behold the incredible unsleeping woman

Anyone who's ever looked at this blog's timestamp and done whatever equation required to figure out the actual time that timestamp is meant to convey (when not during Daylight Savings Time, the formula is timestamp - craziness = real time) probably knows that I am frequently awake until about 3 AM. I'm an insomniac. I have horrible dreams that are rarely amusing (except for the one time when I woke up and I thought that my bed's engine wasn't strong enough to carry me through time to morning, and that I ought to get up and sleep on the floor... that was pretty funny, even six years after it happened) and that's part of why it's so hard for me to fall asleep.

However, the people around me do not have this problem.

Usually when my mother gets home from a daylight shift (she's a nurse, and that shift means she leaves the house a little after 5 AM and gets home anywhere from 3 PM to 5 PM) she changes her clothes, gets a cup of tea, and promptly falls asleep in the living room in some of the most improbable positions possible. Just the other day she fell asleep with both arms propped on their elbows and held straight up in the air. You know how in a cartoon, the character's head will bob back and forth? Her arms were doing that. In unison. She sometimes mumbles or talks, but she always snores. I of course find this hilarious.

It's absolutely unbelievable. Even though my mother isn't a big woman, (she's really quite trim) nor does she have a breathing condition, she produces noises I'd previously only heard while watching Star Wars scenes that featured Darth Vader. Sometimes she's so loud that she wakes herself up. And I giggle and attempt to record her using the "voice memo" feature on my cell phone, because I'm pretty sure that I'll be going to hell anyway.

Tonight, I witnessed the only thing that could possibly be better: two people sleeping in thoroughly unbelievable positions, snoring like a pair of buzz saws cutting through knotted pine.

After dinner and some idle shopping, I went over to Scott and Jason's house with our other friend Mike to hang out and watch a movie. About a half hour or so into the movie, Mike fell asleep, as he'd had two drinks, and that makes him sleepy. Understandable. I've often used alcohol to lull myself into sleep. I've just never fallen asleep curled sideways across a chair like a large cat. Of course, I have trouble falling asleep in my coccoon of soporific softness, so I can't be a fair judge.

Scott, who had just subjected himself to the horror that is laser eye surgery, (don't get concerned--he's fine, and they even opened up his third eye when they accidentally left the laser on while switching from one eye to the other) and who'd also had a few drinks, pulled the throw from the back of the couch and started snoring. He was sitting upright, and every so often his head would bob back and forth. Then he'd wake up and open his eyes wide and look extremely alert, and then immediately fall back asleep. He looked like he was doing an impression of himself falling asleep. Even my mother hasn't managed to be that alert and then completely unconscious in the same second. There was no waking-up or falling-asleep interim. There was only Awake and Asleep. Jason and I had as much fun watching them as we did watching the movie.

I'm going to bed now. Perhaps I should try sitting straight up--it seems to do wonders for other people.