Get A Life by Loretta LaRoche

There’s nothing like a good night’s sleep. You wake up refreshed ready to face the day with energy to spare.

I remember as a teenager I not only slept through the night, but often felt like I could sleep through the day. I would wake up feeling as if I was in the “Twilight Zone”.  My mother would stand at the door barking her orders to “get up” and “get moving”, but my body and mind were somehow removed and unable to connect. I eventually came out of my stupor, but it literally took a couple of hours to shake it off.

Well those days are long gone. Children, worries, a husband that snored, extensive travel, with lots of time changes, and finally menopause have all changed my sleep patterns.

Oh I sleep, but not in the same way. I fall asleep but seem to wake up at 2:30 PM on a regular basis.

I’ve thought about joining neighborhood watch, so that I could use the time productively, but who wants to get up and get dressed at that hour?

Maybe my body still thinks I have to do a night time feeding.

I eventually fall back to sleep but not without some time spent going  over stuff that should have been buried with one of the Pharaohs. Old wounds, unfulfilled dreams, injustices, blah, blah, blah. The mind is often like a bunch of monkeys looking for bananas.

I have used the methods I teach others to quell the mental cacophony, but it doesn’t always work.

It’s especially hard now because of a frog that has made my fish pond his summer residence. He seems to love to sound off every fifteen minutes or so like a fog horn alerting incoming ships. This is a very loud frog. A friend of mine heard him while we were talking on the phone. I decided to see if I could find him amidst all the flora and fauna in the pond. Well it didn’t take long because he was splayed out on a Lily pad as bold as could be. He didn’t flinch as I came closer to observe. In fact he started his braying the closer I got.

All I could do was laugh.  I thought maybe if I get close enough I can kiss him and he’ll turn into a prince and take me away to a beautiful castle where I’ll get a good night’s sleep.

But, hey, been there done that.

Loretta LaRoche writes the Get A Life Column for the Patriot Ledger.
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