A letter to my sleep/wake cycle

Dear screwed up sleep/wake cycle,
I am mad at you. You are ruining my life lately. Why is it that you come alive at 11pm at night, absolutely insisting on utilizing all available neurons so that I am wide awake? Then in the morning, you drug those same neurons so all they want to do is rest. You know I like to get up early. You know I don't like wasting my days catching up on sleep I should have gotten during the night. We have had this fight for the past several months, and it seems you are winning. I have tried to undermine you with Tylenol PM, yet somehow you fight through the drowsiness to make me think of things that really could wait until morning. Like last night- you kept me up thinking about the article in the NY Times about childbirth and the studies that show pushing during a contraction doesn't help labor at all. Is this something that needs to concern me at 3am? Am I pregnant? If so, you must know something I don't. Do I even care about pushing during labor? NO. And the other night when you insisted that I worry about terrorists picking Alton, IL to randomly abduct poeple from their homes so they can behead them. I mean, really. Can you at least be more realistic in your choices for my thought process? How about making me worry that this lack of sleep will eventually kill me? How would that one go? Oh yeah, that doesn't work because I might actually get worried enough to make myself sleep. If there were a way to override you, I would. But mark my words: I won't stop looking for ways to defeat you. You may keep me awake tonight, but tomorrow I think we'll start bright and early with 2 espressos. Then we'll take an invigorating walk outside with Maddie. When we return, 2 more espressos. Then we'll do some heavy cleaning for a couple hours later followed by two more espressos. Then another walk around the block. Then, in the evening around 8pm we'll start taking Tylenol PM combined with a hot bubble bath and some stretching. Then we will crawl in bed and begin reading the Precalculus book on the bookshelf in Ann's room. If you're not crying uncle by then, god help us both.

Yours in wakefulness at midnight,
Laura