Good Night, Sleep Tight

At the end of every day the world (well at least the people in your hemisphere) settles into the groove of destiny and starts doing a ritualistic dance.  This dance isn't intricate or refined, yet day after day many of us enact the pajama bottom hop, the toothbrush shuffle, and the toilet tango in hopes that they would soon be carried off into REM restitution.  I am like any other and once I settle under the covers, I calmly await for sleep to overtake me and delve me deep into dreamland. Night after night, my expectations are the same.  Night after night, my expectations are not met.  Whenever I try to sleep I'm not just merely lying there all snug and comfy.  Nope, to me, it's more of an Olympic event.
First we have the REM race between me and my husband.  My husband, bless him, does a lot of great things, but being a courteous sleeper isn't one of them. He snores, and kicks, mumbles, and makes snuffling sounds into the wee hours of the morning. If I have any chance of getting good sleep, I have no choice but to nod off before he does. It's not an easy feat simply because I have about 3.2 minutes in which to do this.  On top of my husband's sleep escapades, he also falls asleep faster than anyone I know. So far, unless I'm utterly exhausted, I usually don't beat his time. This starts the chain reaction of me lying in bed wide awake, hoping against hope that I'll fall asleep soon.

The second event involves kitty escapades.  Torque, being the needy kitty he is, sleeps with us every night.  This can cause problems in its own right.  Sometimes he wants love and will stop at nothing until you give it to him.  The worst part being that he knows that I'm the one that's awake even though I'm not really moving. Sometimes I wish he would bug Nate so I have another 3.2 minutes to try to get to sleep but alas, he doesn't bother him.   So of course he goes up to me, gets right into my face and starts purring. This might be cute during the daylight hours, but at night, I find it irritating. My irritation compounds when his next move is to find any inch of exposed skin and start to lick it.  Torque is a rough licker. I swear every swipe of his sandpaper tongue takes off a layer of skin.  After the licking starts I have no choice but to pick him up and move him to the bottom of the bed.  Then he has 3 choices. 1. He'll come back and start his purry/lickie thing, resulting in being banned form the bed (it lasts about 15 seconds). 2. He will just stay there where I put him and falls asleep. 3. He'll fall asleep but move into a position where it is impossible for me to get comfortable during the night.  For example he'll sleep right between my legs, making it impossible for me to turn over or cross my legs at the ankles, which I sometimes do when I'm on my tummy. Finally, just when I'm finally starting to get drowsy and almost asleep, Torque will suddenly think that my feet are some dangerous beasts and he takes it upon himself to try to kill them.  This is the cat that is usually too confused or startled to attack a bug.  But no, he needs to attack my feet which are about a third the size of his body.  This results in being banned from the bed (which still lasts about 15 seconds).

Finally the last event is usually the biggest most impossible event in sleep Olympic history.  I am forced to compete against myself.  Oh I do things to prepare that will help me get to sleep; no caffeine after noon, no naps, do some metal stimulation and physical exercise every day etc. but that can only help me so much.  My biggest problem is that I can't shut off my brain.  My brain has the hardest time figuring out when to simmer down and quit thinking.  I can't stop it, I think and analyze all the time.  I feel like a hamster on a wheel whenever I'm about to go to sleep.  First comes what I call the Worry Ring.  Its a cyclic worry cycle filled with rational and irrational things that concern me or I feel anxious about.  Right now, it doesn't have too many things on it, but those things are pretty big worries.  This is followed by an analysis of what I did that day and if there are any things that I need to think about and what I need to do to plan for the next day.  Finally, comes the time where I have to think about usually one set problem or analyze something that interests me.

For example, last night I started thinking about an article I read about anti-matter.  My first task was to try to grasp the concept of anti-matter. I mean matter is anything that has mass and takes up space, so anti-matter wouldn't have either of those properties. Try to imagine something that doesn't have mass or space...I mean even air has a mass and fills any container. Its hard to grasp. As crazy as that sounds I then thought about what scientists would have to do to collect that anti-matter. You would have to use something that doesn't involve matter, so I settled on they would have to use a force, like a plasma magnet or nuclear magnetic resonance to gather the anti-matter. I then started thinking about if I were on the project, if they would trust me to collect the anti-matter. So to prove myself that they would, I started mentally spitting out everything I learned in college and grad school about nuclear magnetic resonance.   Then I thought about how if there was anti-matter, then there needs to be anti-protons, or anti-electrons (called positrons), and anti-neutrons (then I pondered if there were anti-neutrons or just neutrons because they are well...neutral). And if you take an anti-proton and a positron then you would form an anti-hydrogen.  And if you could form an anti-hydrogen then there isn't a reason why an anti-element chart couldn't exist; which would mean elements, chemicals, organic matter, worlds, galaxies, and universes completely built out of anti-matter.  Would there be an anti-earth?  Would anti-people live in anti-houses doing anti-things? Walking their anti-dog, going to anti-movies, eating anti-hamburgers perhaps? Then I thought about what those anti-scientists would do if they found something extraordinary called matter (which has mass and takes up space if you can believe it) and what those scientists would have to do in order to collect the matter.  Then I thought about some anti-girl who had just read an anti-article about matter, and was awake at night with her snorting anti-husband and her anti-cat was attacking her anti-feet. She could think that if there was matter, then there could be protons, electrons, and neutrons (that is when she would ponder if there were neutrons or just anti-neutrons because they are well...neutral).  And if you take an electron and a proton you would get hydrogen.  Then there wasn't any reason why an element chart couldn't exists; which would mean elements, chemicals, organic matter, worlds, galaxies, and universes would be completely built out of matter. That would be a very strange place indeed. I don't remember much after that, I guess I must have fallen asleep.