Where did Wee Willie Winkie go?

The sandman that is. The guy who is supposed to take you to the land of Nod. Who carries the fairy dust around. Do you now know whom I'm talking about? Klaasvakie for short.

Well, I have a problem with him. He has been short-changing me lately. Or skipped my house altogether on his  nightly rounds. Without sending me a notice that he will be taking a leave of absence. Or move to a different zip code. Or just telling me where he was the previous few months. Not a very considerate guy if you ask me.

He ignores some people deliberately if they had too much coffee before bedtime or ate too much. This I can understand - if nothing else, he is quite temperamental and sometimes just plain mean. Where I have a problem with him is when he stays away when I'm really tired or really worried. He refuses to knock on my door in these circumstances.Surely he has some issues he needs to deal with , but not on my watch please.

Little kids fight any form of sleep with all their might. The words they fear most at night, are: it's time to go to bed. As adults we long for that extra hour of sleep and consider it a luxury to be in bed before 23h00. It's a constant battle in this house to actually go to bed. My husband always has one more piece of work to do, one more program to watch, one more article to read, or one more cup of coffee to drink. Me, I can go to bed right after supper, I don't care about the heartburn or the fact that the moon is not yet out. There are antacids and curtains for those things.

I am just so damn cranky when I don't get my 8 hours of sleep and therefor in awe of people who can function on 4 hours of sleep per night. Or am I really? I just not quite believe them if they say how effective they are and that if they sleep more than this they will not get everything done. I get it that life is short, but my friend, I'm sad to say, but it is going to catch up with you, and not in a nice way. You get out what you put in, and if you keep depriving that work horse of a body you have now, it's going to ask for payback sooner or later and usually not in a fun way.

Our minds move at warp speeds during the day (it takes quite a bit from you to make plans on how to change the world and everyone else around you...) and would it be so interesting to know how many thoughts run through this hard drive each day. If I feel wiped out at the end of the day, I can't even imagine about you guys who actually have a real job - it must be quite a party in there. It's precisely because I think too much that I just can't seem to find the "off" switch when I lie down at night, and this is where my battle with WWW - yeah, that guy - starts. Isn't he suppose to help us - not to make it even harder than it already is, right?

Ecclesiastes 5 says: "The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep". Am I just not pulling my weight enough each day? Will I sleep better if I shop even more and run quicker from store to store? Vacuum the house at a faster pace? Peel the potatoes with more enthusiasm. Organise my closet more often.  I'll have to make some changes. It seems that my best efforts have not been good enough to earn a good night's sleep and get the attention of Winkie that I so desperately need - somehow doesn't measure up.

 Maybe I should start cutting back on the excessive thinking and worrying, and then some more thinking and worrying: about the state of the world and my soul, the plight of others less fortunate than me, the safety of my loved ones. Then at the same time feeling the guilt of lying in a warm bed with a stomach so full that the 2 pillows and 3 antacids don't even counter the heartburn one teeny bit, then counting my blessings,  and so on and so forth. Staying busy while waiting for Winkie. Don't dare to waste a minute on doing nothing.

So whether you want to call it beauty sleep, or restoration of mind, body and soul or an inconvenient interruption of a perfect day, don't short change your own health to prove to others that you're somehow superhuman and doesn't need as much sleep as us mere mortals down here. You're not, my friend. We're all cut from the same cloth, so I'm saying this to you just once: "It's time to go to bed now!"