Tsk, tsk. The sordid rumors you have heard about me are alas sadly true. The scoop on the street does not obfuscate. I confess. I can’t get enough. I can never get enough. Actually I can’t get any. Sleep that is.
I crave it like a duck craves H20, like a fruit fly hankers after a steaming hot mound of apple cinnamon oatmeal, like Lady Gaga lusts for a crazy heinie new hat.
Ever since I hit forty with all the calm of a head-on collision, my circadian clock has a cuckoo bird diddling royally with the rhythms, the REM cycle, the NREM spin cycle, the wash and rinse, the eternally stuck snooze alarm.
I grapple in the black hole of terminal crabbiness, cognitive dysfunction and impaired moral judgment, not to mention severe, really annoying yawning. Hard to believe, but my grooming and hygiene no doubt suffer, too.
How I envy the young hottie whose beauty sleep comes as easily as the flick and flutter of her long, full eyelashes. Bah Hum Ladybug to you, honey!
I’ve indulged in all the usual tired remedies for my malady: asinine herbal bedtime snacks, lavender inhalants, listening to opera, reading physics journals, watching C-Span, even – Dear God - conversing with chatty in-laws.
In my pathetic struggle to grasp the ever elusive somnolent high, in my desperate pursuit of that sweet soothing rush of warm melatonin oozing into the nooks and crannies of my weary perimenopausal brain, I have sunk to limbo level lows. I’ve become a valerian junkie, an Advil PM addict, a No-Doze abuser. I avow that I’ll do anything, perhaps everything, for some measly Zs. I’d kill to sleep like a log. I’d pay a million bucks for forty winks.
And so it is with blubbering shame and significant personal disgust that I - in the still of my bleakest, starless nights – dip into my private cache of smut for the sleep deprived. The images I’ve secreted away on my computer: Bright pictures of chirpy, well rested couples in Tempur-Pedic ads; of cheerful fellows napping in comfy backyard hammocks; of tanned women dozing blissfully on massage tables at Maui resorts; and worst of all – seductive color spreads of that narcoleptic Disney slacker “Sleeping Beauty.”
Cruelly even my computer sleeps, and I succumb to dire fantasies of being hooked up to a Propofol Ativan intravenous cocktail, consciousness suspended, postural muscles relaxed in a nerve numbing fog. How I long to be in the land of Nod, yearn to be limp in the arms of Morpheus. Oy, where art thou sweet slumber? Rolling like thunder under the covers? Bosh! Sleep – it is the new sex.
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About the Author:
Barb Best is a freelance writer and small business owner. Her light verse and humor pieces have appeared in various magazines and newspapers over the years,and most recently, online at DivineCaroline.com and More.com.
Her company BBEVHILLS features autographed books and entertainment memorabilia. She is dedicated to her craft, her daughter and husband, and the nonprofit 501c3 RxLaughter.org which uses humor to heal. Active memberships include AATH, SCBWI, BPSC and WIF.She has fond memories of her mother clipping Erma’s columns from the newspaper and sharing them with her and others to enjoy. |