So there are to kinds of naps, the famous cap nap, and the sleeping like a baby nap. I personally am a fan of both. If I am looking for a quick 30 min cat nap, I, like my feline counterpart, look for the warmest sunniest spot in the house and curl up for a quick bout of shut eye. On days when I am just dragging and feeling sluggish and dull, the answer is almost always, a cat nap. I wake up feeling refreshed and down right perky. The other type of nap though is a totally different thing. When I want to sleep like a baby I make sure that the house is quiet, the room is as dark and silent as a tomb, and my clothing as unrestrictive as possible. I snuggle down into my comforter, fluff the pillows, and give a little shiver of anticipation knowing that I have sectioned off at least 90 mins in the middle of the day to rest. It is a luxury and doesn't happen often but I justify it when I've had a sleepless night, or feel like I'm getting sick, or if the calender tells me its a Sunday afternoon.
So this morning I woke at 6am, the crack of dawn in my book, after going to bed too late and having annoying dreams that kept me from really enjoying my sleeping time (you know that life if off kilter when you dream about the problems you can't solve in your waking hours and you feel supremely irritated that you don't even get a break from them while you are unconscious). I got up and thought that I might as well be productive while the house was so quiet and so I started in on getting caught up on some business stuff
(did a bit o blogging: www.shamaleaphotography.com/blog). When the family woke I hopped into mommy mode and made breakfast, got kids dressed and off to school, took care of the baby, picked up, wrote out a grocery list, made a couple of calls, and felt like I had to be at least half way through my day already, only the clock mocked me by flashing: 10:15am. Jon didn't have to leave until close to 11:45am so it came to me that I could either indulge in a really LONG hot shower then do my hair and make up or I could go back to bed for a while. The lure of having the bed all to myself won out and I headed up stairs mentally preparing for a 'sleeping like a baby' nap. But then as I passed the living room there was a very seductive (and in WA in Feb), and very rare patch of sunshine warming the most comfy part of the couch. Which type of nap should I take? The one where I shut myself away and really power nap, or the one where I stay in the hub of the house so that I doze on and off while the sounds of my family buzz in the background. Cat or baby, baby or cat???? A nap needed to happen, and fast, because while I debated the pros and cons I had already lost 15 mins! In the end I opted for the darkness of the bedroom, the quiet hum of the noise machine, and the joy of sleeping in the middle of the bed and utilizing all the pillows. Sounds nice right? Not when your head hits the soft downy comfort of the pillows at 10:30am and you start dream lecturing yourself about missing out on that sunny patch of couch at 10:45! My subconscious self is apparently quite worried about the amount of Vitamin D my body is receiving as well as noting that by sitting in the sun I could put a little color back into my pale winter pallor. I kept telling my subconscious self to back off because I only had 45 more mins of good sleep ahead of me, and it argued back that 45 mins was really more a cat nap and maybe I should have just taken the hot shower after all. 11:20am rolls around and I decide that me taking a nap is a lost cause. So here I sit, not pretty from extra time putting on my make and doing my hair, not rested from a really good nap, not even a little bit more clear headed from soaking up the vitamins of the sun. Where did I go wrong I wonder? And all I can come up with is that I tried to chase the almost impossible dream of napping in the middle of the day. I reached for the stars and had to drag my feet in the trees by going for the 'sleeping like a baby nap', but I applaud myself for my audacity. I could have copped out and gone for the 'cat nap', but that would be like reaching for the tree tops and dragging your feet in the mud. Am I right?
