"hush-a-bye, don't you cry, go to sleepy little baby..."
Sleep is my nemesis. Just ask my mother - the stories of my sleeping -or non sleeping- habits as an infant are notorious in our family.
"There I'd be," my mother will say, "lying in bed with you there beside me, and I'd finally doze off because I was just so tired, but then I'd wake up and you'd be staring at me with those big dark eyes, wide awake and looking all excited."
Yep, that's me.
There's always so many more interesting things to do besides sleep. Books to read, music to listen to and to play, stories to write, friends to visit, movies to see, walks and bike rides to take, food to cook...the possibilities in life are endless. Why waste time sleeping, when all the world lies before you?
Most children defy bedtime, and my parents wisely never forced me to bed early. They trusted me to get the sleep I needed, and apparently I did, for I grew to be a normal, healthy young woman. Now my mother claims I didn't like sleeping because I was "bright" and "didn't want to miss a minute of anything going on."
Actually, she's probably right - at least the part about not wanting to miss things. Because the older I get, the less I like to sleep. After all, there's only so much time in this one wonderful life, and now that I'm into the second half of my century, who knows how much of it I have left.
So why waste it sleeping?
click here for more thoughts about sleeping