To sleep...
I've been an insomniac all my life. Even as a child I couldn't fall asleep or sleep through the night. As I got older, it just got worse. It typically takes me two hours to fall asleep, then I wake up a few hours later. I average 4-6 hours on a good night. I'm used to it by now. I watch old movies. Read. When I lived alone I would clean the house or do laundry. I will TiVo pretty much anything that seems interesting because I know at 3 am my viewing choices are limited. (Curse all infomercials and thank god for TiVo.) Some things I'll only make it 5 minutes before I know it's dull. Other things I'll watch straight through while I wait for the cat to wake up or the sun to rise (usually the cat wakes up first).

The problem is that the older I get the harder it is to be awake all night. It's not as easy as it used to be to get by on only a few hours sleep a night, especially after a few nights in a row of being awake. It's harder to drag my tired butt out of bed in the morning...even harder because I don't have a job to get to so I lack that motivation. Given the choice, I'd sleep 'til noon if I could. But that just makes it more difficult to fall asleep that night.

But there are compensations. I like the quiet. The peace. I like curling up under a warm blanket and watching an old movie or some fascinating documentary where I learn something new. I like turning the pages of a good book, a sleeping kitty curled up on my tummy, with I Love Lucy getting into trouble quietly, in the background.

On cold nights, I'l make a cup of herbal tea or some cocoa and, for some reason, feel decadent. In the summertime I'll open the window and listen to the neighborhood cats do the tango in our backyard. I'll pad barefoot around the house, reading the BBC news at 2 am, responding to e-mail at dawn.

Tonight Husband will go to bed like a normal person. I'll set up my nest of pillows and blankets in the living room and select a DVD to watch. Or perhaps I'll read. Eventually I'll fall asleep, two hours later I'll be awake. I can pretty much guarantee that sometime between 2 and 4 I'll be awake, watching Lord Peter Wimsey solve a baffling case or lost in the pages of one of the three books I am currently reading. (Don't ask.) And it'll be quiet, and I'll be slightly jealous of everyone with a normal sleep pattern. But mostly I'll just be content with my coziness, my cat, my sleeping sweetie, and the fact that I will, at some points, finally get some sleep.