Trials of an Insomniac

I am a part-time insomniac. I can go a couple weeks and sleep great - in bed by 11:30 and up at 7:30 and I feel fairly rested. Then I will go into my insomniac phase and it will be a couple weeks of not actually falling asleep until at least 2am, only to be followed by constant tossing and turning until about 6am when I seem to magically drift off into an amazing sleep until 7:30. I'm in the latter phase of these two lately.

So Thursday night was a really bad night for me, but I got through and survived to Friday. I actually took a little nap Friday afternoon in anticipation of Maddie's slumber party and the late night sure to follow. But, Friday night I didn't get to sleep until about 3am and then tossed and turned. Saturday I was EXHAUSTED and my body basically told me sleep or get sick, so sleep I did - all afternoon.

So last night I went to sleep only to toss and turn. I got up and played on a computer game which sometimes makes my eyes tired enough to fall asleep. Not last night. Then I tried the next trick which is flipping my head and feet on the bed; my head ends up next to Mike's feet and my feet near his head. The first couple times I did this and Mike woke up in the middle of the night - he was a little startled - but now he's used to me. Still, my tricks weren't working. I think I finally started to doze off around 3:30am - that was the last I remember seeing the clock.

At 4:12am there was a knock on our door. I got up and stomped around the bed to get to the door thinking, "this better be really good to have woken me up when I was just falling asleep." Jake is standing there and I still can't believe what he said to me:

"I can't sleep."

I stared at him open-mouthed for what seemed like a minute but was probably 5 seconds before I blurted out that I'd been having the same problem for the past five hours. Then I told him to go back to bed and stare at the ceiling until he fell back asleep. I stomped back to bed, mumbled some choice words and plopped on the bed. I must have at least made a huge impression on Mike because on the next sound that came from the hall (Jake again) I've never heard him move so fast. I chose to ignore it all. At that point I didn't care where anyone slept as long as everyone was just sleeping.