Day Twenty-One: Thankful for Sleep

Today is not a good day.  I am sick, and I am not happy about not being in my bed getting better.  I could take a sick day, but it's so much work getting ready for a sub, I'd rather just go in to work and suck it up.  I'm not running a fever, and other than this massive headache and a stopped up nose, I'm fine.

It's been a very long week, which has probably contributed to me now being sick.  I get sick whenever I'm exhausted.  Usually I avoid the latest bugs going around, and when I do get sick, it's usually extremely mild compared to what other people get.  But, this week, I have only made it home one night before 9:30, and that was Wednesday.  Every other night, I've been walking through the door between 9:30 and 10 at night, and then crashing in to bed from exhaustion.  And since Thursday, I've been feeling like poop.  My nose is stuffed up and is bright red from all the sneezing and blowing.  My head is congested and sore.  And I feel absolutely exhausted.

The cause for the late nights have been from Butter having three wrestling duels this week, and it's not over yet.  Tomorrow morning, I have to get up bright and early for a full day of wrestling, and Peanut has a show choir competition tomorrow, too.  Which means I have to be up at 4AM in the morning so that I can have her to the school by 6:30AM.

But, getting to what I'm thankful for today, I'm thankful for the sleep that I do get.  Even the small amount.  Tonight, I plan on coming home and going straight to bed in the hopes that I'll feel better by tomorrow.  Sleep is the best medicine, and if I can overdose myself on it today, I can keep my fingers crossed that tomorrow I'll be feeling a lot better.

I'm not just thankful for sleep, but where I get to sleep.  I have a giant king size bed, one of those memory foam mattresses, a giant body pillow, and the fuzziest fleece blanket ever.  It makes for one sleeping paradise.  I wrap my body pillow around me, wrap up in the blanket, and drift off in to slumber heaven.  I had to start using my phone as an alarm clock, because whenever my old alarm clocks would go off, I'd just hit them or throw them.  I won't do that to my cell phone, so it's the only way I can make myself get out of bed without starting off with some form of alarm clock murder.

Most weekdays, I go to bed around 10PM and get up at 4:30AM.  So, that's about 6 hours of sleep a night, by the time I get comfortable and actually drift off.  Which isn't enough sleep.  I do go to bed earlier some nights, but that's impossible when there's wrestling or some other sport going on.  But I always make up my lack of weekday sleep on the weekends.  It's not uncommon for me to go to bed around 9PM on a Friday night and wake up around 10AM on Saturday.  There have been many weekends where I've slept a good 12 to 14 hours in one night in order to catch up on some of the sleep I lost during the week.  Won't be able to do that this weekend, but then I only have two days of work next week before I get five glorious days off for Thanksgiving break.

So, today, I'm going to keep it pretty short.  I'm thankful for sleep.  I'm thankful for how it makes me feel.  I'm thankful for any that I get.  I'm thankful for the opportunities to make up some sleep. Even though I probably don't get as much sleep as I should each night, I'm thankful that no matter how busy I am, I have a warm, cozy bed waiting for me when I get home.

And there's only about ten more hours that I have to get through before I can drive home and curl up in to my bed once again.  I'll be counting down every minute, I'm sure.

Have a great Friday, everyone!