He Gives To His Beloved Sleep

Lucy the Cat, Jetlag, the New York Times, and the Bible

One of Louix XIV’s Beds

Here I am, back in my own bed—or at least some parts of it. Some were thrown down by me in a hot wroth late last night when, just seconds after I removed the large plastic protectionary cover intended to keep Lucy the Demented Cat from peeing in her now preferred spot, just below my pillow, and turned my back, and then turned around again, I found she had nipped in, apparently after saving up all day, subsequently making her escape with remarkable speed for her age and arthritis. I imagine that someday I will look back upon this moment and laugh, but this day is not that day. I am excessively annoyed, a state hard to endure as I am also suffering the full effects of jetlag. I feel like a plane unable to take off. I start to have a burst of enthusiasm to put the world to rights, but then just as I am getting into some necessary task, sleep overcomes me and I have to take a short nap, which makes it worse.

Ah me, the travails of coming back to reality after a wonderful holiday. Anyway, as I was scrolling in the middle of the night because my body and mind were insisting to me that it was really noon somewhere else and that I should be wide awake, I found this funny thing, a piece about people becoming overly obsessed with their sleep.

I should just say, before taking a gander at this ridiculous phenomenon, I am personally interested because, since falling into Middle Age and all the attendant miseries thereto, I have embarked upon my own long Sleep Journey to find a way of sleeping that doesn’t hurt my back, a quest chronicled elsewhere, though I don’t remember where, so don’t bother searching for it will just be a waste of time. One thing I know now that I didn’t know before is that Good Sleep Hygiene is the ticket. Make sure your bed hasn’t become the Loo of the Cat, that children don’t think they can sleep there when they are large enough to injure you by a silent, unwitting blow to the head when they change position, that your sheets are regularly washed and soft enough and cool enough not to stick to you through the agony of a long, hot, sweaty night. Go to bed at a reasonable hour. Take a bath. Read something mindless—probably not election news—and for heaven’s sake, don’t pray about anything important because it will wake you right up. I thought I was a bit extreme in my pursuit of good sleep, but I had no idea. From the New York Times: