Sleep

Sleep is such an odd requirement. Luckily, it's a requirement I'm typically very good at, but that doesn't mean it hasn't had its share of odd happenings.

Last night, I was exhausted. I've been working far more than I thought I would be as well as doing a lot outside of work. I told myself I was just going to have a relaxing evening on my lonesome, read, and hang out with my animals. I snuggled up with a book, and before I knew it, I must have been passed out cold. I slowly woke up, ever so groggily, with my dog sitting on my chest, pawing my face, and shaking.

I tried to push him off of me. No easy feat, as the dog weighs half of what I do, I'm still mostly asleep, struggling to breath with him on top of me, and it's slowly dawning on me that he's scared. He's not moving. What's going on? I'm slowly coming out of the fog, and trying to figure out why my dog is so scared.

Boom! Crack! Crack! Boom!

Ah, I got it. The windows were open, and someone was setting off firecrackers right outside of them. I don't think I would have woken up if I hadn't had a 60 lbs dog on my chest making my breathing a challenge.

I can't believe the firecrackers hadn't woken me up on their own. But, then, I guess I have a history of sleeping through some pretty bizarre happenings. The story I'm sharing today happened during the summer when I was taking 6 hours of summer school and working full-time second shift in the OR. It was a hectic summer, to put it mildly, and I didn't get much sleep.

This particular night I remember was stormy, and I do remember lightening forking across the sky when I got home to our tiny efficiency apartment and poured myself onto the air mattress that was my bed for the summer. I don't remember much after that until my roommate, a nursing student, walked into our place that morning sometime after 7am. She walked into the kitchen and said, "What the hell happened?"

Sometime during the night, the storms had crashed half of the tree outside through our kitchen window.

I slept right through it.