Sleep is so underated

Today is the first day of spring break and the kids are off from school. Even though technically, it is still a work day for me, I allowed myself to sleep-in. It felt great. I woke up refreshed, and happy. I had interesting and entertaining dreams that I remembered with bemusement after waking up. The sun is shining, the birds are singing. The design I was working on last night, looks better than ever! I feel ready to take on the world again. Even my hair is having a good day as a result of extra sleep!

Sleep has been a missing commodity in my life for a while. Not only do I rise early during the week for school and work, but the once sacred weekend sleep-in days, have been traded in for running kids to swim meets, early morning baseball games and of course, for me to climb Mission Peak. I remember when I was a teenager, I used to sleep late every weekend. I was never an early riser or for that matter a morning person. I would lounge around in bed and enjoy the luxury of soft pillows and comforters and the knowlege that I had nothing urgent or very pressing to accomplish, other than a term paper to write or an algebra problem to solve. These days, I think I am making up for all the hours that I frittered away in my great big four poster bed sleeping until noon. Payback time is here!

So, anyway today, for the first time in weeks, I didn't have to get up at "o-dark thirty" to shepherd the kids off to school. I told every one last night, no one was to wake me up, for any reason, what-so-ever. I had to make this announcement, because last Saturday, Kyle woke me up very early with his urgent "mom!, Mom!, MOM!!!!! I thought he might be sick and throwing up in the bathroom, that... or being abducted by aliens. After leaping out of bed and running to assist him in his moment of need, I realized he only had another question for me. It turned out, he simply wanted to know why, if the earth is round, how come the sidewalks are straight and don't bend. Not wanting to run the risk of playing trivial pursuit at 6am, I made sure that everyone knew that I was sleeping in. This worked to some extent. I did manage to sleep-in, but didn't quite accomplish my goal of sleeping in undisturbed until 10am! A pure fantasy, it turns out when you have children. Instead, despite my polite requests not to distrub mommy in the morning, I was woken up at 7:30 am, to be asked where the Pillsbury Dipping strips were. Yesterday at the grocery store, Kyle, my avid TV commercial watcher, jumped up and down in the frozen aisle when he spotted the Dipping Strips. Mom! We got to try 'em...I saw 'em on TV...they have to be gooood! In a weak moment, because I was, really tired, I caved in and bought the Dipping Strips, which turn out in reality to be, frozen waffles, cut into strips and sold with prepackaged syrup. Nothing, too spectacular that we couldn't already recreate at home. But, novelty is Kyle's operating word and it was all he talked about last night and needless to say, he couldn't wait for breakfast. That should have been my clue. The signs were big as day! I should have known that my sleeping-in plan would be foiled by the Pillsbury dough boy! But, apparently, I was just too tired to notice!