The wisdom of nap regulation

Yesterday was gray and windy and rainy. I got up in the morning as usual and went to church, came home, cooked a big breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage and toast, put a roast into the slow-cooker with potatoes, carrots and onions, unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher and found myself to be rather WEARY after all that labor.

So I thought I'd go upstairs to my room where it's nice and quiet and where I could hear the rain pattering down and occasional cars driving by, their tires making soft splashy noises on the road. I had my book with me and I read for a little bit, but somewhere along the line, I fell fast asleep. So fast asleep that I wasn't even aware when Aisling came and got in bed with me and cuddled up with her back against mine and that's really saying something because Aisling is a restless person and takes a while to get settled and generally makes you feel like you're on a very small ship on a very high sea as she flops and flounders and arranges her pillows and covers herself up three or four times with her fleece throw and then decides to get up and blow her nose and then gets back on the bed and turns on the television and then drops the remote on the floor and then....and then....and then....

But I neither heard her nor felt her, and when I woke up two and a half hours later, I was completely disoriented and couldn't figure out what time it was or even what day it was, for that matter. But when I lifted my head off the pillow, her head popped up too.

"Hi, Mom!" she said with an amount of good cheer that I found almost unbearable three seconds after waking. "Boy, did you ever sleep for a long time! I bet you won't go to sleep tonight! I went to sleep too so I won't be tired either and maybe we can stay up together and watch a movie on the DVR!"

"Tomorrow's a school day," I replied, having thought it over and decided that yes, it was indeed Sunday. "How long did I sleep?"

"Two and a half hours," she said, "And Daddy said not to wake you up because you'd be grumpy and blame him for letting me wake you up."

"Preposterous," I said. "I only blame him for things like that on days that end in an A."

Aisling looked at me, brow furrowed. "But I don't think that...." Light dawned; she smiled. "Ohhhh, I get it."

As it turned out, she was right about me. She claimed to be having trouble sleeping and came grumpily downstairs at midnight, ate half a peanut butter sandwich and drank a glass of milk and talked my ear off while I sat moodily contemplating the kitchen sink; for lack of anything better to do, I'd cleaned all the leftovers out of the laundry room fridge. That was nearly three hours ago and I've seen neither hide nor hair of her, so I'm assuming she finally fell asleep.

I, on the other hand, am staring down a busy Monday with a feeling of grim dislike. Oh, how I wish I'd set the alarm on my cell phone and not let myself sleep longer than half an hour!