Ok so in my college days I was always up for it. Always up for a laugh, always storming the dance floor busting my moves and I did not give a holy shit who was watching. I was fun, a ladette, a clubber. I was energetic and (dare I say it about myself) sexy.
I used to pride myself in being the last one to leave a party. Man of the match, the last one standing whatever you want to call it. I’d be the one at the end going round shaking seemingly empty cans of Carling hoping someone had left a full… who am I kidding, even quarter full, one. Sometimes I’d score and chug it down only to get caught out by a fag butt lurking somewhere in the ashy, stale half drunk lager… Oh the glamour of days gone by. Ahem.
I remember back then I’d stay up late to watch Prisoner Cell Block H at 2am when I had lectures at 9am. Legend. I’d skin up a fresh doob at midnight, totes cool man… well, so I thought. In my clubbing days I hardly went to bed on weekends. Sleep when your dead, isn’t that what we used to say?
Now sleep is a must. Sleep is a godsend. Sleep is precious and necessary and a whole 8 hours is so rare that my eye bags make me look like a dead person… who’s been dead at least a month. Staying up late does not equate to street cred anymore so why do I do it? Why can’t I go to bed at 9pm and read a book? Is it FOMO? But what am I going to miss out on? Seriously? The most exciting thing that may happen after 9 in our house is that our cat gets into a scrap in the back garden with the cat from next door. I guess I’ve always liked chasing the next high, the next stimulus, from weed to sh*t TV to half drunk lager, so is this it? Am I addicted to stimulation? Is Stranger Things my new high??
This is usually the drill… me and hubby find something to watch on TV. Be it mind-numbing light ent like First Dates or something more exciting like a brand new Netflix production. Whatever it is I do actually want to watch it. I get super comfy. I rest my head on hubby’s lap. I ask him to ‘scratch my head’. Don’t be alarmed I don’t have nits; it’s just a thing I ask him to do. More like stroking or tickling but we call it ‘head scratches’. We mustn’t dis the head scratches BTW as it as it is about all the physical contact we can muster up these days. Anyway, whatever you wanna call it, it sends me right off. Then he goes ‘Are you sleeping?’ And I usually wake up suddenly and lie and say ‘No’ and then pretend to laugh or comment at the TV programme just to make it more convincing that I’m not snoozing… and then I drift off again. WHY? WHY DO I DO THIS?? JUST GO TO FECKIN BED WOMAN!!!!
What usually happens then is at about 11 my husband gets up and he’s like ‘I’m going to bed, you coming?’ And I’m so grumpy at having being woken up I feel like I could kill. I drag my carcass upstairs and brush my teeth and then…F*CK SAKE…I’m wide-awake. Because I’ve taken the edge off haven’t I? I can lie there for hours then, not being able to sleep, thinking ‘Why didn’t I just go to bed? WHY? WHYYYYYYY?!!!!’
I read once that a good parent gets a good night’s sleep because you need lots of energy and patience to be able to run after kids all day. Well yeah, duh, this makes perfect sense right? So why do I stay up late when I know this? Is it because I feel that we’ve been robbed of all our own time and so we want to make the most of those precious few hours of adult time we have in the evening? Is it FOMO instilled in us from our juvenile days? I definitely do associate going to bed early as being dull but surely snoozing on my husbands lap from 9pm every night is the most boring act ever? Waking up in a foul mood looking like Ken Dodd on a bad hair day (head scratches doesn’t half bouffant up the old birds nest), surely that is more tragic than anything in the whole universe is it not? Cool and sexy have definitely left the building…left the planet for f*ck sake.
So ‘yes’ in answer to my own question. I think this does make me a sh*t mum. Low energy, snappy, depending on caffeine to get me through the day Mum has to go. When my kids are grumpy or misbehaving I can quite often pin point it to tiredness or lack of sleep and so I make sure I get them to bed at 7 for their full 12 hours so why am I not putting such importance on this rule for me? I need 8 hours to function. FACT.
Right, I am going to make ‘bed at 9pm’ the new cool. Hitting the sack is sick (sick as in cool, not as in perverted) There. That’s my slogan right there. I’m still down with it…right? This no sleep be killing my vibe. SH*T! It’s actually 10:52pm right now…
…And on that note. I’m off to bed. Night night, hope next doors cat doesn’t bite…
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Amen!!