sleep regiments

Sleeping. My sleep habits have changed throughout my life. Right now, I’m writing at 4am and have been up since 1:42am.

I don’t know how I get into certain sleep regiments, but I certainly am not fond of the current state of sleeplessness I am currently in.

I want to know what determines our lack of regular (healthy) sleep patterns, but I’d like this current one to change.

I used to make fun of my grandfather for waking up at the crack of dawn, when he quietly went to the kitchen to stir his cup of Sanka, while making a large batch of instant coffee for his thermos.

I worked for my grandpa, Ed Loney, for a few years off and on from the age of 12 to about 16 when I got a “real” job with a time card and taxes taken out.

He was a landscaper, a more dignified term for a guy who cut the lawn, chopped the hedges, and trimmed the curb.

Pop would pull up his station wagon, a “three on a tree” stick shift that had just enough room for his equipment and folded up taro lawn mower. He parked his car in front of my mom’s home at 6:30am and honked the horn at 6:31am.

The old American made cars from the 60’s did not have horns that “tooted” either. What was more of a “blare” started with a couple of quick tones, but then built into a full lean if I was more than five minutes late.

The sound of that friggin’ horn was (many times) my alarm clock, and it woke me up out of a deep slumber, often becoming part of my dream.

Oh, what I would pay to enjoy a night of sleep like the kind I had in my pubescent years. I don’t know if it’s from all the elongating of bones or growing of arm pit hair, but those years had pillow time that Rip Van Winkle would envy. On the days I didn’t work, I could easily conk out for eleven to twelve hours.

That’s my three day total now.

When Pop and I arrived at our various lawns to cut, he would have to nudge me to wake up from my nap on the way over, my head bobbed as if I had no vertebrae as i tried to make him believe I was fully awake and ready to work, the perfect assistant for the job.

I have never had a cup of coffee, and as I write this I am coming to the realization that the reason for my lifelong cocas been disdain is my sense memory of watching, smelling and listening to my grandfather slurp his stinky joe out of his plastic cup that came with the thermos.