Night-Night in the Daytime

Our little family was up earlier than necessary this morning.  At 7:30, the humidity already felt suffocating, so we closed the doors and started the ceiling fans to get the air moving.  Thank heaven both of us are compatible, preferring cooler temperatures. It's already obvious that neither of us are overflowing with ambition today.  The meat and potatoes of our day will be either putzing around with our "this and thats" or we'll expend our energies scouting out the back roads for awhile, returning to take an afternoon snooze.

Naps have become an "a la mode" to our afternoons, now that we're free to take them at our leisure.  Actually, since my surgery, I've come to like snuggling in bed for a while after lunch, and, of course, the little fuzzy one sidles herself up against me, cozy as can be.  It's the proverbial "snug as a bug in a rug" syndrome!

The older we get the better naps make us feel. Don't the experts say that our brains are revitalized and our bodies rejuvenated by the nap?  For some reason the nap has gotten a bad rap, and there are those adults who are embarrassed or feel guilty about giving in to a restful afternoon reprieve.

Talk about sleep......when I was a little girl, about 8 or 10 years old, there were a lot of nights when I couldn't fall asleep.  My bedroom was next to my parents' bedroom, so I'd gently knock on the wall so mom would hear me.  She'd get up and tell me to close my eyes, say a prayer, and try to go to sleep.  A few minutes would pass, and I'd knock on the wall again.  This went on a few times until mom would get disgusted with my antics and would come in my room to scold me.  Her tried and true remedy was the scold...not the mollycoddle.

Now on nights when I'm unable to fall asleep, I use a strategy that I read about in a self-help book.  If I completely relax my body and clear my mind of all thought, I mentally say the word "thinking" over and over and over to myself.  The brain is unable to think about anything else when processing the word "thinking."  It may sound silly, but this works for me every time. 


Today's Trivia:  The phrase "sleep tight" originated when mattresses were set upon ropes woven through the bed frame.  To remedy sagging ropes, one would use a bed key to tighten the rope.