me to sleep in. Her explanations cited something pertaining to irregular sleeping patterns being unhealthy (I was always half asleep when she was explaining this stuff to me). Either way, nothing my mother did, or attempted to do, made any difference. In my older age, I am pretty much the worst sleeper in the world. I have wildly irregular sleeping patterns. I go to bed late and wake up late. Some nights I skip sleeping altogether. When I do sleep, I do so in 15-minute increments, change positions with an angry attitude and then repeat the process (for anywhere between 15 minutes to 12 hours).
When I am not on my home court, things are even more awful. My bed at home is stupid plush, so sleeping on couches and futons at other people’s houses only make my incremental thrashing fits more intense.
It turns out that it’s not just my mother.
(When I sleep over with friends and family, they are always banging on the door way too early in the morning telling me to wake up. Don’t these people realize that this is like me banging on the door when they are trying to FALL sleep? Either way, you are keeping the other person from sleeping when they have obviously chosen to do so.)
I generally go to sleep last, so I generally wake up last. Somewhere along the line, people who go to bed the earliest (and consequently wake up the earliest) decided they had the green light to be annoying and wake up the people that are still sleeping.
This makes me want to strangle everyone involved AND passers by.
Keeping me from sleeping late in the morning is like me keeping these bastards from falling asleep before me at night. Eight hours of sleep is still eight hours of sleep, no matter which eight hours you choose to sleep through. Why is it that people who go to bed early and wake up early feel they are the only ones choosing the correct eight hours to be asleep? Moral high ground? I think not.
I just do not understand why people take such an interest in when other people are asleep and when they are awake. One of my college roommates always woke up extremely early on the weekends, had breakfast, ran errands, and then came home and napped for hours every afternoon. Occasionally, my roommate would nap a second time later in the evening for an hour or so. Cumulatively, we each slept 8-9 hours on Saturdays and Sundays. I did mine in one lump slumber, usually from 3:00 a.m. to around noon. My roommate, on the other hand, chopped her rest up as described above. I never made fun of her for her sleeping patterns, but she always joked with me about waking up so late.
Why is it that people do this?
I get sick, and in addition, I get tired (I get sick and tired) of people telling me I am “sleeping the whole day away.” I never bust into their rooms at 9:45 p.m. crying that they are “sleeping the NIGHT away.” I let people do what they want to do. It is not too much to ask for the same courtesy and respect in return.
I stay up all night because that is when all of the cool stuff happens. All of the good tv shows and movies are on late. I see no point in waking up before 99% of the rest of the world, making coffee and watching “Live with Regis and Kelly.” Oh, and the reason you need coffee is because your body is saying “F me John. Again? Why are we awake right now?” Nope, I slept straight through that this morning because last night I was up watching Kimmel. Then I went out clubbing and ate breakfast at a diner with a handful of strange women before zonking out at 4:00 a.m. I just cannot see swapping one for the other at this stage of my life (or ever).
If I ever buy a house and have houseguests for the weekend, I am going to make coffee and breakfast at night in an effort to keep everyone awake longer so we can all go to bed so late that it is actually early the next morning. This way, my houseguests will wake up the next afternoon, like me.
Stop sleeping the NIGHT away. And, stop waking your houseguests. If they wanted to be awake, they would have made their way out of bed already.
I’m not sorry.
You’re welcome.
-Todd
2 comments:
I have a feeling some of your anger was directed towards me. However, I am not like most of the people you described since we always stay up all night together anyways. I'm just the odd one out since I stay up all night AND wake up early. You know I just don't sleep very well at all. I've gotten better at leaving you alone though. I only woke you up one day when I was out there. . . The other day I snuck out without waking you to get my coffee. I like the idea of serving breakfast and coffee at night.
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Thank the LORD I stopped reading this in class or I would have been shot. HILARIOUS! And I totally agree. I love to go to bed late and "sleep the day away." Naps rock. :)
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