To Sleep or Not to Sleep…that is the question.

Well, it is two in the morning. What are you usually doing? The correct answer to that should be…sleeping. If you are a woman over fifty…probably not!

I have never been a great sleeper. I would wake with each little sound in the house. If I wasn’t in my own warm, comfy bed, sleep probably wasn’t going to happen. For a short period of time, my brother and I had a paper route. We delivered papers every week night, and then very early on Saturday mornings. On Friday night, I went to bed dreading the next morning. I woke every couple of hours, hoping it wasn’t time to get up, listening to the barking dogs and wondering which one was loose and waiting to chase me on my bike.

Of course, teenage years in school were awful. I loved school, but if a special event was happening the next day or a test…sleep was the last priority. Not good when you have finals for a string of days!

Then came babies. I could never understand how I could be so exhausted but catch every little hiccough, sneeze or coo from down the hall! Really? Anyone that is a mother knows that pretty much comes with the territory…and it doesn’t end when they marry and have children of their own. I can hear my oldest sneeze from a mile away in the middle of the night!

So when I turned fifty, I thought, “No big deal, I’ve got this, I haven’t slept for years. This won’t be any different.” Wrong! Now it’s a whole different kind of sleepless nights with no rhyme or reason. Sometimes I’m agitated and I sleep wonderfully and other times I’m awake the entire night. I may go to sleep really well and then wake up a few hours later, tapping my toes against the sheet for another few hours.

And now…my dear husband tells me I’m snoring when I’m sleeping! What?! Maybe that’s a blessing. Just maybe I’m finally, actually sleeping when my eyes are closed and going into that deep sleep you’re supposed to have for good health. You know the one…where you lose weight, your eyes are sparkling and you have all sorts of energy?

I don’t think so. The picture in my mirror still looks the same and my running shoes have an inch of dust on them. Oh, I don’t own a pair of running shoes!