Sleepless On Sunday

I wish I was my dog.

I'm looking at Basil right this minute and she's curled up at the foot of the bed with her head tucked over her Blue Monkey, her Most Loved Stuffed Animal Du Jour, and she's sleeping. Really sleeping hard. Sleeping so hard she didn't even move when I threw the bedspread over the top of her, crawled out of bed and went in search of something to read a few minutes ago. Sleeping so hard she didn't budge when I crawled back in two minutes ago carrying last week's People magazine, a Newsweek from last month, and Maureen McCormick's very sad tell-all book (as if anybody other than myself really cares to hear the story about someone from the Brady Bunch cast of the late nineteen sixties)published last year.

I would like to wake my dog and ask her to clue me in on just how it is that she sleeps so well on a Sunday night. So I poked her with my foot and she responded by snuggling closer to my foot, stretching in her sleep, and letting loose with a long, slow snore that told me as clearly as if she could speak that any inquiries I had needed to wait until the snooze alarm woke us both.

Sleep eludes me.

I normally sleep -- pardon the tired pun -- like a rock. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, where I am, or what I'm thinking or not thinking about. There's something that just happens when my head hits a pillow, and I'm out.

It's really kind of nice.

Everything changes on Sunday.

On Sunday evenings, I think about sleep. I even plan for sleep, quite often configuring my schedule so that by late afternoon I'm home, I have nothing on my schedule, and I'm free to read, watch TV...free really to do anything at all that will keep my mind quiet and allow me to think about sleep. Having already laid out something to wear to work on Monday morning, right down to the earrings, I have nothing on my mind to distract me and you'd think I'd sleep like...

Well, like the Monday through Saturday rock.

Quite often, I do.

The problem being, I do sometime after five p.m and prior to eleven p.m, when I inevitably fall asleep in a chair or on the couch, reading a book or watching TV and sometimes doing both simultaneously. Which means once I wake up it's time to go to bed and I'm as awake as if the alarm had just clanged six a.m. and it's Monday morning.

This evening is no exception.

Nearly midnight on a Sunday night is no time to be dead awake in the Old Dutch Village Condominiums. There's just nothing to listen to. Even with the bedroom window wide open the traffic noise from the boulevard is minimal. Chad upstairs takes Sunday nights off, or seems to, from serial dating, so there's no laughter, dropped wine glasses, or hysterical tears from the third floor or the stairwell to keep my ears awake. I find myself faced with a series of choices:

I can log into Netflix, and watch a TV show or movie;
I can wake Basil up, and take her for a walk;
I can read;
I can pretend I'm tired and hope that eventually, I am.

I choose, as I always do, the latter. Mainly because I've already watched everything on Netflix that can be watched free of charge (as I mentioned, this Sunday night insomnia is not a new thing), Basil is grouchy and therefore no fun on a walk she was awaken to take and never fails to pay me back by pacing back and forth across my stomach at four a.m., when I've finally gotten to sleep, the book I'm reading is boring enough to make me sad that I bought it but not boring enough to put me to sleep, and I've always been a big believer that if you toss and turn long enough eventually this will result in sleep and as an added plus provides a low-impact aerobic workout that just has to be good for you.

So I commence tossing and turning.

It's midnight.

In about three hours, if I hold true to past behavior, I will be asleep. I will gladly wake when the alarm goes off, stumble to the shower and begin the work week, very glad it's Monday.

Because Monday Day means Monday night isn't far behind, and Monday night means I will sleep like the proverbial rock.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I will do the same.

It's just Sundays that throw me and I may never know why.

At least at this point, with a boring book beside me and a tossed and turned pillow under my head, I know I have all night to think about it.