Sleep

I have a true story to tell you.

I once worked with a politician who was nice but a bit odd. 

At one point this person came to me with a private member's bill they wanted introduce that would have legislated sleep. 

The background argument, well documented by a huge amount of academic literature, was that lack of sleep was a huge drag on the economy and public safety.

Needless to say that idea was left with me, until now, and didn't go anywhere.

This bill idea was not my mother's although it could have been BTW.

Our entire lives our mother has been asking us about six times an hour if we were tired. (If she is reading this, and she sometimes does, she will verify this).

This will drive a person crazy. And tired. If you ask her why she does this she will tell you it was because, as our mother, she herself was always tired.

The issue of women, sleep and fatigue is an interesting one. In fact I even have a book downstairs written by a famous Canadian women's doctor in the '50s called "Women and fatigue."

This was not my idea.

It seems the dialogue about sleep has been going on in my family my whole life.

My paternal grandmother complained constantly until she died peacefully, and ironically, in her sleep at 95, that she couldn't sleep. We were always being told involved minute-by-minute accounts of how she woke up at 4:00 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep. My general impression was that she lay there mad, rather than getting up and start knitting slippers which is what she did the rest of the day.

Of course someone should have told her that older people wake up early and then maybe she could have rolled with it to 95.

OK back to sleep.

Why am I thinking about this?

Well since I have spent most of the summer in an unacknowledged period of what my daughter's mother-in-law calls a "convalescence" I have realized, as a high-energy person in genera,l that I do get tired. Particularly in the evenings.

The thing is I don't feel exactly tired but I do note that after 9:30 I lose my sense of humour. Sort of like that time when you kids start school and you finally realize that the feeling you had for say the last 12 years was just being tired.

I wish I could nap. 

I actually have never once in my adult life napped. 

I don't know how people do it. Like meditation. When David Page Coffin visited me he meditated a lot and that amazed me.

How could he not think about things? What about all the cool clothes and fabrics he saw at Threads? How could he put those out of his mind? How can a person think about breathing and not pockets?

Myself my routine is bed about 11:30 and if I am really really lucky, like not a work day, my best sleep is 7:00-9:00 am. And I sleep well but have trouble getting to sleep. 

Last night I was going over different ways to do a collar on the dress I am making (more on that later). Sometimes I wake up and look at the clock and am impatient. When will the night be over? When can I get up and do things?

When can I start that collar?

So I have a question for you.

How much sleep do you need? Do you nap?

What role does sleep play in your life?

Crazy question I know but on my mind this morning.