Ode to Joy

This morning, after waking up at 4:30 to visit the bathroom and let the cat out, I realized once again how much I love to sleep.
Last night was one of the first really hot nights of the year, so we left the windows open to cool off the bedroom. Of course that means we get to hear teenagers race their cars up and down the street, listen to lonely Romeo cats looking for feline companionship and hear the neighbor’s baby bawl.
But at 4:30 a.m. the teens, cats and babies were all asleep and the birds were waking up and singing. (Which is why our cat wanted to go out, it’s prime huntin’ time) It was still dark, and the ceiling fan was blowing a gentle breeze. I didn’t have to get up for another three hours. It was so comfortable it was almost decadent.
As a child I fought naps. But everyone else in the family loved them.
My mother, who worked like the rancher’s daughter she was from dawn to dusk, loved naps.
After a morning of gardening, cleaning, laundry, cooking a large dinner for the hay men and oh yeah, sewing school clothes for and raising five children, she would clean up the kitchen and go crash for an hour.
Then she would get up, fold another load of laundry, sew a pair of blue jeans, cook supper, do some more gardening and sit down to watch television with a little mending in her lap.
Meanwhile Dad would be up at the crack of dawn, making breakfast, fixing farm machinery, irrigating the field, fixing fence, herding cattle, or bailing hay. After a break for lunch he and all the hired hands would crash for an hour during the heat of the day before heading out to do the same thing over again until dark.
While I did not pick up the work ethic from my parents, I did find the nap to be a nice addition to my day.
My sister and I have a joke about our napping schedule. After arising at 10 a.m.., we eat something then retire for our mid-morning nap. Waking long enough to prepare lunch eat and clean up afterwards, we find ourselves needing an afternoon nap, followed by the afternoon snack, the mid afternoon nap, the evening meal, the evening nap etc.
As one friend put it, “I have only two regrets in life, that I have to stop sleeping to eat and that I have to stop eating to sleep.”
So let us raise a sleep eyelid to the Sunday nap, the summer nap, the nap lulled to sleep by the sound of lawnmowers and dishwashers humming in the background. Let us not forget the rainy day nap, the dozing in a chair whilst watching television and the ever popular look-like-your-listening-but-really-sleeping in church or long meetings nap.
I would say more, but it’s after 9 a.m. and I’ve been awake for almost an hour. I need to go get some rest.

Scrapping is almost as good as napping. I did this layout for a circle journal yesterday.