Sleep

The photo above was taken early in our married life to add weight to my accusation that my husband was too often taking up more than his half of the bed.

I usually don’t read the ‘Odd Spot’s on Libra packaging, but this one caught my eye: “The average person falls asleep in seven minutes”. SEVEN MINUTES! I haven’t even finished getting comfortable by that stage, let alone revised the day’s activities and conversations, prayed about the way I spent my time, tried to figure out which day of the week it is and then vaguely planned the following day’s activities, put a reminder in my phone to tell my husband about that funny thing my son did at the park, wondered if my son will be warm enough tonight, crept into his room to check the temperature, turned the fan off, flopped back into bed, re-started the getting-comfortable process while wondering how my friend’s first book club went, prayed for her and the group, thought about starting one myself after we’ve moved, imagined the flier I could make to invite people, thought about which book we’d start with, pictured a meal together with my new book club friends, repositioned my pillow, prayed about opportunities to meet people when we’re in Glenmore Park, imagined how I’ll arrange the furniture in our new house, tossed up the pros and cons of a tiled lounge area, designed a giant rug, panicked about packing, written a blog post in my head about how hard it is to fall asleep, considered getting up to type it, decided not to, worked out whether some cereal would help me drift off, decided no, stretched my calf muscles, added another reminder to my phone about reporting my income to Centrelink, and rolled over.

Most nights I wait for at least an hour before sleep shows up. My husband, on the other hand, is one of those people who bring the average waaaaaaaaaaaay down, balancing out my lengthy pre-sleep sessions by dropping off within a few minutes of adjusting the covers and flipping onto his tummy. Sometimes I’m shocked to hear him snoring what feels like seconds after he’s kissed me goodnight. The other night I was reading my book and he snorted loudly and woke himself up; he was too confused to see the funny side of it but it had me sniggering for ages. Occasionally he also talks in his sleep for my entertainment, and I talk back. Once I’ve finishing laughing quietly I have to write our conversation down so that I can tell him about it in the morning.

I sometimes catch myself lying awake and wondering about things I really don’t need to lie awake wondering about. At the end of last year, the night after my husband mentioned that the college library wouldn’t be loaning books until January because they were doing a stocktake, we hadn’t been in bed for long when I whispered, “Are you still awake?” He left my question hanging for approximately 20 seconds before responding with a half-hearted, “Mm.” “How do you think they stocktake a library?!” I asked. “Do they print out a list of all of their books and walk along the shelves ticking them off one by one? And then go back to their computer and mark the missing ones?” It didn't take me long to realise how ridiculous these questions would seem to my husband. I then had to try to suppress my giggles for the next couple of minutes because we’ve been married for long enough for me to sense when he’s unimpressed, even in the dark.

So, yeah. Seven minutes would be AWESOME.