Sleeping Habits

A while ago, Rachel tagged me for some "six" thing where I had to list six random facts about myself. I couldn't come up with six random facts on the spot, but I've felt bad ever since at not responding to her tag. So this evening, because I'm sleepy but refuse to go to bed at 10:00 on a Saturday night, I present to you six random sleep habits that I have.

1) I love waking up and not knowing where I am. I often experience this feeling when I go to a new place. The coolest time I felt this feeling was in Florence. I woke up, realized I didn't know where I was, and tried to figure it out. For some reason, my brain always defaults to my grandparents' old home in South Porcupine. Then it goes through the different places I've lived. When I went through all my places of previous inhabitance and realized I was actually in Florence, Italy, that just feel cool. Of all the places in the world, Florence is probably one of the best to wake up in.

2) This goes with 1, but I love waking up disoriented. This happens fairly rarely, but it's cool when I fall asleep upsidedown in my bed and wake up confused in my surroundings. Very few times in my life, I've tried to get out of my bed when I am disoriented, and I've gotten lost in a corner until I've woken up enough to figure out what's going on. That's just fun.

3) In every home I've lived in for the past several years, I've dreamt about secret rooms. This includes all four of my mission apartments. I love home decorating and I love to fill space. If I have a new room, I get to figure out what to do with it. Office? Another bedroom? A second living room? And my mind obviously loves the idea of a secret, hidden room. The funny thing is that I did live in an apartment with an extra room. When I lived with Sophie, there was a third bedroom in our two-bedroom apartment, but our landlords kept it locked and used it as storage. So there it was in our home, a locked and unusable extra room. And that idea has obviously stuck with me.

4) I love waking up in the middle of the night. I love it because I get to see that it's not time to wake up and I get to go back to sleep.

5) To go along with 4, I set my alarm clock a full hour before I have to wake up. Then I press snooze for a full hour---sometimes two---just because I love that feeling of getting to go back to sleep again and again. When I moved in with El Senor and he heard my alarm go off several times in the morning, he said to me, "Oh. You're one of those people." The funny thing is that even though he said it with derision, I notice his alarm doing the exact same thing every morning. So I'm not the only one of those people in this house.

6) When I was a kid, I was fascinated with the idea of going from consciousness to unconsciousness. So I just started to pay attention every night and try and pinpoint the exact moment I was falling asleep. Because of months and months of practice, I now am able to tell exactly when I am falling asleep. I don't even know if that's normal. Does everyone else know when they're falling asleep, or am I special?

So those are six random sleep things. Recently, Switchback's mother told her to stop worrying about being single and start counting her blessings. One of my singleness blessings is being able to sleep freely. I can listen to my alarm go off as many times as I like. I can roll and squirm and cough and sneeze as much as I like. If I want to watch TV while I fall asleep, I can do that too.

8 comments:

The Holyoaks said...

Our apartment in Pisa had a secret room. The landlord had a deal with the Sisters and it was that we would respect her wishes of never entering the "locked room." Her mother had died in there and it was left exactly as it had been when her mother died. So, of course I moved in and talked my companion in to opening the door and checking it out. It was very creepy. It was full of doilies and ruffles and I swear the rocking chair in there moved while we were peaking our heads in. The best part of the story is the dusty, old school BOM we found at the bottom of a stack of books on the bed-side table. The inside cover had a phone number which we called but the number had been disconnected.

Tolkien Boy said...

I love how everything you describe is what you love. When I'm speaking of sleep, it's generally in terms of irritated lack.

TOWR said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
N.F. said...

I haven't ever thought about trying to find "the moment" when I am falling asleep.

As soon as I get into bed, I'm WILLING sleep to come as soon as humanly possible. :)

Desmama said...

I love the thoughts that come into my head during those in-between moments when I'm juuuuust falling asleep. They're crazy!

natali said...

i remember once i had a roommate who was on the swim team who liked to set her alarm at four to leave by six. she was one of those people. she slept four feet from me. i would have killed her dead but she was too strong.

i i eee said...

You're weird. But in a sexy way.

;)

Anonymous said...

". . .my grandparents' old home in South Porcupine." I wish I were Canadian.