Happiness Is a Good Night's Sleep

I mentioned the happiness book I’d been listening to on my iPod yesterday, and the author started talking about studies that had been done showing happy people get enough sleep, i.e. 8 hours a night.

DUH!

I’m not trying to be sarcastic, well, yeah I am, because this seems like common sense to me. Everybody gets cranky when they don’t get enough sleep, but nobody’s doing it on purpose. If you’re not sleeping enough it’s probably because you have (1) too much work, (2) too many babies (3) too many bed bugs, or (d) too many troubles. Oh, and I forgot to add (f) teenagers.

I have a teenage daughter who spends her every waking minute giving me causes to fret. What are her and her boyfriend doing when they’re supposed to be at a movie? What are her and her boyfriend doing out in the bonus room, and should I go in and pretend to be looking for something again? When we added that bonus room it was to get our noisy kids and their friends away from us. Now it’s way, WAY too quiet in there. Is her boyfriend causing her to study less? Is she spending too much time with her boyfriend and not enough with her girlfriends? Does the boyfriend ever eat at home?

She has a midnight curfew, and I feel I need to be awake to make sure she comes home on time, and alone. It’s not that I don’t trust her, it’s just that I was her age once….and I’m not going to say anything else on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate me.

So if I hop in bed at 12:01, and the crows start squawking at 5 a.m., which means I’m going to lose about 3 hours worth of happiness. I believe this explains why I am cranky and try to pick fights with my family, friends, grocery clerks, and the dog. If none of them are around, I argue with myself, out loud. Sometimes I snarl and bite. I’ll show you the teeth marks if you don’t believe me.

Sometimes I’d like to switch places with my dog. She lies around all day except when someone goes in the kitchen, where she’ll come from the ends of the earth hoping for a dollop of butter. I sling it off the knife onto the floor but sometimes it hits her. What a mess. Butter splats right between the eyes, and her tongue not nearly long enough to reach it even when she curls it out the sides of her mouth. This is torture for her, so I’m not sure why I nearly roll on the floor laughing when it happens. I invite the whole house in to watch. Then I have to clean off the butter and give her a dab as a consolation, which I’m sure she thinks is not nearly enough for what I’ve put her through and the public humiliation.

I can tell you one thing, though, I don’t lose any sleep worrying about accidently buttering my dog on occasion. I’ve got plenty of other things robbing me of my rest and happiness, including writing this blog very late at night. I get tickled and that makes me wide awake. I just wish you could see that dog trying to get at that butter.

So I will bid you all sweet dreams and hope the crows decide to take a vacation so I can sleep in until maybe even 6 o’clock. Ah, that it would be so….