BITR: One thing that annoys the living daylights out of me

Ever since I got the job of riding on a truck for 10 hours a day, I haven’t had any trouble sleeping. It’s a lot of riding, I know; but that really can take the energy out of you. Not to mention loading and unloading the truck several times a day. The first time I ever rode on the truck for a full day, I came home and just laid on my bed until I fell asleep. This was at about 8 pm. I woke up later at about midnight with my lights and my work clothes still on. After I had changed clothes and turned the lights off, I immediately went back to bed. The next morning I got up at 9 am, feeling like I had slept for an entire epoch.

Maybe I’m just really weak or something, but the job always keeps me ready to hit the hay every night. On weekends I tend to sleep about 10 hours at night and then take a nap on the afternoon of the next day (unless I have to get up for church in the morning). I can fall asleep almost anywhere, and many times at home I don’t actually fall asleep in my own bed. But I do get there, eventually.

I love sleeping, though. I love being able to close my eyes and zone out of consciousness, fulfilling my body’s need for rest. That’s why I get so angry when my ability to fall asleep is somehow taken from me. I do all the right things. I drink milk, get a little snack, make sure the temperature in the house is right, and find a TV program that is watchable but not so entertaining that it keeps me awake (ESPN, The Weather Channel, or an educational program usually do the job). Sometimes I start reading a chapter of a book and that almost always makes me fall asleep. The methods are out there, but sometimes none of them produce any kind of results.

I say this because apparently over the last few days I have been afflicted with some kind of plague or something. It started as a Sunday afternoon post-nap headache, but as of last night it was the thing that was keeping my body from its desired rest. Sure, I fell asleep initially. But at 3 am I awoke to the burning pain of cold air passing through my inflamed nostrils and throat. Unless I figured out a way to breathe out of something besides my face, or simply not breathe at all, I wasn’t going to be sleeping anymore. And about 13 hours later, I still haven’t.

Of course, affliction isn’t necessarily the only thing that can keep a person up at night. Christmas, for instance, is sure to keep me from my REM goodness. On Christmas Eve, I’m always so excited about opening presents in the morning that I have absolutely no desire to rest. It’s all about getting that Nintendo 64 out of the box and playing Super Mario 64 for the first time ever. Nothing else matters. I’m 22 and I still feel this way.

Lying in bed without being able to sleep is just about the most annoying thing imaginable. When I’ve already watched Elimidate 8 times, memorized the local forecast (on every 8 of the hour), and seen the same old MLB highlights of Josh Hamilton going yard 28 times in the first round of the home run derby, I start moving towards borderline insanity. Then I look over at the clock and realize I’m supposed to get up in an hour, and there’s already some light on the horizon outside my window. This is a bad thing.

I hate not being able to sleep. I hate it with a passion. I love rest like I love a great meal at Cracker Barrel. When I can’t get it and, worse than that, when I have to lie in bed and think about how I can’t get it, everything in my world goes wrong. It doesn’t happen all that much anymore, but when it does, it sure does make me thankful for the nights that I lay my head down on a pillow and go to sleep almost instantly.