The Old and the Sleepless! or Dr. Pepper Seniors, Up at 10,2, and 4

By Jody Worsham All rights reserved for a herd of sheep and a fence.

One of the side effects of getting old….er is the fact that you only sleep for about three hours at a time. Something about lessening levels of serotonin or increased melatonin. I personally think it’s the shrinking bladder which causes frequent trips to the bathroom that keeps you from your eight-hours-straight. Course add to that mix a five-year-old, a nine-year-old, and a thunderstorm and you can forget about any kind of continuous sleep.

Last night between claps of thunder, rounds of bedroom roulette, and trips to the john, I made some interesting discoveries. For example, did you know that even if you have 150 channels on your TV set, there is nothing worth watching at 3a.m.? Or if the reason you are up and watching the TV at 3a.am it’s because you are suffering from low back paint which only a Joy Seat can cure, you are still cleaning your floors because you don’t have a Shark Steam Clean Floor Cleaner, or you feel the sudden urge to chop grape sized bits of onion, pickles, and tuna for a sandwich and you don’t have the Magic Slap-Chopper?

Not only that, did you know the TV shows that you watched before 9p.m. start repeating at 1 a.m.? Now this can be a good thing for me because I usually fall asleep before the third choice of a vacation home on Devil’s Island is revealed. I have, on more than one occasion, awakened three hours later to not only see the third choice but get in on the final decision, never the one I would have picked.

And, surprise surprise, the 24/7 live recorded weather channel is on some kind of video loop. I almost moved the entire family into an interior walk-in closet before I realized I was currently watching a rerun of the same thunderstorm I had just experienced an hour earlier. I watched that same storm cross my part of the state four more times in much the same way one watches reruns of a movie, just to see if you missed something the first three times. Plus I wasn’t in the market for a genuine cubic zirconium naval ring even if they were going fast and there were only 1,200 of them left.

I also discovered that there is a direct correlation between when a roll of toilet paper will actually run out and the wee-wee hours of the morning. However, this has not been totally verified as the empty-roll-syndrome has been known to happen when a) there’s absolutely no one else in the house and b) when there is absolutely everybody in the house including the preacher regardless of the hour.

I realized, too, that my hearing is 200% better in the hours after midnight. Why are sounds, any sounds, louder, spookier, and more irritating the closer it gets to morning? Tree frogs that were soothing sounds of nature at 10p.m suddenly sound like the latest reject of American Idol at 4 a.m. and can set every dog in the neighborhood howling at the moon, even when there isn‘t a moon. A slight drip from the water faucet you didn’t quite turn off at 7p.m. becomes Niagra Falls on a gigantic tin drum in the early morning hours.

I finally gave up on any kind of continued sleep and headed to the kitchen. That’s the other good side effect of getting old..er. It’s always time for chocolate...at
10, 2, and 4.…and all the times in between.