Snoozin Buddies

I have a confession: I am really bad in bed.

Sleeping, I mean. I don't sleep well, and that makes me a very poor bedmate.

First, it takes me a while to fall asleep. I toss and turn like... well, a thing that tosses and turns a lot. It takes me several tries to get a position that feels juuuuust right so I can actually get to sleep. I start on one side. I try a few arrangements with my arms, then with my legs. Sometimes I shift a bit onto my stomach, then I might shift back. Often I end up in some kind of weird jack-knife position, which is fine when I'm alone, but if you're in the spot next me on the bed, it can lead to a knee in the back. Generally unpleasant.Then I'll switch to the other side and repeat the whole process.

Once I'm done acting like a marionette made of jumping beans (hey, now there's a nice image for your nightmares! YOU'RE WELCOME!), it's still not fun to be under the covers with me. I'm tiny, and I'm always cold, but holy crap do I warm up when I sleep. I have been called a human space heater. My metabolism is just churning away while my brain frolics in dream land, so I'm generating a ton of warmth, and it has nowhere to go thanks to the blankets. I usually start the night all bundled to the gills, but I wake up with blankets, socks, and pajama pants all thrown asunder. With yet another body thrown into this furnace, it just gets to be too much and I can't sleep at all. I'm back to tossing, turning, flinging blankets about, and being an all-around bed nuisance.

Then we have more tossing. More turning. I think this is probably how I get most of my exercise, actually. I wake up about 549862 times a night, and almost every time, a position change is required, even if just a tiny one. If I don't move/change sides/flail about, my joints start hurting like a mofo, and that makes for a very unhappy me. I don't think I've punched anyone in the face yet, but I have kicked, headbutted, and kneed my poor sleeping partners.

Do I snore? I've been told that sometimes I do, but I've also been told these snores are "tiny and cute." Sometimes, though, I get all congested and my unconscious self decides the solution to not being able to breathe through my nose is to just breathe through my mouth. Logical. Except, there I am, on my side with my mouth open, and did you know that you don't swallow in your sleep? When I was about 6 or 7, I watched a friend taking a nap at our babysitter's house, because I wanted to accurately be able to feign sleep. That... hmm. That sounds rather creepy now that I'm admitting it, but come on! I was little, it was the middle of the afternoon, and it was FOR SCIENCE! If something is FOR SCIENCE! that means it's okay. Anyway, point being, open mouth + no swallowing = drooooooool. Sexy. You want this. Don't deny it.

I was thinking about all this last night as I was careening around* my queen bed solo, enjoying being able to fling my legs any which way I pleased. Sharing my bed with a new person is always hard, because I want to appear like I have perfect sleep manners... so basically, I sleep in tiny little 5 minute increments, which are cushioned by ridiculously long periods of laying awake, as still as possible, thinking about all the ways I wish I could arrange my limbs but desperately willing my body not to follow through on those impulses. Sharing the other person's bed with said new person is just double the issues, and the first time that happens, I'm lucky if I get any sleep at all. I love you, sleep! I do, truly and deeply! Why are you so evasive with me?

Anyone else a sleeptard?

*I realize I could have chosen another way to describe this, but the mental image I got of myself careening around a bed like an untied balloon just cracked me up.