Sleepless in Mequon

Normally I can sleep anywhere.

I can sleep on a bus, I can sleep in a train.
I can sleep in the heat, I can sleep in the rain.
I can sleep in Des Moines, I can sleep in Champaign.
I can sleep when I'm crazy, I can sleep when I'm sane.

Well, you get the idea. Ticking clocks, dripping water, glaring lights do not prevent me from dozing off for the most part. Sometimes I will ask the boys to turn down the volume on their music/movie/whathaveyou, and don't tell them, but really I would fall asleep even with it blaring.

Tonight though, I watch the hours tick by on my alarm clock and try as I might, the body and brain do not close down. Rats. I will be exhausted tomorrow. Once or twice a year I experience this, and I have always attributed it to hormonal levels inexplicably being beyond my norms. I wonder what that means? Can it be my body is recuperating to the point of beginning to work more normally?

Sigh. I resort to my usual ploys when sleep does not come. First, try reading. I plow through my research book Living Through Pain: Psalms and the Search for Wholeness - I jot ideas about which Psalms might be worth including in my Morning and Evening Prayers for Cancer Patients Undergoing Chemotherapy DVD.

My eyes begin to feel heavy. I close the book, shut off the light and hope for snoring, but as soon as the dark settles, I am wide awake. I pick up my prayer beads and prayer for everyone on the list. Still no sleepiness. Luther and I chant through a dozen great Psalms. Nothing. I decide I should work on my score study. I grind through a few scores laboriously. No desires for sleep arise. Hum.

I try a warm drink despite the heat. Some chamomile tea. Nothing. Well, hopefully I will make it through class tomorrow without zoning, and by evening whatever is bugging my system will have worn off or moved on. Just as I give up hope, I doze off and get at least 3 hours before the blasted lawn crew begins its 6am daily mowing of the athletic fields just outside my window.

Sigh. Some days you just can't make no progress nohow.