Dear Sleep, Why do we have such a complicated relationship?

This was written at 1:54 a.m. on July 23rd.  Naturally, I should've been either finishing my homework or sleeping.

Lately I have gotten into this really, really weird trend of waking up early.  And I mean, I’m talking early.  The past 5 days I have woken up at 6 at the latest (4:05 at the earliest).  And if anyone who knows me is reading this (probably no one is reading this), then they know that I am not an “early bird gets the worm” kinda girl.  I enjoy my sleep. Very, very much so.  So anyway, there of course is reason to this madness (and madness to the reason).  My summer school class has me reading these articles that are fairly interesting, but they are SO DARN LONG.  Like 30 pages in tiny, tiny print and it’s the sort of article that has like 3 columns per page making it extra dense. (Hey Charles-Dickens-wannabe, you aren’t getting paid by the word. FYI). And I have to read 4 articles each night. And then write a paper on one of them for the next day.  And I have a quiz on them every morning so I can’t really slack on the reading or skim it.  Ok, ok so you’re reading this (again, I understand the “you” is an abyss and that actually no one is reading this. That’s cool; I’m still going to rant) and are thinking stop complaining and just do it.  And that’s why I really need to get someone to sit next to me and like every 10 minutes make sure I am not daydreaming, because that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.  I’ll “read” a paragraph and then take a subconscious 20 minute break where I contemplate what people in Switzerland think of Swiss Miss hot chocolate; Or I imagine which flowers would be in my hypothetical wedding bouquet; Or I take a trip down memory lane to 2^nd grade and reflect on how sweaty and red Timmy D. would look after playing some intense crab-soccer in gym class; that boy sure did share a striking resemblance to a tomato (a sweaty tomato. Yes, I know those don’t exist…but for the sake of the story, go wit it).   

And so, the moral of the story is don’t daydream.  Because it causes you to lengthen (by hours) the time it takes to do your work, and then you feel guilty about not finishing your work so you stay up to obscene hours and try to finish it.  But then you realize that you aren’t actually reading because it’s 3 in the morning and your eyes have this feeling that they have a film covering them, making it nearly impossible to keep them open.  And then you pray for a snow day.  And then you remember it’s summer and the chances of snow are pretty slim.  And so then you also realize that you haven’t even started your paper that’s due the next morning and kinda freak out. So you set your alarm for 5:30ish.  You go to sleep. You wake up at 5:30 and the first thing that crosses your mind is “OH HELL NO!” and you hit the snooze button and sleep for another 15 minutes.  You wake up, rub your eyes, splash cold water on your face, make a lil Dunkin Donuts Coffee, and get down to business.

You arrive to class feeling/looking like a zombie.  You are pretty pissed off at your current state.  You look at the clock and see it’s 10:15 and get nostalgic about the days when you were a kid and summer at this hour meant watching Scooby Doo with your brother and hearing the voice of your mom call you down for breakfast.  And then you remember that you don’t have any milk and need to pick that up after class (you of course forget).  You then quickly read over your notes because you are about to take a quiz.  You have bittersweets thoughts in your head regarding your teacher: damn you for assigning all that reading…but I guess I can forgive you because you are like the nicest guy ever and have this geeky, black framed glasses look going on.  And then you think “oh dear I have a haphazard crush on my 28 year old married professor”. And then you take the quiz. And then you sit in lecture for 2.5 hours.  And then you repeat all the above for 4 more days until the weekend.   

This was taken at 4:15 in the morning last week.  An hour I really do not like to see. But it did kinda look pretty outside.  The sun was just starting to peek through.